Laurel Grauer, who was told to take her flag and go, and is one of those Jews who refuses to learn, moaned: “It was a flag from my congregation which celebrates my queer, Jewish identity which I have done for over a decade, marching in the Dyke March with the same flag.”
Posts Tagged ‘Anti-semitism’
Labour updates Macpherson: hating Jews doesn’t make you a racist
If you can be an unwitting racist, is Jeremy Corbyn’s obsession with Jews and his friendships with those who want them dead a hate crime? Is Corbyn’s Labour Party institutional racist? In 1999, the Macpherson Report into the 1993 murder of Stephen Lawrence by a racist gang and the botched police investigation left us with two legacies. First we got to know what is meant by ‘institutional racism’. Sir William Macpherson defined it:
“The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people.”
And in that we got the second legacy: you could be an ‘unwitting racist’. If the injured party thinks it’s racist, then it is racist. Anything that happens to an Asian person, say, can be self-defined as racially motivated. Lord Macpherson demanded that police mark a crime as racist where the incident “is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person, rather than their own conclusion”. The result is that anything can be racially motivated if you think it is. You can have racism without racists.
If racism can be unwitting, perhaps we’re all racists and at some point become “infected” by racist thoughts? Racism was recast as no longer being about real power and police; it became subjective, a study in what lurked within individuals. The State was in the clear. Don’t look at the police. Look at yourself and investigate your fibre. Racism became a moral matter. Depressing stuff, for sure. To see racism everywhere and in everyone and everything was a low view of humanity. And it stuck.
Which brings us to anti-Semitism. Labour is all for unwitting racism – but not if you’re a Jew. Labour has after much agonising adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s international standard definition of antisemitism. Try not to call Zionists – people who believe in a Jewish homeland – Nazis (a conniving slight of the lowest stripe) or label Israel a “racist endeavour”. Labour noted that it’s decision must not “undermine freedom of expression on Israel or the rights of the Palestinians”. Labour loves freedom of expression so much it wants to make misogyny a hate crime, punishing people for what they think.
It’s odd, no, how racism has caveats when it’s about the world’s one Jewish state but for everything and everyone else it can be assumed. Corbyn had wanted to include a 500-word explainer to one and all – including you Jews – that it must not be “regarded as anti-Semitic to describe Israel, its policies or the circumstances around its foundation as racist because of their discriminatory impact”. He’s never said that about any other country. Israel is exceptional. It’s backers – oh, those shadowy ‘Zionists’ who run the media and the banks (whoever can they be talking about? clue: ask the Jew haters) – are uniquely barbaric. Even after the Holocaust, Jews never learn.
So Corbyn sought a definition of antisemitism that allows people to be antisemitic and get away with it. While other minorities gets to see racism in everything, Jews are not allowed to see racism in anything – even when it’s staring them in the face.
Posted: 6th, September 2018 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment
Don’t panic: gamblers are deserting Corbyn’s nasty party
The Guardian’s headline is suggestive: “Antisemitism row ‘risks chances of Labour government’.” Jew hatred only increases doubt that the electorate will vote Labour and so get Jeremy Corbyn into Number 10. How fair we are, eh. Racism should obliterate the combatant’s chances of winning the popular vote.
Bookmaker William Hill is offering odds of 4-1 on Corbyn becoming Prime Minister after Theresa May. Given that the respective leaders of one of the Conservatives or Labour are shoo-ins for the top job, 4-1 is remarkably generous – all the more so when you realise you can get 5-1 on Boris Johnson, current leader of his TV’s remote control and little else (even his shorts seem to be working independently).
The other things that stands out is that seven Tories are seen as having a better chance of replacing Theresa May in Number 10 than the towering figure who can replace Corbyn: Keir Starmer.
Is William Hill alone? Let’s see what Paddy Power is offering:
Granted the question is skewed towards who will replace May. The odds on her being toppled from within are 1-3 (Corbyn is at 2-1). So you’d expect more Tories to stand a better chance than anyone from Labour becoming the next PM. However, May hasn’t gone. There is no leadership challenge. And the odds on Corbyn becoming the next PM are 6-1. One year ago Corbyn was favourite to become the next Prime Minister. He’s drifted.
Back in the Guardian, the aforesaid headline is rooted in the opinion of a former Labour MP. Look out for Ivor Caplin being trashed on twitter by Corbyn fans in 3…2…
Caplin, a former defence minister under Tony Blair who chairs the Jewish Labour Movement, tells the paper:
“It’s been depressing for members of the Jewish community, but not just for us, for members of the public as well, because they want to see the Labour party as an effective opposition to this shambolic Tory government, and particularly on Brexit, the NHS, schools.. I think that, for Labour, it is a very dangerous position to be in. It will affect any chance of a Labour government…
“I went to a CLP [constituency Labour party meeting] in deepest east Sussex the other week. A lot of them were very concerned about how we had got into this position. They weren’t saying it was smears. And a majority for them had voted for Jeremy to be leader.”
Interesting. Move away from the nastiness and toxicity on social media and you see people seeking not the weakest point in an opponent’s argument but the strongest. These people want to understand the other side’s argument before engaging with it. This is out of kilter with the mood around Corbyn, in which his monocular supporters cast any opponent as either mentally negligible or malicious. Caplin adds:
“In some constituencies, the constant aggressive nature of some people is wearing on activists and that is not right. One of the founding traditions of the Labour party is we are able to have different views but walk out and go for a drink afterwards, because that is what Labour is about. It is not about aggressive, nasty behaviour.”
If the bigots win the day, then Labour is spent. If you can’t engage with an opponent without branding them too old, too thick, too Jewish, too immoral, too racist (if they express concern over immigration) and discount them as a fascist for voicing any opinion not aligned to your own, you’re not ready for the big debates. You’re not fit to govern.
Posted: 1st, September 2018 | In: News, Politicians | Comment
Corbyn is the anti-Semitic Prime Minister you voted for
Is Jeremy Corbyn a racist? He is if he you look at what else he said at a London conference convened by the Palestinian Return Centre in London in 2013. The conference was marketed by the Qassam Brigades, the Hamas military arm – they’re the group that want all Jews dead and who Corbyn has called his “friends”. Ok, ok, move on ,already. We know all about the mural, the iffy mates, Press TV and the report whitewashed and wrapped in ermine. Borrrr-ing! On this occasion Corbyn was irked by comments directed towards the Palestinian ambassador in response to a speech he’d made. Corbyn responded by saying Jews, sorry, Zionists heckling the ambassador suffered from two problems: “One is that they don’t want to study history, and secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, they don’t understand English irony either. I think they need two lessons, which we can help them with.”
Did he man Zionists or did he mans Jews? Do you smell something nasty or not? Nothing of it, said Labour, holding its nose. Corbyn was using the word Zionist in a political way. It was a word employed in “the accurate political sense and not as a euphemism for Jewish people”. Phew! He’s not othering British Jews. Corbyn was not billing Jews as the enemy within, a people loyal only to Israel, a country he sees as the epitome of all Western ills and the ultimate enemy. Jews are not, in terms employed by the Left to demonise Israel and make the Jews not worthy of the Holocaust (but maybe deserving of another one; those uniquely barbaric sods never learn), Nazism’s fifth column.
And then he said this:
“[In the early 20th century], the progressive leadership in London of the trade unions and the Labour Party… was actually Jewish trade unionists and Jewish people in the East End of London. It was Zionism that rose up and drove them into the sort of ludicrous positions they have at the present time.”
That sounds a lot like anti-Semitism. British Jews used to be good. All of them. Now British Jews are bad. All of them. He didn’t mean Zionist in any political sense at all; he meant Jews.
Jews and the Left were once of a single mind and purpose. They joined forces at the Battle of Cable Street in 1936 to fight fascists in London’s East End. That was then. Now Labour has nothing in common with Jews, who do not hold English values. Born and bred British Jews are foreign and hold only the possibility of civilised humanity. This was Corbyn the tribalist, middle-class Jew hater of a type we know too well, who sees “large fat foreign” Jews, as the author Graham Greene did, a writer who opined for The Spectator in 1939: “How the financial crisis has improved English films! They have lost their tasteless Semitic opulence and are becoming – English.”
Are you still uncertain as to whether or not Corbyn is a racist? One Guardian writer said Corbyn’s words were “unquestionably anti-Semitic”; another said they were “anti-Semitic and unacceptable”. Both are right. That Corbyn is still in with a chance of being Prime Minister is depressing: how can a bigot lead the country? The conclusion must be that for too many people anti-Semitism is no big deal. It’s only the Jews, a Biblical people remarkable for having survived persistent persecution. This leaves Jews to form their own conclusion: grandma was right. The oldest story is back. Keep a bag packed under the bed and rely on nobody else to fight your battles. They always come for us.
Posted: 31st, August 2018 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment
Columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown says far Right ‘Allo Allo cast pose threat to British society
Did you see the Nazis massed in Gloucester? There was Herr Flick and the rest of the Herrenvolk who used to star in he BBC’s fly on the wall documentary Allo ‘Allo!. These recreational Nazis were at the Gloucester Goes Retro festival.
Columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown spotted them. She noted: “Too busy accusing Labour of anti-Semitism to heed the real scary threat posed posed by the hard right.” Yeah, all four of the Far Right enthusiasts surrounded by media – which is pretty much par for the course when it comes to reporting on Nazis, a minority focus group with huge reach. There the “real” threat – unlike the Jew hatred that’s rife in the Labour Party, which is presumably fakery made up by a team of scriptwriters.
As they used to say on the TV show, she’s the one with the ‘big boobies’.
