Let's talk about Islamophobia

I watched the bulk of Politics Live. Danny the Fink, Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle (aristocratic name, Labour ‘look’) Belinda de Lucy, (glamorous Brexit Party MEP)  and Pippa Crerar (seemed too sensible to be ‘ex-Guardian’ and Political Editor of the Daily Mirror) were with Jo Coburn today. 

In Fashion News: JoCo's hair always looks its best on Monday mornings. That must be the day she has it done.

I missed the very beginning, but the interesting part of the conversation about the 'generalection', and the bit where things got heated, occurred between Finkelstein and Belinda de Lucy - where the former said the likelihood that the Brexit Party would gain any seats at all was next to nil, therefore he wondered why Nigel would risk splitting the vote? The latter countered with “Boris only has to pick up the phone.” Then the argument segued into something that amounted to “well, they may as well stand against every Conservative seat because, in fact, their policies are entirely different”.  The customary party political points were bickered over, and the concept of selling off our NHS to Donald Trump was examined but the verdict was inconclusive.

You’ll not be surprised to hear that the subject ”antisemitism in the Labour Party” was the one that engaged my attention most fully. It came up two-thirds of the way through a 45-minute programme. 

Lloyd R-M, bless him, started off in full mode McDonnell. So sad, he was. (He sounded genuine before he veered off in the direction of denial)  Predictably, the issue of antisemitism was duly played down on Twitter. 

Fink gave a sympathetic account of the Jewish community’s fears and feelings, but it didn’t take long before Islamophobia came up. I think the culprit was Jo Coburn, but Danny Finkelstein picked up the ball and ran with it.

Tory peer Danny Finkelstein on manifesto policy to “grasp” with Islamophobia

“I think the party has got the chance to be a pioneer, because there a lot of Islamophobia in this country, possibly even more than there is anti-Semitism”#politicslive https://t.co/dLHtKBMf1p pic.twitter.com/6OVarxGucc

— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) November 4, 2019

In my opinion, Esther Duflo, the economist who has just won the Nobel prize for the accessible-sounding book on economics she co-authored, “Good Economics for Hard Times” came in far too late in the show. She had already been on the radio this morning, and we were treated to a longer and larger slice of her wisdom then. As a bit of an ignoramus on theoretical economics, I could have done with a bit more of that and less of the other. It somehow seemed fresher and more interesting.

Imagine that. A book on economics more interesting than Brexit.

Some sort of agenda

Don’t you just hate hearing people saying would when they “really meant” wouldn’t.
Ditto, people saying anti-Semitist when they “really meant” anti-anti-semitist  (or something). 

That’s pretty silly stuff, with a distinctly humorous tinge. Far less amusing is the BBC‘s crass insensitivity (!) in choosing to broadcast unadulterated pro-Palestinian propaganda in the form of the creepiest passive-aggressive grievance-mongering from: 

Raja Shehadeh, the award winning Palestinian writer, lawyer, and founder of the human rights organisation, Al Haq recollects a humiliating experience on his way home to Ramallah. Read by Peter Polycarpou.

What timing. Why, anyone would think whoever commissioned this virtually unlistenable drivel for this week's  Book of the Week (BBC Radio 4) had some sort of agenda.

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The only reason I subscribe to the Times these days is that I can see the comments below articles such as  Daniel Finkelstein’s. (£)

Jeremy Corbyn is blind to the racism in his party. Here’s a taster:

Complacently, I had always assumed that what happened to my parents couldn’t happen to me or my children. There were too many liberal, progressive people who wouldn’t allow it. I no longer believe this with the same confidence. (I found it really painful to write those words. I deleted the last sentence twice, but I left it in because, sadly, it’s true.)
It’s less the antisemitism itself that has induced this fear. It is the denial of it. The reaction I expect on the left to the rise of antisemitism — concern, determination to combat it, sympathy — is not the one I’ve encountered, at least not from supporters of the leadership. Instead there is aggression, anger at the accusation, suggestions that the Jews and zionists are plotting against Jeremy Corbyn.

Even though a few notable Jewish figures have started expressing similar concerns to the ones outlined above, their ambivalence vis-à-vis “the case for Israel” shines through. Maybe it’s partly a fear of falling foul of ‘rule 1a’, (dual loyalty) but I think it’s much more likely that it's down to pure ignorance, or (in other words) a lifetime of being under/ill-informed by biased reporting.

Looking quickly through the comments, I spotted Ian Hislop’s name. Not that the views of smug arbiters of moral righteousness through the medium of satire particularly interest me, but Hislop leaps straight to the Nation-State law, and cites Daniel Barenboim’s dodgy Guardian op ed, to boot.

One ambivalent asaJew refers to “incessant land-grabs by Israeli settlers.”  Incessant land grabs? Now, there’s a typical example of the effect of absorbing a listening-lifetime of selective, misleading, partial and agenda-driven journalism.

Labour welcomes everybody (but some are less welcome than others)

The Today Programme featured a report from Orla Geurin speaking to troops in Iraq - some of them English - fighting Daesh alongside Kurdish soldiers. They want the British government to support them much more in order to defeat Daesh there before embarking on the dreadful situation in Syria. 

The spokesperson for the select defence committee happened to be Ruth Smeeth MP, who spoke knowledgeably to Nick Robinson on the topic. It was unexpected and rather nice of the BBC to bring her in to discuss something other than you know what.

