So, therefore, what would your question be? Let's assume that it doesn't get through Parliament. Let's assume that we have what is called, ludicrously according to many people, 'a people's vote'...
Ah, Chuka, just try that with the BBC Complaints Department! What they'll say is: John didn't call the term 'people's vote' "ludicrous". He said that "many people" thought it is "ludicrous"'. So he wasn't expressing his own view, merely citing the views of others.
Whether Chuka will believe that or not is another matter.
(In the absence of anything interesting to say about the Andrew Marr show apart from wasn’t Yo Yo Ma sweet, aged seven?)
Antisemites and Corbynites frequently blame Jews for ‘championing’ open borders. If there’s any truth in this accusation, and it seems that there is, it stems from the fact that they (Jews) ‘know what it’s like to be a refugee’ and it would be hypocritical to forget their own desperate plight and to deny others refuge in their hour of need.
Behind that is a willful blindness to the virulent antisemitism within Islam, which leads to the inability to confront the fact that the religion of peace is more akin to the actual Nazis than to their victims; in other words, the current crisis is neither a parallel situation nor a matter of moral equivalence.
Add to that the general assumption that being devoutly religious is widely perceived as a virtue, no matter what or which. The over-simplified conflation between “all refugees” - asylum seekers and economic migrants - has propagated a sinister cabal of hyped-up, left-wing social justice warriors and hate mongers.
Now that certain Labour MPs are facing the stark reality of their dilemma - should I go or should I stay? - it’s disappointing to see, say, Chuka Umunna hanging his ‘calling-Jeremy-out’ stance onto his personal ‘Remain’ stance.
Obviously, Corbyn would have something to gain from making the Labour Party the Remain Party. Theresa May’s weak position is crying out to be exploited in such a way.
The opposite side of the coin is that Corbyn’s antisemitism is crying out to be denounced vociferously, condemned publicly and exploited politically, but the Conservatives haven’t bothered to do so. It’s as if they’re as uninterested in and unmoved by the topic as the wider public appears to be. This is disappointing and appalling and gives some credibility to the claim that antisemitism comes from the right. Are the Tories hoping to draw support from a different demographic?
Howard Jacobson has written a witty and clever essay on the subject of Corbyn, but he too has hung his argument rather too firmly on a Remain peg, which, for me, blunts the message and dilutes the sting. Or the other way round.
Rabbi Sacks surprised us with his forthright message, but he too spoilt it with his allusion to Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, which one might argue was less a matter of racism than a prescient analysis of the development, structure, and functioning of human society. (i.e., sociology)
Anyway, that was an ITBB political party broadcast in the form of a collection of personal disappointments to add to the disappearance of The Sunday Politics and the general dumbing down of everything.
Many others have commented on this surreal episode, but I’m still trying to digest Theresa May’s ambiguous and, if I may say so, obscurantist response.
Mr Walker, the MP for Broxbourne, had asked Mrs May: "When people make fun of Christianity in this country, it rightly turns the other cheek.
"When a young gymnast, Louis Smith, makes fun of another religion widely practised in this country, he is hounded on Twitter by the media and suspended by his association.
"For goodness sake, this man received death threats and we have all looked the other way.
"My question to the prime minister is this: What is going on in this country because I no longer understand the rules?”
Mrs May responded, saying: "I understand the level of concern that you have raised in relation to this matter.
"This is a balance that we need to find. We value freedom of expression and freedom of speech in this country - that is absolutely essential in underpinning our democracy.
"But we also value tolerance to others. We also value tolerance in relation to religions. This is one of the issues that we have looked at in the counter-extremism strategy that the Government has produced.
"I think we need to ensure that yes it is right that people can have that freedom of expression, but in doing so that right has a responsibility too - and that is a responsibility to recognise the importance of tolerance to others.”
This mealy-mouthed mumbo jumbo about tolerance is on a par with Jeremy Corbyn’s “I oppose racism in all its forms”.
I got to the end of the first panel and gave up, but I might go back and give it another try later on. Yvette Cooper has taken Keith Vaz’s role and seems to have acquired some of his oleaginousness in the process.
What bothered me most was the way some of the committee seem to have taken an adversarial position against critics of Sharia courts.
On the all female panel were:
Zlakha Ahmed MBE, Chief Executive, Apna Haq
Shaista Gohir OBE, Chair, Muslim Women's Network UK
Dr Elham Manea, Senior Fellow, European Foundation for Democracy
Maryam Namazie, Spokesperson, One Law for All
I was familiar with Namazie as she is well known for her views on reforming Islam, and I recognised the verbose Shasta Gohir OBE as she was on TV on and off all day.
Dr. Manea spoke well, but was interrogated in a gratuitously hostile fashion by Chuka Umunna. The lady in black gave me the creeps. Sorry, but there it is.
