Daily Politics. H/T Happy Goldfish
Who is Lord Dubs? Alf Dubs was helped to flee Czechoslovakia at the age of 6 by the late Nicholas Winton when the Nazis arrived in the late 1930s. His father was Jewish.
Here he is speaking about antisemitism in the Labour Party on the Daily Politics on 21st March.
Jo Coburn:“Over the weekend, one of your colleagues, Lord Levy, threatened to resign unless Jeremy Corbyn, your leader, makes absolutely clear that anti-semitism will not be tolerated in the Labour Party, saying he's not gone far enough in cracking down on it. Do you think Jeremy Corbyn could be doing more about that issue?"
Chuka Umunna:"It would be completely disingenuous for anybody to deny that in fringes on the left there have been problems with anti-semitism. but I tell you what, if anyone can lead the charge. in stamping it out and showing a zero tolerance to it, it is Jeremy."
Lord Dubs:"I think we've got to be careful that when people are critical of Israeli government policy, they're not accused of being anti-semitic. There are some people who tend to merge the two. Clearly they are totally different!"
It’s understandable that former refugees would identify with immigrants and tend to be in favour of immigration. However, someone should point out that there is a big difference between Jews fleeing Nazism, where their very existence was a crime, and Muslim immigrants fleeing intra-Muslim war zones and, in their host countries remaining in closed communities that are fundamentally hostile to the west.
Look at the smug expression on David Davis’s face as he nods in agreement with Lord Dubs’s assertion that critics of Israeli government policy mustn’t be accused of being antisemitic.
This superficial deflection really shouldn’t be allowed to pass unchallenged. Criticism of Israeli government policies all too often is very clearly antisemitic, as it invariably ignores the provocation and aggression that necessitates much of the Israeli government policies designed to protect Israelis against violence. These policies are usually the ones that antisemites criticise the most, and they get away with doing so simply because the violence, racism and incitement that exists within Palestinian society is rarely reported in the western media.
Another H/T to the Happy Goldfish.
Radio 4 The World Tonight with Shaun Ley . “Jewish organisation criticises Corbyn“
I don’t much like the tone of Shaun Ley’s interview with Jonathan Arkush and later with Ken Livingstone, but that’s subjective.
Ley:“(Jeremy Corbyn’s) brother might have views that you don’t like, but he’s not, as it were, his brother’s keeper, is he? The judgment is not what the Labour leader says but what he does.”
Should Shaun Ley describe Piers Corbyn’s poorly disguised antisemitism as ‘views you don’t like’?
Re. using the word Zionism as a pejorative:
Arkush:“All it means is the right of self-determination for Jewish people”
Ley:“And the distinction between the right of self-determination and what the Israeli State itself does - what its current government does and what its policies are - is it possible in your view to oppose what the current government of Israel does and not be antisemitic?
Back to deflecting. “What the current government of Israel does” is a commonly deployed mechanism for insinuating that Israel is gratuitously ill-treating poor defenceless innocent Palestinians; it’s the context-free insinuation that lets antisemites off the hook. (The context being that the Palestinian leadership’s fundamental position is the immutable, unshakeable, permanent, entrenched opposition to the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, both in action and in words forever and ever amen.)
Arkush:No problem because Israel is a vigorous democracy and its critics are just like critics of our own government. [...]I’m concerned about hostility to people because they are Jewish.[...]
Ley:Have you confronted Jeremy Corbyn with this? Only it’s one thing to come into a radio studio and make these criticisms and allegations but I wonder if you’ve tried to raise it directly with him.
It’s almost as if Arkush has just barged his way into the studio uninvited, like a political gatecrasher on a mission to defame the Labour Party.
Arkush:I put some things to him (about his meetings with terrorists and holocaust deniers) will you now say that on reflection that they weren’t a good idea and you won’t repeat them, and I pressed him, and all he would say is that he would reflect on them. Two months have passed.
Ken Livingstone (0:15:10) on the phone-line.
“I’ve been a member of the Labour Party for 47 years, I’ve never heard someone say anything anti-semitic.”
Jonathan Arkush 0:16:00
“Well, just in the last few weeks we’ve had a stream of Labour figures who have said things which are anti-semitic on social media, and I’m not sure why Ken Livingstone hasn’t heard them.”
Craig will be back soon, blogging about all manner of things. Sighs of relief all round.
No not all round! At least not here! (Nothing against Craig but I follow Israel pretty closely and Sue you are most helpful.)
ReplyDeleteI agree about criticism of Israel often being an expression of anti-semitism. You can normally tell because all of the alleged misdeeds laid at the door of Israel are found in a much larger dimension in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, India, Morocco, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, China and so on - but the critics of Israel just don't seem at all exercised by those misdeeds. You have to ask "why?".
ReplyDelete