Posted: 30th, August 2018 | In: Key Posts, News, TV & Radio | Comment
No anti-racist should vote for Corbyn’s Jew hating Labour
Funny, no, how so many self-styled anti-racist campaigners on the Corbyn Left have no problem with Jew baiting and Jew hatred. Might it be – and this is just a wild theory – they are anti-Semites? Labour MP Dame Margaret Hodge noticed that Labour’s new anti-Semitism guidelines mark the Jews out as special. Whereas other races get to know when they are being attacked, when it comes to Jews, Corbyn’s Labour knows better.
Labour did adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA’s) definition of anti-Semitism. But it made a few tweaks. Corbyn’s Labour says it is not necessarily anti-Semitic to say Jews are more loyal to Israel than the UK. Jews are all Israelis, then – the country Corbyn and his fans hates above all others. And saying Jews / Israelis / Zionists are like Nazis is only bad if “anti-Semitic intent” can be proven. Not content with goading living Jews, Cobyn’s Labour attacks the dead ones too, especially the 6 million Jews murdered by actual Nazis. His Labour makes the murdered deserving of genocide. It is revolting. But the Left can’t see it – or doesn’t want to.
Under Labour’s rules criticising a Muslim, a woman or a transsexual requires no proof of intent to label the speaker a bigot? Labour adheres to the Macpherson definition of racism: an act perceived by the victim to be racist is racist. Unless your a Jew in which case: prove it. Macpherson is a bizarre rule that necessitates the ability to read minds and judge another’s thoughts. It can make you an unwitting racist. It’s an absurd, anti-democratic ruling that makes us all potential racists. But Labour supports it. Criticise the London mayor, a Muslim, and you are Islamophobic, says Labour. Abuse the Windrush Generation and you are a racist, says Labour. But go for a Jew and Labour says its all about free expression and free speech.
Why is it different for Jews? Labour says it’s about freedom of speech, the need to be able to criticise Israel, which, after all, is one of its pet hobbies and a cornerstone requirement of being a caring and sensitive Corbynista. Fair enough. But why aren’t Muslims or blacks treated the same way? Why is freedom of speech vital to Labour when it comes to lambasting Jews and the world’s one Jewish State but unimportant when criticising Islam? Why-oh-why are Jews singled out? Is it because, you know, Labour is a haven for anti-Semites?
Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour turn things upside for Jews. So here’s a message for those contortionists.
Dame Margaret, the MP for Barking, wrote in The Guardian that she “confronted Jeremy Corbyn in Parliament and told him to his face what I and many others are feeling”. Labour was “so distrusted by the Jewish community, we are the last people on earth, at this time, who should think about amending a widely accepted definition of anti-Semitism.” No Jew should vote Labour. I’d like every Jewish MP to become an independent. The idea that voting for a Jew and thus helping Corbyn become Prime Minister
To Corbyn’s Labour, Jews are ok to demonise. They are the useful Other, the uniquely barbaric enemy within against which everyone of a sound mind and good morals can rail and mass.
The BBC reports:
Labour MP Margaret Hodge faces “action” by the party after reportedly swearing at Jeremy Corbyn and calling him an “anti-Semite”. A spokesman for the Labour leader said what had happened was “clearly unacceptable between colleagues”.
Sod the Jew hatred in Labour. Just clamp down on anyone who dares to speak out. So much for freedom of expression…
Posted: 20th, July 2018 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment
Corbyn’s Labour united by hated of Jews
What unites the factions behind Jeremy Cobyn’s Labour? In a word: Jews. Obscurantist theories about Jews are now back in the mainstream. Jew baiting and Jew hatred never went away, of course. Overt anti-Semitism in the West became unfashionable, the stuff of far-right goons and governments in the Middle East. But now thanks to Corbyn and his fans, Jew hatred is the done thing in the left wing. They say it’s all “smears“. It isn’t. Labour has rejected the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s [IHRA] definition of antisemitism. Its working definition is accepted by thousands of public bodies. But not the British Labour party.
The IRHA defined anti-Semitism thus:
“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
Manifestations might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic. Antisemitism frequently charges Jews with conspiring to harm humanity, and it is often used to blame Jews for “why things go wrong.” It is expressed in speech, writing, visual forms and action, and employs sinister stereotypes and negative character traits.
That definition is adopted by the current UK government, the Crown Prosecution Service and many other nations. But Labour has written its own rules. And it’s one so to help itself deal with members accused of Jew hatred. You might suppose that Jews know anti-Semitism when they hear it. Corbyn’s Labour knows best. Board of Deputies President Marie van der Zyl and Jewish Leadership Council Chair Jonathan Goldstein can’t work out why Labour has move to rework the definition of Jw hatred. “It is for Jews to determine for themselves what antisemitism is. they says. “The UK Jewish community has adopted in full the IHRA definition of antisemitism, as have the British Government, Welsh Assembly, Scottish Parliament, 124 local authorities across the country and numerous governments around the world… (Labour’s) actions only dilute the definition and further erode the existing lack of confidence that British Jews have in their sincerity to tackle antisemitism within the Labour movement.”
Nick Cohen rites in the Observer:
Labour dropped the alliance’s stipulation that it was racist to accuse Jewish citizens of having a greater loyalty to world Jewry than their own country, or to hold Israel to a higher standard than other democratic nations. The international definition implies that Ken Livingstone’s “Hitler was a Zionist” fake history or comparisons of Israel with Nazism are racist. Labour prefers to hide in a forest of equivocation. It is normal to draw metaphors from history, its Jewsplainers state. It is not antisemitic to use them “unless there is evidence of antisemitic intent”. As you can rarely look into another person’s soul and prove intent, I take that to mean Labour is giving many of its racists a free pass…
Recently departed Labour staffers describe as a “political project” the party’s decision to make Jews the only ethnic minority Labour denies the right to define the racism they face.
Why Jews? A study found that “more than half of Muslims (55%) held at least one anti-Semitic attitude”. It’s absurd and insulting to think all Muslims are Jew haters. But Corbyn – formerly a presenter on Iran’s Press TV – courts the Islamist vote. And Corbynist do so love a conspiracy theory. Jews, you know, are behind anything and everything, including the Salisbury chemical weapons attack.
Cohen adds:
It ought to be notorious that antisemitism is an anti-democratic project built on almost two millennia of religious prejudice. The Tsarists and fascists used it to dismiss human rights and free elections as tricks the Jews used to hide their secret power. The old Marxist-Leninists who surround Corbyn were not so different. They also believed human rights and democracy were shams – only in this instance they hid the machinations of corporate capitalism. It’s only a small leap to say the capitalists are Jews – or “Rothschilds” as Corbyn’s supporters so tellingly call them – and you have reached the other side.
Conspiracy theorists toss up all manner of oddities. Corbyn’s supporters deride those who say climate change is hyped or ‘fake news’ but can buy a Left-wing magazine that shows this on is front page:
And what of the letter written to the Guardian by find minds worried that “the debate on anti-Semitism has been framed…to weaponise it against a single political figure just ahead of important elections”?
How can it be that so many self-proclaimed anti-racists on the Left have a problem with Jews? And why can’t they see what anti-Semitism looks like?
Posted: 8th, July 2018 | In: News, Politicians | Comment
Jeremy Corbyn has “antisemitic views” says Jewish expert
The Mail’s photo choice is interesting
Jeremy Corbyn has “antisemitic views”. So says Jonathan Arkush. Arkush is the outgoing president of the board of deputies. He says the Labour Party leader “has views which are antisemitic, and he has problematic views”. Arkush tells the Daily Telegraph that British Jews are asking: “Do we have a future here?”
Under a country governed by Corbyn: yes, of course Jews will continue to live in the UK. One remarkable characteristic of Jewish history is the persistence with which they are persecuted. Some Jew always stays on to light the lamp, denying Mohammed and Jesus’s claims of divine destiny by waiting for the true Messiah. Will derelict synagogues in London, Leeds or Manchester become stopping points on tourists walks, like those in India, Cuba, Morocco, Turkey, Iraq, the Czech Republic, Syria, Italy and all other places where the Jews were dispossessed and expelled? Will the country under Corbyn do its bit for the deep history of Jewish victim hood? No. Well, not yet.
The future for British Jewry might not be a vibrant one. Better, of course, if British Jews become the right sort of Jews. But Arkush does not speak for all British Jews, even if the Mail does bill him as ‘The Tribe’s’ “chief”. The bilge that ethnic minorities in the UK have ‘community leaders’ who speak for their kind sticks in the craw. Don’t lump us all in together. Don’t divide us into groups. You don’t need to be Jewish to see that Corbyn’s Labour has a little problem with Red Sea Pedestrians. Arkush speaks for himself. And we can listen. Jews, after all, are often rather good at spotting Jew haters.
“He was a chairman of Stop the War, which is responsible for some of the worst anti-Israel discourse,” says Arkush. “If he shares the prevalent discourse about Israel, then that view is unquestionably antisemitic… I think we are all entitled to some clarity on his real views about Israel.”
Corbyn is too nuanced and slippery to let the electorate know his real views on much. But he does have a spokesman to tell everyone that Arkush comments are “personal attacks without any evidence to support them… Jeremy has been absolutely clear that he is a militant opponent of antisemitism and is committed to driving it out of our movement.”
He is? Got any evidence of anything he’s done to prove it?
“Jonathan Arkush’s attempt to conflate strong criticism of Israeli state policies with antisemitism is wrong and undermines the fight both against antisemitism and for justice for the Palestinians,” the spokesman adds. “It should be rejected outright.”