At the end of the interview Nick Robinson asked her about the abuse she’s been subjected to, which brings me to the final ‘leadership hustings’ debate between Corbyn and Smith, which took place on Sunday in front of Labour Friends of Israel and similar groups.

You can watch the whole thing on Jewish TV if you can bear it. The sound quality is abysmal; they seem to have amplified the applause coming from the auditorium and muffled the actual speakers. The whole thing was as frustrating as you’d expect it to be. Jeremy Corbyn was as reptilian as usual and he sat uncomfortably on his peculiarly designed high-stool, which I think was facing the wrong way. The others seemed to have foot-rests on theirs, whereas I think Jeremy’s was round the back and he couldn’t find anywhere to perch his feet. I almost felt sorry for him. Almost but not.  

Interestingly, the anchor was from the BBC. Lucy Manning. I must admit I wasn’t familiar with Lucy, but I found out from Mr. Google that she wasn’t a popular recruit (from ITV) at a time when others at the BBC were being given the heave-ho. 

However, although I hear she has a reputation for being strident, in this debate she seemed fine, although the sound levels might have contributed to that. I don’t think you could tell which side she was batting for, Corbyn, Smith or the audience, and that’s quite a feat for a BBC staffer

There’s a summary of the questions that were submitted to the pair here.

The widely publicised quote from Corbyn: ‘I believe Israel has the right to exist in its “1948 borders”’ ‘ came from that debate as did the well-worn excuse regarding Paul Eisen. ‘I attended the events before I knew he was a holocaust denier’ - which was trotted out again to audible groans from the audience. 

Even though there was potential to put the questions some of us would have liked to ask, there was no opportunity for follow-ups due to the one and only microphone having been passed to the other end of the room by the time the original questioner might have made use of it. 

Owen Smith drew louder applause than Corbyn, from this tiny audience at any rate. Towards the end, a question from the President of Oxford University Jewish Society. ‘Why have student victims of labour anti-semitism not been apologised to, and their attackers not been dealt with?’ Waffle ensued. 

My pick of the press today. Daniel Finkelstein in the Times (£) 

Labour’s chaos over antisemitism is shameful.

It’s about about Michael Foster, still suspended from the Labour Party. I’ll post a chunk of the piece here for the benefit of those who can’t access.

There was a time when it was almost impossible to be expelled from the Labour Party. You could get a programme on Iranian state TV, vote against the party in parliament hundreds of times, and praise Hamas and they’d make you leader. 

Nowadays it seems hard to avoid being excluded. You might have purchased your membership on the wrong date, for instance. Or, like Michael, said the wrong thing without any clear rules about what the right thing is. 

Yet even though it’s not remotely apparent what rule Michael broke, I think I can guess what it was that did it. It was the word Nazi. And this would be funny if the whole thing wasn’t so tragic. 

When Ken Livingstone was suspended from the Labour Party there was a lot of comment about his inability to avoid mentioning Hitler every time he appeared on television. But this is what I call the Fawlty Towers Fallacy. The problem isn’t that he mentioned the war. It’s what he said about Jews. 

Livingstone claimed that “before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews” Hitler supported Zionism. He continues to claim that this is true (which, just to be clear, it is not). With this statement he joined other Corbyn supporters who regularly make comparisons between Israel and Nazism. 

The problem is not with mentioning Hitler, or generally using Hitler analogies, or loosely making Hitler comparisons. The problem isn’t being abusive or silly or hyperbolic. The problem is deliberately and systematically equating the Jews with their exterminators. The problem is with implying the Jews are authors of their own misfortune and as bad as their killers. 

Israel isn’t being compared to the Nazis because of a want of tact. These people don’t compare Israel to Stalin, or to Pol Pot, or to Kim Il Sung. It is a deliberate and grossly offensive attack tailored specially for the Jews. 

It is an attack that tells the survivors of the death camps that they should have learnt lessons from their suffering but haven’t. It is an attack that deliberately minimises Hitler’s genocide by comparing it to the conflict with the Palestinians. It is an attack that outrageously distorts Israeli policy and provides those who want it with a justification for the terrorist murder of Jews. It is shameful and has no place in a progressive party. 

I thought, when suspending Mr Livingstone, that perhaps the Labour Party now appreciated this. Now it is clear they do not. In the grip of the Fawlty Towers Fallacy they haven’t decided to suspend antisemites, they had decided just to suspend anyone who mentions Hitler. Never mind if they are a Jew, whose grandparents were in Dachau concentration camp. 

Instead of dealing with hatred of Jews, they are just running around in a panic. And when this leadership election is over, neither the panic nor the antisemitism will have gone away. 

The Corbyn supporters who complain of a purge, the moderates who despair that there hasn’t been one, they are both correct. Maybe you are a member, maybe you aren’t; maybe that behaviour is OK, maybe it isn’t; maybe you will be out for ever, maybe we will let you back; maybe you can have a vote, maybe you can’t. Who knows? 

Nobody has a clue what they are doing or why they are doing it. The party is flailing. Accuse someone of being a stormtrooper and goodbye, support the IRA and you can be shadow chancellor. 

The only question I have for Michael now is an inversion of Groucho Marx’s famous quip. Why would he want to be part of a club that doesn’t want him as a member? 

And if a party cannot retain someone like him — enterprising, full hearted, unpredictable, passionate, successful, excitable and exciting — it is doomed. Suspend Michael Foster and you are suspending the Labour Party on a rope.