‘They want to shut us down’

Some of the UK’s leading Jewish female figures gathered in Parliament this week to discuss a problem they are all facing: online threats and abuse

ANTISEMITIC AND misogynistic abuse is “an attempt to silence” those in politics seeking to bring about change, Labour’s Yvette Cooper told a packed conference in Parliament on Monday.

Speaking at the launch of the Sara Conference, convened to address the antisemitic abuse of women, the Home Affairs Select Committee chair also said she was “ashamed” that MPs in her party such as Luciana Berger and Ruth Smeeth had experienced vicious vitriol and abuse.

Ms Cooper told the conference: “Antiall semitism and misogyny is an attempt to silence people, to silence political voices and an attempt to stop change.

“That’s why we need to speak out… and why all of us have to do more to challenge the coming together of those two ancient hatreds.”

Addressing the abuse of party colleagues by Labour members, Ms Cooper said her party “still needs to do more to address a basic duty of care to deal with threats and abuse”.

She praised the “incredible strength” Ms Berger showed by speaking out about antisemitic abuse “on behalf of Jewish women, and, in fact, all women and all of us”. “She is frankly one of the best MPs in Parliament,” Ms Cooper said.

Those at the event — put on by the Antisemitism Policy Trust (APT) and the All Party Parliamentary Group on Antisemitism — discussed new research showing that Jewish women MPs faced 15 per cent more online antisemitic abuse than their male counterparts. Former Google data scientist and author Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, the researcher behind the project, found that women with political power were “particularly subject to antisemitic abuse”.

The survey, conducted for the APT and the Community Security Trust, also found people were more likely to search for “Luciana Berger Jew” than “Luciana Berger policy”.

Mr Stephens-Davidowitz also revealed that, of 9,000 threads about feminism posted to far-right website Stormfront, more than 60 per cent mention Jews.

Former EastEnders actress TracyAnn Oberman said she had faced an onslaught of antisemitic abuse online after taking to Twitter in an attempt to defend Jewish Labour MPs from repeated attacks.

She said: “You have to stand up to antisemitic abuse wherever you see it. I couldn’t believe the abuse being hurled at Luciana and Ruth.”

But she revealed that taking on the abusers meant she too became a victim.

She revealed: “As a Jewish woman, I’ve been attacked on my looks, my body, my age, my lifestyle choice, my job.

“I put in the words ‘dirty Jew’ into Twitter to find out I came top of the list.”

Ms Oberman added that the “massacre in Pittsburgh shows what happens if smears, lies and tropes lie around unchallenged.”

MP Dame Margaret Hodge, who fought a public battle with her party leader Jeremy Corbyn over the summer after she called him “antisemitic” to his face in the House of Commons, read out a list of the racist, misogynsitic and ageist smears she has endured.

She told the conference’s first roundtable session: “I’ve never run away from a challenge but this is one of the toughest I have faced in my 40 years of public life.”

She described the “duty” to “stamp this out” but added: “It won’t be easy.

“I don’t want women, particularly Jewish women, to feel that they can’t play their role in politics because of the fear of sexism and antisemitism,” she said.

“What I don’t want to see is talented Jewish or any women being put off from entering politics and taking those leadership roles that we want women to take over time. It’s a battle worth fighting for — let’s win.”

APT chief executive Danny Stone said he and his colleagues would “do everything we can to ensure women facing antisemitism know that we are pushing for urgent change and that they are not alone in the struggle they face.”

Also speaking on Monday were Sarah Brown, President of Their World; and Conservative MP Theresa Villiers, who was conference co-chair along with Ms Smeeth.

Sara Khan, who leads the Commission for Countering Extremism, said: “Jews, in particular Jewish women in public life, are being named, targeted and dehumanised on far-right extremist websites.

“This is taking place at a time of rising recorded antisemitic incidents and when female Jewish politicians in our own country have publicly highlighted the threats of violence they continue to receive.

“It is unacceptable that far-right websites are able to propagate wholesale extremist propaganda and hatred.” Metropolitan Police Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick said, “sadly” the online abuse of women and MPs was a “very significant” factor for her police force.

She said that police would become involved in investigating possible hate crimes even if eventually a criminal threshold is not passed.

Presenter Emma Barnett had earlier said she was concerned it was still necessary to explain what constituted antisemitism.

She also revealed she had become experienced at challenging antisemites who phoned in to her radio show.

Conference attendees included Mitzvah Day chair Laura Marks, Board of Deputies chief executive Gillian Merron, the Holocaust Educational Trust’s Karen Pollock and Claudia Mendoza of the Jewish Leadership Council.

The Sara Conference was so-called because of the name’s link to the Abrahamic faith and because it was the name the Nazis forced Jewish women to take if their first names did not sound Jewish.

Berger has shown ‘incredible strength’ Jewish women are being named and targeted