Rhea Wolfson, a member of Labour’s national executive committee, is shocked by the comments. Her words take up half the Guardian’s story on the matter. The paper offers no words in support of Arkush’s view. “Jeremy Corbyn is not antisemitic, he does not hold antisemitic views,” Wolfson tweeted. “I cannot understand what Arkush is trying to achieve here but I know it isn’t about being constructive.
“Jonathan Arkush has never spoken for me, for many other young, progressive Jews, and he doesn’t in this article. We have a lot of work to take a lot of poison out of the debate… around Israel and Palestine, making blanket accusations isn’t constructive and doesn’t move towards a better debate or solutions.” So much for Corbyn being militant. It’s a debate he wants.
The Guardian story is headlined: “Jeremy Corbyn’s views ‘could drive Jewish people from UK’.” So if you’re a bigot, vote Jez, right? The paper finds no space to report what Arkush also said. This from the Tele:
Mr Arkush said: “We have always felt Britain is a generous, fair-minded, exceptionally tolerant, mutually respectful country where Jews have been secure, well accepted and in return they have contributed vastly.
“That is why I am so troubled that, particularly in the last few months, there is an increasingly widespread question asked over the dinner table – which is, do we have a future here, and what’s that future going to look like? In its current, widespread form, it is very new.” Asked if he attributes this new anxiety in the community to Mr Corbyn’s leadership, he said: “Yeah. I do.”
You do wonder how any British Jew can vote for Corbyn, or, indeed, be a member of the Labour Party he heads. But it takes all sorts to make a ‘community’. And – get this – not all Jews are the same.
Posted: 31st, May 2018 | In: News, Politicians | Comment
Racism is only unacceptable if McDonnell and Corbyn notice it in Pendle
The story of the Tory and the racist joke features Pendle Council, Lancashire, and Rosemary Carroll’s return to the Conservative party’s ranks. In July 2017, Carroll was suspended from the Conservative Party for sharing a joke on Facebook. The Lancashire Evening Post added a dash of tautology and called the joke “racist and derogatory”. Council leader Mohammed Iqbal made an official complaint and called for Carroll councillor to be expelled from the Council and the Conservative Party.
Pendle Tory leader Coun. Cooney acknowlegded the “racist post which had been shared on Facebook by one of our councillors” and stated: “We will not tolerate racism of any form.”
By now you want to know two things: what was the joke and what happened next? Well, the Daily Mirror reproduces the joke. Most other newspapers and the BBC do not. Indeed the BBC says: “Tories urged to act in ‘racist joke’ row at Pendle Council,” the broadcaster unsure what is racist. Without the joke, the story is lacking. Here it is:
“I took my dog to the dole office to see what he was entitled to. The bloke behind the counter said ‘you idiot, we don’t give benefits to dogs’. “I argued ‘why not? He’s brown, he stinks, he’s never worked a f***ing day in his life & he can’t speak a f***ing word of English’. “The man replied: ‘His first payment will be Monday’.”
Nasty stuff.
Carroll spoked to LADbible. Her apology contained a blend of sympathetic back story and the caveat now routine in all apologies, the one that places the onus on the recipient and their reaction, ‘if I have caused offence’. She said:
“It was a mistake, obviously, somebody posted it to me and I thought I was deleting it. I don’t use Facebook much. Everything has gone over the top now. It was a genuine mistake. I can only apologise, because I am not racist by any means. All I can say is, if I’ve caused offence, I am truly sorry. I don’t do stuff like this and have closed that Facebook thing.”
In May, Carroll rejoined the Tories.
Tory leader Paul White says Ms Carroll had “learned form her mistake”. Mohammmed Iqbal says: “They should have done the decent thing and distanced themselves from her. I’m appalled. The suspension was a gimmick.”
Carroll’s return was timely. In the council elections, the Tories won control of Pendle council by a single seat. The Conservatives control Pendle with 25 seats, ahead of Labour’s 15 and the Liberal Democrats’ nine.
And then the story got bigger. Shadow chancellor John McDonnell said it was “unacceptable” for Carroll to return. “To have the Conservative Party take control of that council by reinstating a councillor who used the foulest, foulest joke, a racist joke is unacceptable,” he said.
If Carroll’s return is wrong is – and argue amongst yourselves if it is – is it also wrong for Naz Shah, Jeremy Corbyn and others accused of racism to be in the Labour Party?
Shah was John McDonnell’s PPS. Shah is the Bradford West MP – and what if her job gave the Labour Party an overall Commons majority? – who shared on Facebook the idea of “transporting” citizens of the world’s only Jewish state (that’s Israel, not New York) to the middle of the USA. Having called for a country to be obliterated and “foreigner” Jews forcibly relocated away from what many see as their ancient home, she added the comment “problem solved”.
The JC added: “Shah also posted a tweet with a link to a blog which claimed Zionism had been used to ‘groom’ Jews to ‘exert political influence at the highest levels of public office’.” The BBC adds: “A number of other posts emerged, with her comparing Israel to the Nazis and saying ‘the Jews are rallying’.”
Nasty. Labour suspended Shah. But she apologised, kept her job and her salary. After a brief suspension (a little over 3 months), Shah was back.
Former Labour major of London Ken Livingstone is still suspended by Labour. He said Shah’s comments were “rude and over-the-top” but not anti-Semitic – even though Shah accepted it was and apologised. And then he doubled down, opining: “When Hitler won his election in 1932 his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.”
John Rentoul noted:
Livingstone’s refusal to accept that he had ever come across anti-Semitism in his 47 years in the Labour Party. And hence his refusal when pressed on the BBC’s Daily Politics today to accept that Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, whom he invited to London and who wrote that “every Jew in the world” should be fought by “every Muslim”, was anti-Semitic because he had never said anything anti-Semitic to him.
Back to Jeremy Corbyn, then, of whom Nick Cohen writes:
Corbyn invited Hamas and Hizbollah to Parliament and called them his ‘friends’. Bear in mind that Hamas’s Charter is explicitly genocidal – it makes it clear its supporters want to kill Jews and repeats Nazi conspiracy theories. Their founding Charter also rules out any peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestine problem. It says:
Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement… There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad.
See a pattern?
Ben McIntrye has a good article in the Times on why Livingstone is no historian:
The suggestion that Hitler backed the idea of a Jewish homeland underpins an association between Nazism and Zionism that is fundamentally antisemitic. It is also wrong. “You can’t expel someone for stating historical fact,” Livingstone insists. But his claim is not a fact: it is a distortion of history, a defence of the indefensible that has undoubtedly emboldened antisemites within his party, leading to the current meltdown…
The Haavara Agreement was really just one more way of ethnically cleansing the Jews from Germany and taking their wealth. The idea that it represented any kind of support for a Jewish homeland, a central tenet of Zionism, is ludicrous and a deliberate perversion of its real import…
The idea that the Holocaust was due to the onset of “madness” on Hitler’s part is also wrong, reducing a programme of collective evil to an act of insanity on the part of one man. Hitler’s genocide was not the unexpected policy of a lone madman but premeditated, rational by Nazi logic, and purely wicked.
The oldest trick in the book of cornered politicians is to claim to have been accused of something they have not been accused of, and deny it. “I did not say Hitler was a Zionist,” the former London mayor said. “And that was why I was suspended.” Again, not true: he was punished because he claimed Nazi “support” for Zionism, a more subtle insinuation and a misreading of historical fact.
After Livingstone’s comments, things escalated. The Times again:
John Mann, who chairs the all-party parliamentary group against antisemitism, branded Mr Livingstone a “Nazi apologist” in a confrontation outside a TV studio that was captured live on camera. Mr Mann is reported to have called him a “f***ing disgrace”.
When the party released a statement early in the afternoon to announce Mr Livingstone’s suspension, a spokesman added that Mr Mann had been summoned to see the chief whip about his conduct.
Michael Dugher, Labour MP for Barnsley East and a former frontbencher, said that announcing the actions at the same time represented “drawing some kind of moral equivalence between John Mann and Ken Livingstone”.
“Yet again they’ve prevaricated because it was another of their close allies up to their necks in antisemitism again,” Mr Dugher said.
Is any of that “unacceptable” to John McDonnell?
In January, we got more:
On Saturday, International Holocaust Memorial Day, Mr Livingstone, 72, a former mayor of London, appeared in a programme called Has the Holocaust been exploited to oppress others? on the Iranian state-owned channel Press TV.
He said that Hitler had worked with the Zionist movement to move Jewish people to Israel: “He worked with the Zionist movement to move . . . to get 60,000 to go, but it was about half a million — and then he changed his policy and went for genocide.”
The presenter, Roshan Muhammed Salih, told viewers that Mr Livingstone, who has been suspended from Labour since April 2016, had been “targeted by the Zionist lobby here in the UK”.
You know who else used to appear on Press TV? Yeah: Jeremy Corbyn who used to present a show on the channel – although since Labour was exposed as haven for anti-Semites, traces of Corbyn’s journalism seem to have vanished from YouTube.
Corbyn and ‘Yvonne Ridley’ – someone of that name also used to present a show on Press TV – both voice their support for an anti-Semitic mural in East London.
If Rosemary Carroll’s return to the Tories is “unacceptable” to Labour – she underwent diversity training and apologised; Shah went on a “journey” of self-discovery and apologised fully; Corbyn says of supporting a huge painting of Jewish bankers sat on the backs of naked workers, something the Guardian says “resembled a homage to the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer”, “I sincerely regret that I did not look more closely at the image I was commenting on.”
Labour only notices racism when it’s not about them and everyone else is pointing at it.
