Jewish activist heckled after calling for ban on hate speech
A SENIOR Jewish activist was heckled on the main stage of the Labour conference yesterday as he urged the party to stamp out anti-Semitism.
The national vice-chairman of the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) Mike Katz was met with shouts of ‘rubbish’ as he called for the party’s rules to be changed to ban hate speech.
He said: ‘I don’t want to be here, because I wish there hadn’t been an upsurge in anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, misogynistic and homophobic vile hate speech in our party, even here in our exhibition and in our fringe, I’m sad to report.
‘There is no place [for anti-Semitism] in our party, you must root it out.
‘Against this backdrop is it any wonder that support for Labour amongst British Jews is said to be as low as 7 per cent?’
But he was later met with a standing ovation for insisting that the JLM was ‘going nowhere’. He urged Labour to show it was ‘serious’ about tackling misogyny, racism and anti-Semitism.
Earlier in the week, leaflets were handed out calling for the expulsion of the Jewish group from the Labour Party. Mr Katz said the JLM was ‘beyond disappointed’ and ‘dismayed’ that the National Executive Committee was not taking action to tackle the issue immediately.
He said: ‘We shouldn’t have to wait a year, we shouldn’t have to wait a further minute, we should have been able to do it now. I have to say, and I say this with no little regret, the JLM does feel let down. But we are going nowhere.’
He told the Mail he had been pleased to receive the standing ovation and that hecklers had been told to ‘shut up’.
A damning poll unveiled today found nine in ten thought the party was failing to do enough to stamp out the abuse.
The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, which carried out the survey, warned that the UK’s Left-wing parties were ‘descending into darkness’.
The poll found 87 per cent of British Jews thought Labour was too lenient on anti-Semitism in its ranks – twice as many as thought Ukip had the same issue.
Nearly half of those surveyed believed the Green Party was too tolerant of the abuse, while 40 per cent said this was also true of the SNP and 37 per cent of the Liberal Democrats. By contrast, the Conservative Party was the only party not seen as having a major problem – with 13 per cent of the 1,864 British Jews questioned saying they thought the Tories were too tolerant of the racist slurs. The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism said the results were a ‘stark warning over the rise of anti-Semitism in the political parties of the Left’.
Joe Glasman, head of political investigations at the organisation, which represents Jewish communities in the UK, said: ‘The Jews of Britain understand both historically and intuitively what they are witnessing, and every accusation that they are concealing a hidden agenda confirms their fears that Britain’s Left is now descending into darkness. This is amply reflected in our findings.
‘Anti-Semitism corrodes society, and urgent action is needed by the parties of the Left which have talked the talk but now need to walk the walk. Jews are the canaries in the coal mine, and in large numbers are falling silent in Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. The whole nation should listen to that silence and shudder.’
The campaign said that, while political parties have strong policies against racism, the poll showed the Jewish community had lost faith that they were being firmly implemented. This was because parties had failed to ‘deal robustly’ with instances of anti-Semitism.
Former London mayor Ken Livingstone was suspended by the Labour Party after claiming Hitler supported Zionism before he ‘went mad and ended up killing six million Jews’. But he was later re-instated.
The row intensified last month when Shami Chakrabarti was handed a peerage by Mr Corbyn weeks after publishing a much-criticised report that allegedly whitewashed anti-Semitism in the party.
The human rights campaigner’s inquiry avoided criticising the Labour leader for describing terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah as friends. She also failed to question why he had not clamped down on anti-Semitic comments.
‘Vile hate speech in our party’