Naz Shah, who, perhaps to save herself some embarrassment, stood down from this committee when they were addressing antisemitism, was back in action. Having been convincingly contrite over her own ‘ignorant behaviour’ she reverted to type by invoking human rights and freedom to follow one’s faith, in a mixture of passion and aggression.
Throughout this section I felt that all the contributors were dancing energetically on the head of a pin and that the fatal flaw running through the entire process was the failure to question the fundamental concept of allowing Sharia Courts in Britain in 2016.
Massive Islam-shaped elephant in the room.
The premise of the inquiry seemed to be that Islam has been accepted as part of the norm in Britain, no matter how antithetical, therefore we have to accept it in all its forms along with all the cultural baggage it brings with it.
This normalisation is deeply worrying to many of us.
You will have seen this.
Shafiq is a well known figure to regular viewers of the BBC’s Sunday morning religious programmes like SML and TBQs. He is very rude and finds it difficult to shut up. His description of the Gatestone Institute and the Henry Jackson Society as fascist and totalitarian showed an astonishing lack of self awareness, as did his inability to pronounce “Baroness Cox”, which repeatedly came out as Baronex Cox.
Some people might see this as progress. Theresa May might see that motion as Canada’s official sanctioning of taking a responsibility to recognise the importance of tolerance to others.
Sorry for the tardiness and belatedness of this post. Others have tackled it before me but let’s go ahead anyway. The other parliamentary event that took place this week was the Home Affairs Select Committee enquiry about the rise of antisemitism.
This was chaired by Keith Vaz, who pronounces antisemitism with an ‘’e’, as in “antisemetic” .
Watching Keith Vaz being forensic and painstaking in that laboured manner of his is very annoying, and it makes him look a bit thick. He began by making Jonathan Arkush define antisemitism, dragging it out as though he’d never heard of such a thing in his life. It was quite an emetic, in fact. He used attitudes to ‘the right to self-determination’ as a kind of litmus test.
For all the laborious, misdirected unpickings of what is and what isn’t antisemitism, those familiar, lazy, defamatory generalizations were left hanging in the air.
This enquiry left an overriding impression of unchallenged falsehoods and inaccuracies, ranging from the ubiquitous “What Israel is doing to the Palestinians” to Ken Livingstone’s “700,000 Palestinians who were driven out of their homes illegally at gunpoint” - not to mention the factthat Hitler supported Zionism because he was keen to rid Germany of all its Jews by deporting them to Palestine (before he went mad and killed 6,000,000.)
What was the point of it all? Does it relate to Shami Chakrabarti’s ill-conceived chairmanship of the inquiry into antisemitism in the Labour Party, which is morphing into an enquiry into all kinds of racism including Islamophobia? It happened; therefore it was.
MPs who were sympathetic to Jonathan Arkush and hostile to Ken Livingstone still appeared to be in agreement that condemnation of Israel was understandable because of “What it is doing to the Palestinians”, but they seemed to think that the elusive affliction known as antisemitism was shameful and a real menace. Nobody seemed to wonder why Israel kept on “doing” stuff to the Palestinians. It was unanimous. Everyone, including forensic examiner Keith Vaz agreed that criticism of Israel was not antisemitic.
Mr Winnick:
The last question I want to ask is arising from what the Chair asked you about Israel. You accept entirely that criticism of Israel is perfectly compatible with non-racism, and that it is not connected automatically in any way with antisemitism. The criticism of Israel, which could be very strong indeed—some, indeed myself would say that it is often very much justified—is not antisemitic.
The most interesting sound-bite and quotable performance arose from Chuka Imunna’s dramatic speech, somewhat marred by his consciousness of the need to preempt the inevitable trolling. That says a lot about the atmosphere in Corbyn’s current Labour Party, and is a tacit admission that antisemitism is the very thing that is motivating the predicted trolls.
“You know what? I will get trolled incessantly after this exchange. I don’t care—”
He still let Livingstone get away with his appalling lies, if indeed he recognised them as lies.
The speech, for which the Chairman admonished him - “This is not an opportunity to make statements” - began:
“I just say this to Mr Livingstone. You were born in my constituency and you went to school in it. I and many other Labour colleagues of all backgrounds and faiths campaigned not just once but twice for you to be Mayor, and I think you campaigned for me. You did help reduce poverty, you did help reduce inequality and you did improve the housing situation in our capital city.”
It’s all very well to set out a couple of carefully selected examples of Mayor Livingstone implementing Labour values, thereby excusing his party’s support for Livingstone’s mayoralty. An aspiring Labour rising star could do no other. But it does look hypocritical to have overlooked, as Umunna seems to have done, Livingstone’s record of ( amongst other things) courting such disreputable people as Qaradawi and the disgraced Lee Jasper.