Posted: 7th, May 2018 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment
France is ethnically cleansing Jews
In France, Nicolas Sarkozy, the country’s former president, Manuel Valls, the former prime minister, Charles Aznavour, the entertainer, and Gérard Depardieu, the actor, have all added their names to a document calling on the State to tackle murderous anti-Semitism. The document signed by around 300 notables says France has mutated into “the theatre of murderous antisemitism”. Since 2006, 11 Jews having been “assassinated” because of they were Jews.
Hideous
“French Jews are 25 times more at risk of being attacked than their Muslim counterparts. Ten per cent of the Jewish citizens of the Paris region… have recently been forced to move because they were no longer secure in certain council estates. This is a quiet ethnic cleansing.”
The document says France’s long and repugnant history of far-right French antisemitism is now joined by “a part of the radical left which has found in anti-Zionism an alibi for transforming the executioners of the Jews into the victims of society”.
Sound familiar, Jeremy Corbyn and his fellow Labour apologists?
It also accuses politicians of having made the “lowly electoral calculation that the Muslim vote is ten times bigger than the Jewish vote” – there are around 500,000 Jews in France, the biggest Jewish population in any Western European country.
It’s serious. Last month, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor was stabbed to death in her Paris flat. Her crime? Being a Jew.
Indy journalist on anti-Semitism: ‘Why do some groups have so much power’?
Have we forgotten about the Holocaust? You might think it’d be hard to. It’s taught in schools and there are some movies entertaining enough to keep industrial mass murder palpable, even humorous. But the mood has changed. The oldest story is back. Antisemitism is rife and mainstream.
Why?
Well, in The Spectator, Alistair Thomas outlines why Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party excuses alleged Holocaust denial, gives a safe space for members to deny and downplay “the reality of anti-Semitism” (the words of Christine Shawcroft, the head of the Labour Party’s disputes panel in her resignation apology for opposing the suspension of a council candidate accused of Holocaust denial); and can have in its ranks MP for Bradford West, Naz Shah, who a year before she won her Commons seat shared an image of Israel’s outline superimposed on a map of the US below the headline “Solution for Israel-Palestine conflict – relocate Israel into United States”, with the comment “problem solved”, compared Israel to the Nazis and stated “the Jews are rallying” – she said sorry and left her post as – get this – John McDonnell’s parliamentary private secretary. How does someone with such abhorrent views rise to high in Corbyn’s Labour? And there’s the mural, the Facebook Posts about “powerful” Jews and Corbyn’s “friends“. And Ken Livingstone. And… And…
For anyone unsure what anti-Semitism looks like, Andrew Neil has provided this handy guide:
“That, dear viewer, is anti-Semitism. At its deadliest and most depraved. Which is how it always ends up. Which is why it can’t be tolerated. Those still in doubt need to educate themselves. Fast.” @afneil opening #bbctwpic.twitter.com/MFi7pYorkB
— BBC This Week (@bbcthisweek) March 29, 2018
Thomas writes:
…for Corbynites of my age (early twenties), the whole issue remains just another attempt to delegitimise Corbyn’s bid to become prime minister. That’s why Twitter accounts were awash with the hashtag #PredictTheNextCorbynSmear, which mocked all accusations of anti–Semitism. It demonstrates the Corbyn faithful’s remarkable capacity for indifference…
It’s all a conspiracy. And like any good conspiracy, it feature the Jews. You can read all about it on The Protocols of the Elders of Facebook.
They’ve all studied the second world war at school; they know how much Jews suffered and how dangerous discrimination is. Surely they must have a problem with that blatantly anti-Semitic mural that Corbyn himself had endorsed?..
They find Israel, as a country, guilty of all kinds of crimes, and regard Jews, anywhere, as Zionist sympathisers. Within the far left, the de facto position is one of hostility and distrust, not just towards Zionists but towards Jewish communities wherever they are. This attitude infects the whole party, even my friends.
“Jews for Jez” – with a yellow star, to boot. These are Labour’s ‘Good Jews’.
Just Labour under Corbyn? The Labour Party supporting New Statesman had a question that might have been rhetorical.
The Jew can be a good Jew or a bad Jew. But being a Jew is what defines you totally. Jews are traduced and homogenised. Howard Jacobson understands, of course:
Christianity is key here…. Christianity’s had to leave [Judaism] behind, so it’s had to hate it, it’s had to say, we are not that, we are not that anymore, and then to say we were never that – so that’s a necessary hatred. And then out of that grew a sense of the possibility that all cultures have to have someone to hate. Not just a scapegoat. It’s more essential than that. Who am I, what am I? I am not that. To the degree you know that, you know who you are.
Today on Good Friday many Christians will utter their Prayer for the Jews. The third of the Solemn Collects in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England is as follows:
O merciful God, who hast made all men, and hatest nothing that thou hast made, nor wouldest the death of any sinner, but rather that he be converted and live; Have mercy upon all Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Heretics, and take from them all ignorance, hardness of heart, and contempt of thy Word; and so fetch them home, blessed Lord, to thy flock, that they may be saved among the remnant of the true Israelites, and be made one fold under one shepherd, Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.
The Catholic Church’s Prayer for the Jews has been changed a little. This is the 1955 version (via):
Let us pray also for the faithless Jews: that Almighty God may remove the veil from their hearts so that they too may acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord. (‘Amen’ is not responded, nor is said ‘Let us pray’, or ‘Let us kneel’, or ‘Arise’, but immediately is said:) Almighty and eternal God, who dost not exclude from thy mercy even Jewish faithlessness: hear our prayers, which we offer for the blindness of that people; that acknowledging the light of thy Truth, which is Christ, they may be delivered from their darkness. Through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.
The bigotry never vanished. The Jews continue to define what the righteous reject. And once again anti-Semitism is to the fore.
These are worrying times to be a British Jew. If you would not excuse any other form of racism, don’t excuse anti-Semitism.
Lead image:
This is a mainstream journalist. She doesn’t write for some obscure blog with Pepe the Frog in the comment threads. She has bylines at The Independent (https://t.co/GfKUwsrDKd). pic.twitter.com/PMPZ2y1zic
— Stephen Daisley (@JournoStephen) March 30, 2018
In response to her tweet the writer who, as Stephen Daisley notes, contributes to the Indy added on Twitter (before blocking us):
A response to the tweets.
Vote now and vote often.
Posted: 31st, March 2018 | In: News, Politicians | Comment
Jeremy Corbyn supporters call anti-Semitism protest the work of a ‘very powerful special interest group’
How goes the Labour Party’s response to accusations of anti-Semitism in the ranks? Party leader Jeremy Corbyn admitted to “pockets of anti-Semitism” within the Labour Party. He then went on to talk of “newer forms of anti-Semitism… woven into criticism of Israeli governments… Criticism of Israel, particularly in relation to the continuing dispossession of the Palestinian people, cannot be avoided. Nevertheless, comparing Israel or the actions of Israeli governments to the Nazis, attributing criticisms of Israel to Jewish characteristics or to Jewish people in general and using abusive phraseology about supporters of Israel such as ‘Zio’ all constitute aspects of contemporary anti-Semitism.”
Is the anti-Semitism really that “new“.
On Facebook, around 2.000 users purporting to be Jeremy Corbyn supporters have reacted to an open letter saying Monday’s Jewish-organised protest against anti-Semitism was the work of a “very powerful special interest group” wielding its “immense strength” to “employ the full might of the BBC”. The open letter posted to a open group garnered 936 comments before the admin disabled commenting, writing:
…exaggerating the influence/power of Jewish groups is a form of antisemitism. Jewish groups have the right to lobby and influence the same as other religious or ethnic groups do. You do not specify what ‘special interest groups’ you are talking about. If you are talking about groups like JLM etc, phrases like “very powerful” are totally inappropriate. I would also suggest the reason why the BBC ran the story at the top of it’s headlines all Monday is down to the Westminster clique, _not_ because of any Jewish lobby groups!
I’m turning off comments. The reason I’m not deleting this post is because screenshots are all over twitter, and keeping the post will help us get to the bottom of what’s happening here. Please do not delete it without talking to us first…
I deeply question the motives of the person that took this screenshot to score political points, rather than reporting it to us. This group has about 400 posts a day and about 10,000 comments. We are unpaid volunteers. We rely on people to report any concerns, especially when overwhelmed by a tsunami of posts from the subject being top of the news agenda.
One twitter screenshot is here:
Not everyone “endorsed” the letter as the Indy claims they did. Many who did respond have have. But, as noted, there have been dissenting voices, not least of all the group’s “admin”.
The busy We Support Jeremy Corbyn group. Screenshot: 29/03/18
The open letter on the Facebook group “We Support Jeremy Corbyn” runs:
“Yesterday we witnessed the full onslaught of a very powerful special interest group mobilising its apparent, immense strength against you.
“It is clear this group can employ the full might of the BBC to make sure its voice is heard very loudly and clearly. It is a shame not every special interest group can get the same coverage…
“But, and it is a very big BUT, we live in a democracy, a one member one vote democracy and no special interest group, regardless of their history or influence, can be allowed to dictate who the rest of us can vote for or how we vote.
“I am writing this letter to say that I support you and I trust you, more than I would trust any politician, to do the right thing in terms of racism, antisemitism, and any hate mongering from anyone against anyone.
“We know that any politician who stands for the many and not the few will have very many powerful enemies and it is expecting an awful lot of a person to put up with the pressures that are put on you. But thank you, thank you, for your inspiration and steadfastness and be sure that you still have my support.”
As said, not all reactions have been supportive of the letter – the majority have been, but not all:
“Do people not realise how how absolutely ironic it is that in response to accusations of antisemitism that people accuse people of Jewish background of backroom organising and conspiracy?”
