CHAKRABARTI AND CORBYN: INDEPENDENCE , IDEALISM, AND INIQUITIES

While it would certainly have been preferable for Labour’s National Executive Committee (of which I was chairman 10 years ago) to have released Baroness Royall’s report on allegations of antisemitism in the Oxford University Labour Club rather than deferring publication until the completion of the wider report for which Shami Chakrabarti has been commissioned, the JC’s headline proclaiming that “Labour blocks hate inquiry” (May 20) is simply untrue.

Marcus Dysch’s article makes it clear that the full report will be published, and the wider enquiry is in process.

The attack on Ms Chakrabarti is itself unwarranted. Together with other MPs and Peers, several of us Jewish, I attended a meeting with her in which she made it clear that she will publish her report, and emphatically stressed that she is acting in an independent capacity. She is widely respected for her work with Liberty .

It is absurd to protest, as the JC’s editorial does, that the fact that she has joined the Labour Party disqualifies her from conducting the inquiry. She has been a long-standing Labour sympathiser but, until she recently stood down from her role with Liberty, thought it inappropriate to belong to any Party.

My colleague Lord Stone, who has been involved for decades in bringing communities together, is working with her to help improve the organisation’s response to these issues.

As a member of the All Party Parliamentary Group on AntiSemitism, I am only too conscious of the existence of this manifestation of racism, and of the appalling online abuse suffered by the likes of Luciana Berger and Louise Ellman. It must be tackled wherever it appears inside or outside the Labour Party, but a sense of proportion in the columns of the JC and elsewhere would be welcome. Jeremy Beecham House of Lords

Simon Brasch ( Letters, May 20) claims Jeremy Corbyn is an “idealist and humanitarian”.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Not only is he unable to issue a straightforward denunciation of antisemitism, he also has a record of accepting some of the worst humanrights violations.

He refused to support armed action against the murderous Isis regime, which has committed acts of genocide against Yazidis, Christians and Shi’a and crimes against humanity, particularly against women, on a massive scale. The Genocide Convention places an obligation on states to “suppress the crime of genocide”. Britain under Corbyn would stand idly by.

He has supported organisations that promote terrorist acts against civilians, calling them “friends”.

At the same time, he supports (and was chair of) the so-called Stop the War Coalition which has supported Putin’s aggression against Ukraine and the illegal annexation of Crimea. This is not the record of an “idealist” or a “humanitarian”. It is the record of an individual who is not fit to hold public office. Professor John Strawson London N19

Contrary to your article, Charedim attack Diane Abbott for ‘not getting’ concerns over hate crisis ( JC, May 20), the motion which was proposed and subsequently withdrawn did not conflate Zionism with Nazism.

However, it is the case that, when he spoke to the motion, the proposer did refer to comparisons between Zionism and Nazism made by others. Laura Pascal Smith Cazenove Branch Secretary, Hackney North and Stoke Newington Constituency Labour Party, London, N16