“But you are not a historian. You are a politician. And by needlessly and repeatedly offending Jewish people in this way you have not only betrayed our Labour values but betrayed your legacy as Mayor because all you are now going to be remembered for is becoming a pin-up for the kind of prejudice that our party was built to fight against. That is a huge shame and it is an embarrassment. “
That is if one overlooks the other (aforementioned) memorable contributions to the legacy of this particular pin-up boy.
Ken Livingstone is not alone in his attitude to Israel, Jews and his malignant version of history. Why do they so readily believe (and I’ve heard it from others) that (in 1948) 700,000 Palestinians were driven out of their homes at gunpoint?
Chuka Umunna could offer no substantive challenge to this falsehood, thus considerably weakening the whole enquiry.
Ken Livingstone: No, no. It is a catastrophe in the sense that the deal done was for two states and a division. The tragedy is—and it is the legacy that still leads to violence today—that 700,000 Palestinians were driven out of their homes illegally at gun point. The Prime Minister of Israel said, “The old will d
Mr Umunna: Sorry, we only get a small amount of time to ask you questions. Either you thought it was wrong, and it was a great catastrophe, or not. Yes or no?
Ken Livingstone: It was right to say that we will create a haven for those Jews who wish to go there. It was not right for the Israeli Government to expel—Mr Umunna: Ken, was it a catastrophe and was it wrong or not?
Ken Livingstone: It was not wrong to create it. It was a catastrophe to expel at gun point 700,000 Palestinians from their homes.
Mr Umunna: Sorry—that was not the question I asked.
Over the page: Transcript. Umunna and Livingstone.
Who is Lord Dubs? Alf Dubs was helped to flee Czechoslovakiaat the age of 6 by the late Nicholas Winton when the Nazis arrived in the late 1930s. His father was Jewish.
“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’tbe 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.
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.
“Gender segregation would be outlawed by labour” says Chuka Umunna, still aboard the bandwagon afforded him by the Today programme yesterday.
But the nasty party have countered with: “Gender segregation in universities is pandering to extremism,” Michael Gove has said, as he became the latest politician to wade into the divisive row over external speakers."
While the hard-copy Telegraph has the headline: “Forcing sexes apart is not permissible says equality watchdog” to an article by home affairs correspondent David Barrett, the online version’s headline is:
“Official watchdog says university sex segregation plans 'not permissible'”.
After yesterday’s discussion with Justin Webb, many people felt that Justin made mincemeat out of Ms Dandridge. But I’m not so sure. While “Forcing sexes apart” sounds unseemly, “Forcing them together” almost sounds worse. Imagine compulsory seating arrangements a la the dinner party regulations: Man, lady, man, lady, man lady.
Enforcing seating arrangements of any kind seems regressive and inappropriate, and haven’t the universities argued that they’re ‘providing’ separate areas rather than imposing blanket restrictions, though the “brothers/ sisters” notice seems to contradict that.
Brothers, sisters, does God exist?
Nicola Dandridge feels that if brothers and sisters wish to self-segregate that’s up to them. We can’t have gender police standing at the door forcibly mingling lads and lasses, surely. But it’s a big ‘if’, for who’s to say what’s really behind this business of being “comfortable” or “uncomfortable”, with such things?
As for gender apartheid in general, no-one can even agree on the effect, if any, that ‘gender’ has on our cognitive abilities. All this business about vertically wired brains versus horizontally wired lady-brains is dubious. Now that even our anatomical, gender-related characteristics can be surgically reversed it’s all a blur. But there is, nevertheless, an anatomical difference between men and women, no matter how much we like to pretend otherwise. Common sense should be the arbiter of what’s best for whom.
It seems that everyone, except Nicola Dandridge and the young conservative chaplain Saleem Chagtai, who defended it on the Today programme (08:32) agrees that separate seating at Islamic meetings is misogynistic and unacceptable in universities at any time and under any circumstances.
However, doesn’t this whole kerfuffle about gender segregation in universities seem like a red herring? It certainly does to me. It’s a bit like all the other Muslim/Islam-related phenomena, which seem so antithetical to what I assumed was modern civilization. Things that should be accepted as ‘given’, like women’s right to education, the right to equality and enforcing the law against FGM and honour-killing now appear to be a matter of debate. Why, in this day and age should the acceptance of rabid homophobia and antisemitism even be debated let alone tolerated?
I can’t see how the stridently feminist Sara Khan, or any other ‘brave’ modernising Muslim women can be all that liberated, empowered or free if despite championing certain reforms they’re still associating themselves with Islam.
We’re guilty of pretending that we object to gender segregation merely because it’s a symptom of paternalism and misogyny, which is how I interpreted what Sara Khan said this morning.
Well yes; and a symptom of a paternalistic, misogynistic, homophobic, antisemitic, barren, hypocritical, superstitious, warmongering, jealous, medieval religion. Sorry Sara, sorry Nicola, sorry Saleem, sorry everyone, but while you’re denying the incompatibility of ‘Islam’, ‘University’ and 'Great Britain', you’re not making much sense.