Beneath a link to the story on the letter published by the Indy, there is talk of conspiracy:
This is the first time ive actualy seen first hand how a smear starts from actually reading the letter in question when put on the group to how they have spun it in an almost villian like way
Anyone with an iota of common sense realises the anti semitic problem is an attempt to wreck the labour party. When it has the full support of the BBC it is patently obvious that there is collusion with the tory party, as we all know it is now totally controlled by these corrupt brigades who are up to their necks in corruption. The only way you would get an honest answer from them is if they were constantly wire up to a polygraph. We must bring them to account for the sake of all of our futures. Make no mistake we are being manipulated by pure evil…
And:
Just to alert you guys. There’s a journalist mole on this group who’s shared Frances Naggs letter.
Over on the BBC, the Jewish-organised anti-Semitism protest was followed by a new revelation. We meet Christine Shawcroft, 62, head of the Labour Party’s disputes panel who has “quit after it emerged she had opposed the suspension of a council candidate accused of Holocaust denial”. The accused Labour Party member denies any wrongdoing.
Are attitudes towards Jews finally changing within Corbyn’s Labour? Will Labour finally extend its self-aggrandised and self-hymned intolerance of all racism towards its members who attack, bait and demonise Jews with calls for them to be mass deported (that was from a serving Labour MP), monstering them as a people so uniquely barbaric that Jews are not worthy of the Holocaust – which, you know, might all be big ‘fake news’, a revolting and sneaky claim which makes liars of every survivor, their families and the murdered millions? Thankfully, we live in a democracy. So you can give two fingers to racism at the next election.
Vote now and vote often!
Posted: 29th, March 2018 | In: News, Politicians | Comment
The racist Left, ‘Jews for Jez’ and Jeremy Corbyn’s inability to spot anti-Semitism
Only around a thousand people turned up on Parliament Square to protest against anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. The polite request was that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn works to expose and confront the hatred of Jewish in his party’s membership – and that he stops acquiescing to anti-Semitism. Some Labour MPs did attend. And that’s great. But only about a dozen of them bothered to make the shot walk from the Commons to the grassy roundabout.
Accompanied by chants of “enough is enough”, the crowd heard from Haringey Council leader Claire Kober, and Labour MPs John Mann, Louise Ellman and Wes Streeting, Ian Austin, Chuka Umunna and Luciana Berger, who said antisemitism is “very real” and “alive in the Labour Party”. Some Conservative MPs also turned up, including Priti Sushil Patel, and cabinet ministers Sajid Javid and Penny Mordaunt.
Mr Streeting told the throng: “To those Jewish members who felt enough is enough and cut up their membership cards and walked away, our commitment to you is to work with every ounce of strength to drain the cesspit of antisemitism in the Labour Party so you can come back. We know what needs to be done. We don’t need any more mealy-mouthed statements from the leader of the Labour Party, we need actions. The actions are very simple: Ken Livingstone should not be in the Labour Party. Antisemites need to be drummed out of the Labour Party. And that whitewash of a report – the Chakrabarti Report – can we at least implement every one of those recommendations. We had a wishy-washy report, it got someone a place in the House of Lords, but let’s at least make sure its delivers a genuine fight against antisemitism in our party.”
Slippery and nuanced Jeremy Corbyn wasn’t there, of course. He never is. But he did address the Jews via a letter:
“I recognise that antisemitism has surfaced within the Labour Party, and has too often been dismissed as simply a matter of a few bad apples. This has caused pain and hurt to Jewish members of our party and to the wider Jewish community in Britain. I am sincerely sorry for the pain which has been caused, and pledge to redouble my efforts to bring this anxiety to an end. I must make clear that I will never be anything other than a militant opponent of antisemitism.”
Not a single world on how he has contributed greatly to that “pain”. Not a single word from his supporters, those intolerant people who if this were a Tory or anyone else they did not like giving a big thumbs up to anti-Semitism would be demanding their resignation. They screamed in outrage when Conservative MP Anne Marie Morris said “nigger in the woodpile”. They howled for Toby Young’s removal because he’d tweeted about women’s looks and described wheelchair ramps as part of “ghastly” inclusivity in schools. They pilloried Tim Farron for his views on homosexuality (he called it a “sin”) – ubiquitous Corbyn fan Owen Jones called Farron’s comments “an absolute disgrace”.
To his supporters, Corbyn can do no wrong.
Some Corbyn fans are Jews. A small number arrived carrying signs that said “Jews for Jez”, the words written on a yellow star. If Brass Eye did protests:
“Jews for Jez” – with a yellow star, to boot. Some people, eh.
Instead of being upset by Corbyn’s links to anti-Semitism, his supporters tasked themselves with getting the hashtag #PredictTheNextCorbynSmear to trend on Twitter. Blessedly, not everyone thinks anti-Semitism is no big deal:
Nobody promoting #PredictTheNextCorbynSmear tonight (trending) can expect to be taken seriously as an opponent of anti-semitism; those doing so undermine any commitment or future effort to ensure that the Labour party does not tolerate anti-semitism.
— Sunder Katwala (@sundersays) March 25, 2018
#predictthenextcorbynsmear just proves the point that people are making about Corbyn, his supporters and anti Semitism. Rather than address the issue they create a mocking hashtag that dismisses the concerns of the Jewish community & all those opposed to racism
— Eddie Marsan #FBPE (@eddiemarsan) March 25, 2018
5 stages of Corbynista:
1) Denial – It’s all Tory Smears
2) Anger – Blairites & Murdoch & the MSM are out to get him
3) Bargaining – He apologised (in a vague tweet)
4) Depression – Whatabouttery responses at the ready.
5) More anger – Create a #PredictTheNextCorbynSmear hashtag pic.twitter.com/EhN8EERQUI— Chris Rose (@ArchRose90) March 25, 2018
Corbyn did have more to say. And it, as ever, vague:
“Sometimes this evil takes familiar forms – the east London mural which has caused such understandable controversy is an example. The idea of Jewish bankers and capitalists exploiting the workers of the world is an old antisemitic conspiracy theory. This was long ago, and rightly, described as ‘the socialism of fools’. I am sorry for not having studied the content of the mural more closely before wrongly questioning its removal in 2012.”
Amazing, no, how Corbyn, a man who presents himself in public as highly sensitive to anti-Semitism can looks at the picture above and not realise its might be even a tad anti-Jewish without “study”. Is he blind to anti-Semitism or does he think it’s ok?
As Brendan O’Neill puts it: “Corbyn is in essence saying: ‘Ah, I didn’t notice the anti-Semitism.’ And that is precisely the problem. This section of the left never notices anti-Semitism. It always seems to pass them by. Or worse, they acquiesce to it in the belief that objecting to it might lose them support among some of their key bases, in particular the old left and young Muslims. I didn’t see it, they say, not realising that their failure to see anti-Semitism is the crux of the problem. It is a wilful blindness to hatred that they would treat as unforgivable in relation to any other racial or religious group.”
Anti-Semitism is a sickness. It’s been excused time and time again under Corbyn’s watch. You can look at Corbyn and his fans and ask yourself: if it looks like a duck, quack likes a duck and talks like a duck, what is it? And you can vote in the election.
Posted: 27th, March 2018 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment
Josh Rivers: Gay Times editor’s only crime was to be unfunny
Today’s hate figure is Josh Rovers, editor of Gay Times magazine, now suspended for tweeting things between 2010 and 2015. Examples of Rivers’ tweets are many. One mocked women and the fat:
“I’ve just seen a girl in the tightest white tank & lord help me if she’s not pregnant, she should be killed. #gross.”
And, of course, there’s always the nastiness about Jews:
And:
“I wonder if they cast that guy as ‘The Jew’ because of that fucking ridiculously larger honker of a nose. It must be prosthetic. Must be.”
In the Guardian LGBTQ rights campaigner Peter Tatchell is aghast: “His history of grossly offensive tweets is such a letdown. It undermines whatever good he was planning to achieve in the magazine.” Looks like equality rules: LGBT people can be every bit as nasty as the rest of us. Who knew?
Want some more examples of Rivers’ tweets? Of course you do. Here goes:
By way of background, it turns out that Rivers is not a person: he’s a walking box-ticking exercise. The Guardian notes that Rivers “is the first BME editor of a gay men’s magazine, and took on the role with a mandate to promote inclusivity and diversity.” And you thought he was just the best person for the job on account of his editing abilities and cutting-edge wit.
Outed and suspended from the post he only got in October, Rivers has issued an apology, the language of which might be a better reason than the lame tweets to dislike him:
To every single person who is hurt, offended and disappointed: I’m sorry. pic.twitter.com/XAwz7llKxc
— Josh Rivers (@_joshrivers) November 15, 2017
The apology is terrific, isn’t it. It’s not about you, it’s about him. Josh, an arch narcissist, is now on a therapeutic journey, taking “steps” to self-discover a better him, to be the kind of wonderful person he truly is and knows he is. After guffing about “pivoting” and “empowering”, Rivers – he used to work in marketing, natch. – co-opts us all into his ugliness, hoping that “we” can “grow”, “heal” and move “forward”. It’s a journey. Get on the bus. You too, fatso.
But I’ll pass. I’m okay, Josh. You’re the berk, not me, the dick who thought it clever to make jokes about Jews, women, Asians and pretty much anyone not just like you.
Rivers’ sentiments expressed in his tweets are pathetic, puerile and horribly unfunny. He appears to be aiming at waspish humour, a snarky, offensive, live-it-loud gay laugh-in where anything goes. He fails miserably. Josh Rivers is not like his namesake Joan Rivers, the caustic, tough-talking American who wielded a comic stiletto with gusto and precision. Josh’s attempts at humour are every bit as wet as his name suggests. And he’s a fool. Rather than explaining it all as misplaced banter, stupidity, letting off steam and the result of his over-arching vanity, Rivers tells us that the tweets actually explain him, each presenting an insight into his mind. To wit, he was a racist, sexist, anti-Semitic misogynist. Those tweets weren’t just idiotic. They really meant something.
Let’s not trivialise Rivers’ tweets, but remind ourselves that Rivers has committed no crime. He’s apologised and that should be an end to the matter. He can hold the most abhorrent views on Jews, women, Asians and more but if he keeps them to himself, or else voices them to an audience more sympathetic to his prejudices – just as many of us have down in the privacy of our own homes and amongst friends – I’m fine with it. Shocked? Offended? “Oh, grow up!” as the aforesaid Joan advised.
Josh Rivers’ offence wasn’t to hold childish and nasty views; it was to voice them in the wrong context. Now, back to work. But time for a quick survey: anyone out there actually read Gay Times?
Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t count Israel among his Jew-hating ‘friends’
In 2015 then Labour leadership candidate Jeremy Corbyn went on the telly to explain why he addressed Islamist militant organisations Hamas and Hezbollah, a group that calls for the murder of all Jews, as “friends”. (Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah opined: “If Jews all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.” Hamas states in its charter a mission to “fight the Jews and kill them”.)
Saying he met his “friends” Hamas in Lebanon and Hezbollah in this country and Lebanon, peacenik Corbyn told us: “What it means is that I think to bring about a peace process, you have to talk to people with whom you may profoundly disagree.”
Can this be the same Jeremy Corbyn, now leader of the Labour Party and with a decent shout of becoming Prime Minister, who called for an investigation into anti-Semitism in his Labour Party and found it squeaky clean (in much the same way a defecating bear cannot see the wood for the trees) and of whom the Sunday Times reported on October 29 2017:
Jeremy Corbyn has refused to attend an official dinner with the the country’s [Israel’s] prime minister this week to mark the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, which helped to pave the way for a Jewish nation state.
The Labour leader’s snub came as Israel’s ambassador to London told The Sunday Times that those who oppose the historic declaration are “extremists” who reject Israel’s right to exist and could be viewed on a par with terrorist groups such as Hamas…
The move is reminiscent of last month’s Labour Party conference in Brighton, where Corbyn avoided a Labour Friends of Israel reception attended by Regev.
So much for talking with people with whom you profoundly disagree…
Posted: 16th, November 2017 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment
Prince Charles has Jewish ‘friends’ but they’re all self-serving lobbyists
In 1986, Prince Charles penned a letter to his pal Laurens van der Post. In it he bemoaned the “Jewish lobby” and the state of the State of Israel. None of what you are about to read suggests Charles is, like some of his fellow toffs in harbouring an intense dislike of Jews. Indeed, the Mail, which publishes the story of Charles’ letter, tells readers: “He has many prominent Jewish friends and in 2013 became the first Royal to attend a chief rabbi’s inauguration ceremony. In a speech that year, he expressed concern at the apparent rise of anti-Semitism in Britain.”
Off hand, I couldn’t name any of Charles’ Jewish pals, and scouring pictures of the perpetual heir to the throne’s skiing hols and shooting jaunts, I’m unable pick out any Jews in the happy throng. Although rumours abound that he did one fancy Barbara Streisand.
The paper also notes, “Charles has always enjoyed a close and supportive relationship with the Jewish community in Britain”. What the Jewish community is can be hard to define, but most often in community matters, it amounts to a few well-appointed, pushy knobs and knobesses serving to represent anyone and everyone who shares their faith, religion or skin tones. It’s a handy shortcut that saves on gentile shoe leather and hand sanitisers.
And so it is that Charles – not a Jew hater – writes:
‘Tried to read bit of Koran on way out and it gave me some insight into way they [Arabs] think and operate. Don’t think they could understand us through reading Bible though!”
Well, so long as you read one of the good bits, understanding an ancient religion need cost you no more than a copy of York Notes. Charles looks up from the text that consumed minutes of his busy day and continues:
“I now appreciate that Arabs and Jews were all a Semitic people originally and it is the influx of foreign, European Jews (especially from Poland, they say) which has helped to cause great problems. I know there are so many complex issues, but how can there ever be an end to terrorism unless the causes are eliminated? Surely some U.S. president has to have the courage to stand up and take on the Jewish lobby in U.S.? I must be naive, I suppose!”
“Incendiary,” says the Mail. And it is odd. Was it not the Jews returning to their God-given homeland after being forced to ‘wander’ for eons, taking in lands such as Poland where they were punished for BWJ (breathing while Jewish) with State-sanctioned murder? Was Israel not their birthright, taken from them by enemies that caused them to suffer? Can we include some of Charles’ ancestors in the list of Crusading angels who caused Jews to wander into Nazi death camps in German-occupied Poland?
As for the Jewish lobby, what is that? It’s an old anti-semitic trope of a Jewish cabal running the world for their own advantage. You can be black, white, male, female, transgender, disabled, a peacenik, a veteran or whatever, but if you are a Jew, then in the eyes of Charles your campaign is driven by Jewish self-interest. It’s echoed throughout society, alluded to by the likes of Richard Ingram, who wrote in the Guardian: “I have developed a habit when confronted by letters to the editor in support of the Israeli government to look at the signature to see if the writer has a Jewish name. If so, I tend not to read it.”
So much for the deserving Jews, one big shadowy mass of group-think. But what of the royals, specifically the blood and oil-socked kings who rule with an iron fist over many Arabs? Well, Charles rather likes them.
“Much admire some aspects of Islam,” says Charles to his Afrikaans friend. “Especially accent on hospitality and accessibility of rulers.” When they’re not booting out Jews, those Arab toffs are tops. Julie Raven nails him:
He likes Islam because monarchs aren’t answerable for the vilely hypocritical lives they lead (the drinking and whoring of Muslim monarchs compared to the treatment meted out to their subjects who indulge) and because they can divorce at their whim with no comeback. The very worst and weakest Western men are attracted by Islam – he’s no exception.
This is Charles who on Mar. 21, 2006 weighed in on the Muhammad cartoon controversy, telling an audience of more than 800 Islamic scholars at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University: “The recent ghastly strife and anger over the Danish cartoons shows the danger that comes of our failure to listen and to respect what is precious and sacred to others.” No, not freedom of expression, a cornerstone of our democratic right. He didn’t mean that. Charles is all for the sanctity of theocratic Islam, which abhors our hard-won freedoms, stymies womanhood and raises monarchs to the pantheon of living gods. That’s what righteous Charles wants defending: the powerful.
Charles is a weak and feckless sort, a man searching for a legacy but failing to find a purpose. He’s exactly the type of right-on plodder who eventually reasons that the main cause of trouble are Jews. To wit it’s worth reminding him that his son and heir is married to Kate, of whom Iran’s Mehr News Agency warns:
“This lady’s family roots show that she is considered a Sephardic Jew from her mother’s side. Moreover the timing of the wedding and the way it was held which was based on Jewish culture verify the evidences. William’s marriage as the inheritor of the crown to a Jewish girl will leave the future of Britain to the hands of the couple’s Jewish children.” *
Yeah. They got you Charles. They got you good…
Posted: 13th, November 2017 | In: Key Posts, News, Royal Family | Comment
No anti-Semitism in Labour – just calls for a ‘final solution’
Good job there’s no anti-Semitism in Labour or else we’d think Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East (LFPME) seeking of a “final solution” ugly.
Having been alerted that Nazis were fond of just that term, and forced to why they used it in regard to the world’s only Jewish state, the group Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East (LFPME) has apologised for its “extremely poor choice of words”.
They then added a sympathetic backstory:
“Due to the preparations for the Party conference, we were unable to effectively check every piece of content being published on our page.
“While the use of the phrase in this context was genuine error we would like to sincerely apologise for the hurt it has caused and will endevour [sic] to ensure such errors do not occur in the future.”
Look out for Labour debating “the Jewish question” at a meeting near you.
Posted: 1st, October 2017 | In: News, Politicians | Comment
Labour is still trying to work out when it’s ok to hate Jews
Labour doesn’t much mind the rampant anti-Semitism in its ranks. Jeremy Corbyn says anti-Semitism is not “a huge problem” within the party. Union leader and Corbyn backer Len McCluskey says accusations of anti-Semitism are “mood music… created by people trying to undermine Jeremy Corbyn”. And there’s dear Ken Livingstone, who says: “Some people have made offensive comments, it doesn’t mean they’re inherently anti-Semitic and hate Jews. They just go over the top when they criticise Israel.”
And there isn’t any Jew hatred. Well, not that Labour can find. The party was given a clean bill of health by crack racist-spotter Shami Chakrabarti, who despite a pathological fear of men from Essex (none of which are Jews, natch.), was able to engage in a full and far-reaching investigation hat went a bit like this:
There is no antisemitism in the Labour Party.
There is no antisemitism in the Labour Party.
There is no antisemitism in the Labour Party.
There is no antisemitism in the Labour Party.
In utterly unrelated news, the Leader of the Labour party nominated Shami Chakrabarti for a peerage. She is now Dame Shami.
There is no antisemitism in the Labour Party.
There is no antisemitism in the Labour Party.
There is no antisemitism in the Labour Party.
There is no antisemitism in the Labour Party.
Time and time again we are alerted to the hideous anti-Jew hatred that for years has been allowed to thrive on the Left and now has wormed its way into Labour’s heart. Stephen Pollard tells Daily Express readers that Labour is now run by “thugs”. Labour activists at the party’s conference in Brighton demand that the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) be “expelled” and leaflets compare Israel and Jews to Nazis, a nasty, snide slight that presents Jews as unworthy of the Holocaust and deserving of it, making the millions of Jewish victims of Nazi murder, rape and torture complicit in their own deaths. It’s hideous and deliberately cruel.
John Cryer, Labour MP for Leyton and Wanstead and chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, told a meeting at the conference: “I have seen some of the tweets from paid up Labour Party members and I am not kidding you, it makes your hair stand up.” He says attitudes to Jews in Labour ranks are “redolent of the 1930s”.
The Daily Mail leads with the story of how anti-Semitism has been allowed to fester and grow in Labour. The paper lists examples of the kind of Jew hatred Labour acquiesces to. Over two pages, the Mail tells Labour: “ROOT OUT YOUR RACISTS!” But in the Daily Mirror, the story appears in one slim, short column on page 10 (the left-hand page). “Anti-semitic views face a crackdown,” says the headline. “Labour has backed new powers to stamp out anti-Semitism in the party.” Labour members voted to “back a tightening of rules against racism”.
Nasty. No, not just the bigots – the Press using the horror of anti-Semitism to damage Jeremy Corbyn and cheer moves to turn being an anti-Semite into an act of rule-bashing rebellion. It’s not a light matter to hate Jews. History teaches us that. Do we sincerely believe everyone aghast and agog at anti-Semitism is a friend of the Jews, a champion of Jewish rights? Do we not suspect that some of the shock and horror is born of a desire to bash Labour? What should be free, frank and open debate about a poison that places people in fear of their lives for the ‘crime’ of being a Jew or being a Zionist (ie thinking Israel has a right to exist) becomes a witch-hunt.
Labour has a problem with Jews. That much is clear. And that it’s not all that bothered by anti-Semitism is also clear. Why should it be? Not all that many Jews live in the UK, so their vote is relatively unimportant. Labour has no need to woo the Jewish vote. Ultimately, Labour is representative of its members, who haven’t been deterred by the racism. In fact, Labour membership has grown in recent years. So expect more of the same, then.
Posted: 27th, September 2017 | In: Key Posts, News | Comment
The anti-Israel demo ‘is just an excuse to hate Jews’
You don’t like Israel. Fine. Debate and discuss. March and shout. Being offended and outraged is good for the soul. It’s not hate speech to decry a country. It’s free speech. It’s good speech. It makes you think and seeks answers to hard questions. So answer me this, why does Israel excite the righteous so very much? Why do the knowing want to boycott Israeli goods, academics, musicians and humans and not those of other countries? Why are there not marches against Burma, Saudi Arabia, and Islamists? Is your hatred of Israel a little, you know, discriminatory?
Why is it that when a hangover of Nazis (is that the collective term?) mass in Charlottesville, the Left tell us to #punchaNazi and declare a return to the 1930s – as if a decade is a living, breathing thing – chilling us with dire warnings that fascism is rife and unless we coalesce into anti-fascist groups, America is lost to white supremacists, but when Islamists murder hundreds of people in Europe, the buzzwod is ‘Islamaphobia’?
Censorship is a horror. Anti-Israel protests should be admired for their fervour. But, then, British Jews are seen as soft targets. Muslims less so.
Which leads to other questions: are you locked in a dictatorship of a monocular mind, where reason, tolerance, free speech and independence are trashed in favour of a conformity which says Jews are unique in their barbarism and represent the leading threat to world peace? Would a Jewish state ever be welcome in the Middle East, however benign, unarmed and free? When you say Israel is guilty of a Holocaust against Palestinians, do you aim to show your own ignorance of that horror or just to assault Jews with their own grief? Why is Holocaust Day attacked when Israel is in the crosshairs and riding high on the news cycle as war with Hamas turns civilians into human shields and the dead, so making all Jews guilty and underserving of the vow ‘Never again’?
One Londoner has an idea:
Watch: This Brit went to #TLVinLDN and encountered an anti-Israel demo outside the festival. This is what he had to say: pic.twitter.com/AyXDlJYQHS
— 4IL (@4ILorg) September 9, 2017
You aren’t an anti-Semite if you criticise Israel. But it really does help if you are.
Posted: 17th, September 2017 | In: News, Politicians | Comment
Chelsea asks fans to police themselves but abusing Spurs is all part of the game
Chelsea want their fans to stop hailing new striker Alvaro Mora with the song: “He came from Real Madrid he fucking hates the Yids.” ‘The Yids’ is, for those of not au fait with footballing abuse, a reference to Tottenham Hotspur football club. The rich irony being, of course, that Chelsea are owned by Roman Abramovich, a Jew. Mr Abramovich is Chairman of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia. This might be a shock to the Chelsea goon who in the early 1980s sniffed my friend and hymned: “Fe-fi-fo-fum, I smell Yiddish scum.”
In blood, Abramovich is more of a yid than Spurs’ Harry Kane. But this isn’t really about racism. This is about finding ways to insult the opposition and upset their fans.
Most Spurs fans couldn’t give a toss about the song. The club’s self-styled Yid Army demand to sing what they want to, and good on them. The press ridiculously call it “The Y-word” (Daily Mail), fetishising the word through censorship, making it all the more exciting and daring to say aloud.
Chelsea have issued a statement:
“The club and the players appreciate the fans passionate support away from home, of course, but the language in that song is not acceptable at all. We’ve spoken to Alvaro after the game and he does not want to be connected to that song in any way and both the player and the club request that the supporters stop singing that song with immediate effect.”
That’s a rather clever twist on the usual ham-fisted demands for football fans to stop saying things or else. If Chelsea fans are annoying their own new star turn, then surely they’ll stop singing the song. It’s progress. Chelsea are not threatening fans with the police or lifetime expulsion from watching the team for the crime of singing songs. They’re politely asking for the fans to sort it out amongst themselves.
Good-oh.
Posted: 10th, September 2017 | In: Chelsea, Key Posts, News, Sports, Spurs | Comments (13)
If Trump is fine with Nazis is Jeremy Corbyn ok with other types of anti-Semites?
Caitlin Moran has been writing in the Times about Donald Trump and his cheerleader, Piers Morgan. It’s a snappy read, taking in Nazis and Jews.
This week, however, Morgan… faced the big dilemma, which is, in the words of Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, “When are you gonna come down? When are you going to land?” Trump’s disturbed press conference on Charlottesville — “There were some fine people there” ABOUT A NAZI RALLY — seemed to make Morgan realise that Jimmy Kimmel’s words were true: “When you’re with people who are chanting things like ‘Jews will not replace us’ and you don’t immediately leave, you’re not ‘a very fine person’.”
A “very fine person” leaves when the anti-Semites turn up. That’s “true”. But Trump is an “entrenched old bastard”. He stays.
Mindful of that, see if you can make the link between the next two images:
A) Jeremy Corbyn is not all that far from a man holding the Hezbollah flag, a group the Labour Party leader called “friends” after inviting them and Hamas to Parliament for a chat.
As reported in the Guardian:
The leader of the Labour party has defended supporters of every variety of ancient prejudice: the Palestinian activist who revived the medieval libel that Jews used the blood of Christian children to make bread; the Anglican vicar who promoted the views of modern neo-Nazis that the Jewish conspiracy was now so malign and supernaturally powerful it was responsible for 9/11. After reviving old prejudices, Labour members adopt new ones just for fun. Jews were the chief financiers of the slave trade, they say as they repeat a fantasy promoted by the US race-huckster Louis Farrakhan. Jews collaborated with Hitler, they continue as they repeat the fantasies of 20th-century Marxist‑Leninis
The Jewish Chronicle also questioned the banners at the Stop The War Coalition sponsored Al Quds Day rallies where Corbyn regularly speaks. Corbyn is also chair of the Stop The War Coalition. I have been to these racist rallies where Hezbollah flags are proudly waved and banners, which I have photographed, state: “Israel is a disease we are the cure” and “For world peace Israel must be destroyed”, “Israel your days are numbered”, “Death to Israel” and “The world stopped Nazism and Apartheid the world must stop Zionism”.
B) Vote Jeremy Corbyn.
Do we judge people by the company they keep?
Corbyn later added on Hamas, a group that calls for all Jews to be murdered (“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him” – Hamas covenant) and Hezbollah:
“I use (the word ‘friends’) in a collective way, saying our friends are prepared to talk. Does it mean I agree with Hamas and what it does? No. Does it mean I agree with Hezbollah and what they do? No. What it means is that I think to bring about a peace process, you have to talk to people with whom you may profoundly disagree.”
Was Trump just enabling the peace, enlarging the conversation, when he blamed both sides for the violence in Charlottesville? Was he doing a Corbyn?
I don’t believe Corbyn is an anti-Semite nor Trump a Nazi. But to the sensitive and morally right who offer no excuses for bigotry and profess to know it when they see it, not voting for Corbyn makes you a “cunt” and voting for Trump means supporting a “bastard”.
Were that a Confederate flag or Nazi banner behind Corbyn, what then? Of course, the modern day Nazi party is, thank god, relatively amateur when it comes to mass murder. Islamists remain the current market leaders in barbaric anti-Semitism.
Brendan O’Neill muses:
I just wish the people rightly shocked by the anti-Semitism on the Charlottesville march had been equally shocked by the big London demo against Israel’s war with Gaza a few years ago at which I saw loads of swastikas (“Israel is Nazi”), placards making accusations of collective Jewish guilt for crimes against humanity, and a man in a grotesque “Jew mask” pretending to eat a doll covered in blood while young Arab kids laughed their heads off. Some of the leftists furious over Charlottesville were on that march. People need to clean out their own stables too. Anti-Semitism is a serious problem and it exists on the right and the left.
Such are the facts.
Posted: 19th, August 2017 | In: News, Politicians | Comment
Jews get final laugh at ‘anti-Semitic’ Swiss hotel
Jews! To the showers! So reads the sign to “Jewish guests” at the Aparthaus, Arosa, Switzerland.
“To our Jewish guests, women, men and children, please take a shower before you go swimming. If you break the rules I’m forced to cloes [sic] the swimming pool for you.”
A second sign, this one of a fridge, says:
“For our Jewish guests: You may access the refrigerator only in the following hours: 10:00-11:00 and 16:30-17:30. I hope you understand that our team does not like being disturbed all the time.”
“Everyone had been very nice to us; suddenly we came down and saw the sign, we were in shock,” says a Jewish Israeli on Israel’s Channel 2. “It was very strange and the sort of anti-Semitic incident we have not been exposed to before.”
Ruth Thomann, the hotel’s manager, has removed the signs. The hotel tells Channel 2:
“There was no anti-Semitic intent and the signs were removed. We have no problem with Jewish guests at the hotel “
Accidental racism, unwitting, if you will.
With it so far? It all seems pretty fair. After all, the hotel accepts and welcomes Jews as guests. But then…
“The sign on the freezer was hung because only Jews used the workers’ refrigerator. The sign regarding the showers was hung after two Jewish girls entered without taking a shower, ignoring a sign addressed to all guests. Therefore, a specific sign was hung to focus their attention on this.”
Ah. You singled out the girls not for their girlishness, rather by their Jewishness. No longer two kids ignoring the rules, the miscreants are two Jews whose very Jewishness makes them offenders-in-waiting. So all Jews are hereby warned.
Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely says it’s “an anti-Semitic act of the worst and ugliest kind”. Really? She can think of no worse act of anti-Jewish hate than an unsettling sign addressing Jewish guests to shower (with all the connotations that command brings), who surely did some research before booking?
Shlomo, a haredi Jew from the Jerusalem area, counters: “I personally know the owners of the hotel and the woman in question who is accused of anti-Semitism. I have been to this hotel several times and they are as far from anti-Semitism as the far east is from the west.”
The message is not to let a misspelt sign spoil your holiday. After all, free Jews taking in the Alpine air at a place where not all that long ago Nazis felt very much at home is the best story of all.
Casual anti-Semitism creeps into a Times story on BBC pay: Claudia Winkleman and Vanessa Feltz are Jews
Kevin Myers writes in the Sunday Times:
I note that two of the best-paid women presenters in the BBC — Claudia Winkleman and Vanessa Feltz, with whose, no doubt, sterling work I am tragically unacquainted — are Jewish.
Good for them. Jews are not generally noted for their insistence on selling their talent for the lowest possible price, which is the most useful measure there is of inveterate, lost-with-all-hands stupidity.
I wonder, who are their agents? If they’re the same ones that negotiated the pay for the women on the lower scales, then maybe the latter have found their true value in the marketplace.
Ouch. How did that one slip past the editors?
Update: The Times online has removed the article.
PS: the Jewish Chronicle notes:
When the BBC reported on its list of highest-paid broadcasters on its News at Ten last night, it said there was no one from an ethnic background in the top 20.
Which was wrong (well, wrong depending on your definition of ethnic minority). For the top 20 included two Jewish women – Claudia Winkleman and Vanessa Feltz.
Spotter: Mat Morrison
Posted: 30th, July 2017 | In: Broadsheets, News | Comment
Anti-racist Chicago Dyke vexiphobics weed out the wrong kind of Jews
For progressive American Jews, intersectionality forces a choice: Which side of your identity do you keep, and which side do you discard and revile? Do you side with the oppressed or with the oppressor?
Do you wear that yellow Star of David on your arm or on a flag?
That kind of choice would have been familiar to previous generations of left-wing Jews, particularly those in Europe, who felt the tug between their ethnic heritage and their “internationalist” ideological sympathies. But this is the United States. Here, progressives are supposed to be comfortable with the idea of hyphenated identities and overlapping ethnic, sexual and political affinities. Since when did a politics that celebrates choice — and choices — devolve into a requirement of being forced to choose?
Another woman told to leave was Ms. Shoshany Anderson, who wrote: “I wanted to be in public as a gay Jew of Persian and German heritage. Nothing more, nothing less. So I made a shirt that said ‘Proud Jewish Dyke’ and hoisted a big Jewish Pride flag — a rainbow flag with a Star of David in the center, the centuries-old symbol of the Jewish people. During the picnic in the park, organizers in their official t-shirts began whispering and pointing at me and soon, a delegation came over, announcing they’d been sent by the organizers. They told me my choices were to roll up my Jewish Pride flag or leave. The Star of David makes it look too much like the Israeli flag, they said, and it triggers people and makes them feel unsafe. This was their complaint.”
CDMC replied on Facebook:“This decision was made after they [the Jewish Pride flag carriers] repeatedly expressed support for Zionism during conversations with Chicago Dyke March Collective members. We have since learned that at least one of these individuals is a regional director for A Wider Bridge, an organisation with connections to the Israeli state and right-wing pro-Israel interest groups.”
In the name of anti-violence and equality, we should pull the flags from those sticks and beat these Untermensch with them. But we’re tolerant and peaceful. “We want to make clear that anti-Zionist Jewish volunteers and supporters are welcome at Dyke March,” says the all-inclusive CDMC.
And that’s right and proper. Compliance is all when you’re celebrating diversity and freedom.
No anti-Semitism in Labour and other myths
Whatever happens in the election and afterwards, someone in Labour has surely got to get a grip of this nauseating shit. pic.twitter.com/Lp22FZbw4G
— Jo Green (@jg_ccpress) June 6, 2017
Vote now and vote often.
Just look at the state of this:
Bloody hell:
Posted: 7th, June 2017 | In: Politicians | Comment
Labour activist Bethany Barker gets publicly shamed
Kids, eh. They say the darndest things. Take Bethany Baker, 19, described in the Telegraph as the “student chosen to introduce Jeremy Corbyn at his local election launch”. Bethany Baker has just resigned as general secretary of Nottingham Labour Students. She doubtless had a bright and rosy future in the Labour movement until someone spotted “a series of racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic tweets” on her account.
Take these tweets from 2013:
“I cooked brandon chicken and rice, supporting the n***** race.”
“I hate bbc one, f****** c**** black f****** b**** I hate everyone #mayday.”
There’s another tweet mocking Jews in their unlovely “Jew caps”.
The stars and frosting are used lest any reader not on twitter and therefore not used to such nastiness get offended.
The paper adds:
In response to a tweet about the jewellery firm Pandora knowing “your mood” she tweeted “it’s a jewellery company you f****** f****t it will never know your mood”.
Miss Barker has issued a statement:
“Some screenshots have resurfaced about what I said in the past. I’m absolutely horrified and beyond disgusted about these tweets and they are in no way representative of the views I hold now.
“I have no recollection of writing these tweets and I am unequivocally sorry for the shadow that has been brought over our society because of it.
“These views are in no way what I align with today and I am beyond upset that I could ever say such things.”
You might wonder how someone who says such things gets to be a leading light of Labour student politics? Or you may not. You might see the anti-Semitism as some part of Bethany Barker’s audition to be a Labour activist. Or you may not.
But can we not be sympathetic to Bethany’s plight? The Sun features a line from Bethany’s apology that the Telegraph does not. She writes: “I have changed so much since I was 14, I was not nice and my past is something I am ashamed of.”
The Independent makes her age-at-tweeting a key part of the story:
Fair enough, no? Who at 14 is not a bit of a dick and says ugly things? And who sane wants to be publicly shamed? If we can spend a moment wondering about Bethany Barker’s state of mind rather than the media’s shaming of her, don’t our hot views cool a little? Those tweets stick and prick with stigma. And we wonder how language became more important than deeds?
Jacob Collier, chairman of the student group, tells us it’s not Labour policy to be a bigot: “We reiterate these comments are not reflective of Nottingham Labour Students members and we will do everything as a committee to ensure that our society is an inclusive and welcoming place for everyone regardless of their background, ability, age, ethnicity, race, religion, gender or sexual orientation.”
What price many student activists are now hitting the delete button.
Posted: 9th, May 2017 | In: Broadsheets, Politicians | Comment
I’m on the Chicago Dyke March Collective (CDMC), “a grassroots mobilisation and celebration of dyke, queer, bisexual and transgender resilience”. But I’m not all that resilient. I am offended and terrified. I boast strong “anti-racist, anti-violent” credentials and work “to bridge together communities across race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, age, size, gender identity, gender expression, sexuality, culture, immigrant status, spirituality, and ability”. But I am scared by flags. I am a vexiphobic.
Yes, I know it’s odd but phobias are. And mine’s more intersectional than most because I’m scared only of flags depicting the Star of David. Whenever I see one I feel ill and want it removed from decent society. I’d like it burned but I’m worried about the carbon footprint. When I saw one being brandished as part of Jewish Pride on the march, I felt physically sick. A CDMC health worker saw my suffering and asked the flag brandisher to leave because the flags “made people feel unsafe”.
So the rainbow flag with the rainbow Star of David on it that tested the extremes of my resilience and anti-racist credentials, and breached them both, was banned. That it also meant the Jews holding these disturbing flags also were banned was a shame but, then, if the wrong kind of Jews arrive, they should except no special favours. I am neither biased not bigoted. Get thee hence. It’s what you do with people who have everything, you take things away.
For purposes of clarity there are two kinds of Jews. You’ve got the Jews who still haven’t learnt not to be barbaric and sub-human and you’ve got the educated Jews who admit they are barbaric and sub-human. As Bari Weiss notes: