I no longer understand the rules

Having missed PMQs yesterday I only heard about the extraordinary exchange between Charles Walker MP and the Prime Minister on Susan Hulme’s BBC radio 4 late night parliamentary round-up.

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. 

Here’s the dialogue, courtesy of the BBC: 

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”.

Several prominent journalists have been appalled at the way Louis Smith has been humiliated by the baying P.C. brigade, and I see his two-month ban by British Gymnastics as a very ill omen indeed. The BBC is maintaining its customary policy of impartiality in this matter. 

I tried to watch the Home Affairs Committee hearing on Sharia Courts that took place the other day. 

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.

Did you see that Canada has passed a motion? A new anti-Islamophobia motion to be precise. 

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.

I just see that motion as shite. 

Making a difference

Why can’t the Home Affairs Committee do one of their lip-service game-changing inquiries into antisemitism in the BBC? 

  

After all, the BBC’s conduct parallels the Labour Party’s in many ways. 

• Bias? ‘tick’ 
• Antisemitism? ‘tick’ 
• Reprimanding staff with no consequent action. ‘tock’ 
• Suspending staff and subsequently reinstating them? ‘tick’ 

Just imagine Tim Loughton, Chuka Umunna, David Winnick (if compos mentis at the time) and the gang (perhaps Keith Vaz will be back?) - ensconced in their judicial horseshoe-shaped seating arrangement, gravely and purposefully interrogating Jeremy Bowen, Tony Hall and other appropriate heads of departments, with perhaps a couple of quasi legal advisers passing down notes on little bits of paper.

As Craig has stated, the BBC confounded our (justifiably) low expectations by treating the Home Affairs Committee’s report on Antisemitism in the UK as newsworthy.

In fact the report headlined Radio 4’s early Sunday morning bulletins, but was subsequently relegated to second place behind a rather lame tale of Boris Johnson’s alleged duplicity over Brexit. 

The Sunday Programme (Radio 4) didn’t mention the antisemitism inquiry,  but various lacklustre interviews with Tim Loughton (who has replaced Keith Vaz as chair of Home Affairs Committee) were shown on most of the news channels throughout the day. There didn’t appear to be much appetite for analysing or scrutinising the report and I didn’t see any constructive suggestions as to what measures might be taken to rectify the situation. Maybe I missed it. 

It now looks as though the media has lost interest altogether.

Superficiality.

The BBC doesn't try to delve beneath the superficiality of the Home Affairs Committee’s hearing or its findings. 

Nor, for that matter, have the BBC fully examined Shami Chakrabarti’s mishandling of the enquiry into antisemitism, (and all forms of racism) at any rate in comparison with the tenaciousness with which they’ve pursued other scandals.  They haven’t really exposed the extent to which she discredited herself, firstly, by compromising her independence by joining the Corbynistas before undertaking the enquiry. Secondly, with those oh so shifty responses of hers when asked (by Kirsty Wark) if she’d been offered a peerage (“No, have you?) and (“I’ve been offered peerages many times”) and that shame-faced evasiveness when asked  if an appointment to the shadow cabinet was in the offing. 

Andrew Marr conducted a brief interview with Tim Loughton who is dutifully acting as spokesman in the absence of the committee’s incapacitated former chairman.

Incapacitated

Andrew Marr said: “I don’t believe Jeremy Corbyn has a single antisemitic bone in his body. “

I‘m not sure what an antisemitic bone is, but it’s not Jeremy Corbyn’s bones we should be worrying about, but his cerebrum; and the only bodies I’m interested in apart from Jeremy Corbyn’s - perish the thought - are the bodies with deeply antisemitic roots, which he has consistently shown such enthusiasm for.

There are several points in this Home Affairs Committee report that need to be examined more closely, but first, let me go back to the hearing itself, which I blogged at the time, here, here and here.  (Incidentally, in one of those posts I said: 

“Next to Ms Chakrabarti in the front row, directly behind Jeremy Corbyn, sat a stern-faced man in a dark suit who Keith Vaz referred to as “Mr. Rotherham.”  

At the time of writing I failed to realise that I was / should have been familiar with the gentleman in question, Mr. Rotheram (without the ‘h’) because I had already seen him in BBC 2's enjoyable documentary “Inside the Commons”, where he was followed, alongside Sarah Champion, as a new MP getting to know the ropes. This 4-part documentary is currently being repeated, and it’s worth taking a look to see just how much has changed since it was made.

Surveys and stats.

Anyway, from the shocking statistics about antisemitism in the UK, if they are to be believed:

“recent surveys show that as many as one in 20 adults in the UK could be characterised as “clearly antisemitic”.” 

Oddly, that figure roughly equates to the number of Muslims in the UK. We assume it isn’t only Muslims or Muslim MPs who’ve been expressing antisemitic and anti-Zionist views, but it does rather imply that, if anything, one in 20 is a gross underestimation. It seems that some degree of antisemitism is indeed almost the norm in the UK. 

In fact, the report also quotes figures  given to them by the Community Security Trust, which state that:

 “a description of the offender was provided in only 58% of reported antisemitic incidents” and “of these 84% male, 54% were white European. 20% were South Asian, 13% were black and 1% were S.E. Asian” 

I find this confusing.   

You can see the complexity of collating evidence of antisemitism. It boils down to “incidents”. 

If you bother to look at the CST website you can access a pdf of their reports over individual years. you will find on p9: 

“CST classifies as an antisemitic incident any malicious act aimed at Jewish people, organisations or property, where there is evidence that the victim or victims were targeted because they are (or are believed to be) Jewish. Incidents can take several forms, including physical attacks on people or property, verbal or written abuse, or antisemitic leaflets and posters.  

CST does not include the general activities of antisemitic organisations in its statistics; nor does it include activities such as offensive placards or massed antisemitic chanting on political demonstrations. CST does not record as incidents antisemitic material that is permanently hosted on websites, nor does CST proactively ‘trawl’ social media platforms to look for antisemitic comments in order to record them as incidents.” 

None of the BBC’s “structurally antisemitic” reporting would fall into the category of an ‘incident’. That means editorial decisions to show a conflict from one particular perspective more sympathetically than the other (because they consider it morally righteous) wouldn’t count. The same applies to the Labour Party and its leader. When Jeremy Corbyn stands in front of Hezbollah flags while he bellows into a loudspeaker at a Stop The War rally, that wouldn’t count either.

The other statistic, which Paddy O’Connell was so keen to highlight, was that 75% of incidents came from the far-right. Almost as if, for some personal reason, he wanted to exonerate the Corbynistas and the Muslims from charges of antisemitism. Why would he want to do that? 

Who knows how the 75% figure was derived. Perhaps it was purely from the recorded number of physical attacks on visibly identifiable Jews, in which case neo-Nazi hooligans would likely be perpetrators rather than those timid keyboard warriors of the left. You know, the ones with acne and cauliflower noses that Andrew Marr says operate from their mothers’ basements. 

I was curious. I mean who voluntarily identifies as ‘far-right’ these days? I’d just like to know how all these statistics were gathered and categorised, because to a lay person like myself all those numbers and percentages are virtually meaningless.

Of course the Home Affairs Committee accepted it, so maybe they know something I don’t, but I would tend to question the extrapolations from those figures rather than parrot them unquestioningly. Clarification, you know..

Demonisation of Israel

The sharp increase in antisemitic incidents between 2014 and 2015 is equally striking, which coincides with Operation Protective Edge, mistakenly described in the report as “launched by Israel in 2015”. It was, of course, 2014.  

The hatred for Israel that was generated during the both the 2009 ‘Gaza war’ and the more recent “Operation Protective Edge” was exacerbated by, if not positively incited by the BBC’s woefully biased and decontextualised reporting, particularly in its weakness for relaying Palestinian propagandists’ stock-in-trade images of child casualties.

The BBC has some kind of tacit moratorium on reporting the truth about the Palestinian leadership. All one asks for is the truth; not selected stories relayed through the romanticised prisms of ‘gone native’ reporters like Yolande Knell in Ramallah and Lyse Doucet in Gaza. 

Organisations like Palestinian Media Watch have started to make a difference in that regard, but there’s a long way to go. 

If the BBC were somehow forced to acknowledge their own institutional bias (and rectify it) much of the antisemitism in the UK would fizzle out. It stands to reason, merely because reasonable people dislike terrorism and religious-based violence. If they knew exactly what was happening to Israelis on the proverbial ‘daily basis’ and why it was happening, the public would be equipped to judge.

One-sided reporting is one of the biggest injustices of our times. Even Jeremy Bowen, one of the worst offenders when it comes to demonising Israel, inadvertently admitted such thing during Samira Ahmed’s piece on Newswatch, emphasising the need to give a rounded picture -  albeit about Syria rather than his despised Israel. 

“Mainly children are shown for maximum emotional effect when in reality the majority of casualties are adults including many Sunni Jihadists” 

observed one viewer.

Samira Ahmed:

 “Are we getting a full picture of the conflict?” “Some viewers have told us that they’re concerned that we’re getting a distorted view of the conflict”

“Most of the reporting I’ve done has been from the government side[…] Being with the rebel side is too dangerous.”

explained Bowen.

“News should not be about goodies versus baddies. […] 

An intro gives you a flavour of what’s coming up, and it’s not the whole story. You’ve got to take the whole, and in fact you’ve got to take, probably the whole in more than one piece, because I try and look at the number of pieces that I’ve done from one reporting trip other than from one individual report.  

I know that’s difficult because not everyone watches the news with the same obsessive zeal that journalists do but you can’t get everything in in every piece and what I try to do, and for me it’s a challenge of TV reporting particularly. 

 I do a story, which, for someone who’s interested but doesn’t know much, will ‘get’ and learn something, and will come away, hopefully a bit wiser; and will also hopefully at the same time, have something in it that the top diplomat in the office who deals with in the Middle East will find quite interesting as well, so it needs to be a bit like a layer cake, and you know that is not an easy thing to do.  

You need very good material, some of the pictures, and you need to be very careful with your words, and - good interviews, good sound, and you know, sometimes we succeed, and sometimes we don’t.”

Jeremy Bowen sounds quite objective here, doesn't he? He hasn’t got that visceral loathing for one side, as he has when he's dealing with Israelis and Palestinians, although he has appeared rather fond of softly spoken, Israel-hating Bashar al-Assad in the past. My enemy’s enemy?

The Home Affairs Committee could have had a field day with the BBC, but if they did, would the BBC report it?

Why did you think this inquiry was relevant when it really doesn’t come to any conclusions?

I wasted an inordinate amount of time transcribing bits from yesterday’s Home Affairs Committee hearing, starring Jeremy Corbyn and Shami Chakrabarti; stupid really because I knew that if I just hung on for a day or so there would be an official transcript. 

Sure enough, here it is. 

Of course, when you’re looking at print you can examine every syllable at your leisure, but in black and white you don’t get the nuances of the actual panto performance. 

The visuals and the audio add that extra something. You don’t get to hear Keith Vaz’s peculiar delivery in a transcript. He sounds as though he’s doing a half-hearted impression of Brian Sewell. I suppose it gives him an air of authority; part disdain, part superciliousness, part pomposity, and all the more oleaginous when used to pay a compliment, and in this instance to express profuse gratitude to Jeremy Corbyn for attending.

 (So he didn’t have to attend if he didn’t want to?)

There are several other media responses worth looking at if anyone’s interested. Patrick Kidd has made it the topic of his Political Sketch. Times (£)  “A masterclass in ducking the question” 

The Spectator’s Katy Balls noticed that Chuka Umunna  “Has started to make a habit of using the Home Affairs Select Committee to grandstand about his party’s woes.”

The Today programme also mentioned it: Susan Hulme. 44:10

“It’s believed to be the first time an opposition leader has been questioned by a commons committee. But-- they certainly weren’t deferential.”

She played a handful of sound clips from the hearing. I think both Sarah Montague (who had introduced the item) and the presenter, Ms Hulme, found the whole thing rather amusing. More amusing than absolutely necessary. Somehow I don’t mind anyone else finding it amusing, but I strongly object to the BBC doing so. 

Harry’s Place has it of course. 

Keith Vaz said:

Many regard this inquiry as a whitewash because it does not contain any facts and figures, and it did not take evidence from some of the principal people accused of antisemitism. Why did you think this inquiry was relevant when it really doesn’t come to any conclusions?

Other people might be wondering this as well. It now transpires that Naz Shah’s suspension has been lifted.  Exquisite timing.

Jeremy Corbyn: "I think I got away with it"

I watched this rather nasty hearing on the subject of antisemitism by the Home Affairs Committee, chaired as usual by Keith Vaz, who opened proceedings with a few warm remarks about his long-standing friendship with the chief witness.

Towards the end of the hearing Jeremy Corbyn was asked if Shami Chakrabarti’s report clarified what antisemitism is. He duly obliged with the following definition:

“Antisemitism is where you use epithets to criticise people for being Jewish, you attack Jewish people for what they are, it is completely unacceptable, and I would have thought it’s very obvious what antisemitism is, just as much as would be very obvious what Islamophobia is -  if you criticise Moslem people for what they are, what they are alleged to believe, even if they believe in it or not, and I think in the report Ms Chakrabarti makes it very clear that we have to condemn both of those with great vigour equally.”

Shami Chakrabarti was sitting behind Jeremy Corbyn, and she appeared to be acting as his ‘minder’. She nodded and shook her head, scribbled away on a pad and occasionally slipped a post-it note onto the table in front of her client. 

Next to Ms Chakrabarti in the front row, directly behind Jeremy Corbyn, sat a stern-faced man in a dark suit who Keith Vaz referred to as “Mr. Rotherham.”  He and Ms. Chakkrabarti gave each other meaningful looks, and he too passed a post-it note to Mr. Corbyn. Keith Vaz spotted this and scolded them. 

tête-à-tête

Keith Vaz queried Ms Chakrabarti’s independence in the light of her last-minute decision to join the Labour Party. He suggested that people might regard her report as a whitewash.

“No no”, protested Mr. Corbyn. “Shami is completely independent”. 

There was a great deal of waffling about what Mr. Corbyn meant in his accidental comparison between Israel and “Islamic states”. He insisted that he meant it ‘lower case’  i.e., Islamic states in general, not ‘the’ Islamic State.

“Ms Chakrabarti, there is no need to nod at the back” said Mr. Vaz. 

This did not go down very well with Ms Chakrabarti and the stern-faced man. Both glared thunderously thenceforth.

Victoria Atkins, James Berry, David Burrowes, Nusrat Ghani, Tim Loughton, Stuart C McDonald, Chuka Umunna, and David Winnick were the MPs who questioned Jeremy Corbyn.

The JC.com  has published a summary. Here’s a short extract;

He said he “totally and profoundly disagreed” with the views of Holocaust denier Paul Eisen. 

Mr Corbyn reflected on his meeting with Board of Deputies president Jonathan Arkush earlier this year, which, he said had “lasted quite a long time. We got on quite well. Look if we want a strong cohesive society, we oppose antisemitism because it divides us”. 

The Labour leader said he had attended events about the Israel-Palestinian conflict where Holocaust deniers had been removed for making antisemitic comments regarding the Shoah. 

He had travelled to Ealing in west London for tea with Raed Salah because the sheikh was under house arrest, he added. 

Questioned on why he had accused Guardian journalist and JC columnist Jonathan Freedland of "subliminal nastiness", Mr Corbyn said Mr Freedland had "made comments detrimental to my character".

Mr. Corbyn spoke of his agreeable conversations with “Mr. Akrush”, mispronouncing his name repeatedly.   Nusrat Ghani’s approach was rigorous and rather fierce. When Mr. Corbyn kept including “all forms of racism” in his replies she insisted on talking specifically about antisemitism. 

Mr. Corbyn responded to her adversarial tone by becoming increasingly insouciant. 

She asked if he intended to accept the invitation to visit the leader of the Israeli Labour Party.  His evasive answer implied that he would not be accepting it, and it’s widely believed that he hasn’t actually replied at all.

Victoria Atkins was also fittingly adversarial. She raised the subjects of Stephen Sizer and that “cup of tea with Raed Salah”

“I had a discussion with him”, said Corbyn. 

He explained his relationship with Paul Eisen: 

“Paul Eisen founded a group called Deir Yassin Rembered. Deir Yassin was a village that was destroyed during the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.”

An anti-Israel version of an event, plucked from its proper historical context, unchallenged by the committee. When controversial matters appertaining to Israeli/Arab history are being distorted I do not believe members of the Home Affairs committee are capable of identifying propaganda. 

As I’ve said so many times before, Jeremy Corbyn and his ilk have always embraced the Palestinian version of events as if they were definitive, absolute and conclusive. 

Corbyn’s total lack of interest in historic events from the pro-Israeli perspective belies all his disingenuous claims about bringing people together, engaging with both sides or talking with “people you disagree with” to secure ‘peace’. He claimed to have visited Israel many times, and to have spoken to Israelis, but he did not go into detail. 

David Winnick is too doddery for his shirt I’m afraid, and his supposed support for Israel is half-hearted bordering on full-scale elusive. He appeared to be saying that Israel is guilty as charged, but blaming Jews for it is racist. 

 “Bombardment of Gaza” intoned Corbyn.

David Burrowes livened things up a bit by mentioning the Hamas Charter, and Keith Vaz obligingly read out the well-known passage, as follows:

 “The prophet, peace and prayer be upon him said: the time will not come until Muslims will fight Jews and kill them until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees which will cry ‘O Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him’ “

“It’s unacceptable but you have to talk to extremes on both sides.” said the witness.

Chuka Umunna wondered why Corbyn didn’t “call out” Mark Wadsworth, the individual from Momentum who had offended the Jewish MP Ruth Smeeth at the infamous launch of the Chakrabarti report. He said he’d seen the video. In fact we’ve all seen the videos of what happened. From every conceivable angle.  He also brought up Jackie Walker’s offensive comment about Jews financing the slave trade.

Tim Laughton enquired about the role of Seumas Milne, Corbyn’s right-hand man and director of communications. 

“Is he a friend of Hamas and Hezbollah?”  

“You’d better ask him. He’s a man of immense intellect and a scholar. He’s written many books (so has Ernie Wise) and he works extremely hard...”

There is a video, said Mr Laughton, showing Milne praising Hamas for their spirit of resistance and declaring that they would not “be broken” 

He was not allowed to show the video to the committee, but Mr. Vaz promised to write to Mr. Corbyn about it at a later date. 

Stuart C McDonald wasn’t sure if the report defined what antisemitism is. Corbyn duly obliged:(forgive the repetition.)

“Antisemitism is where you use epithets to criticise people for being Jewish, you attack Jewish people for what they are. It is completely unacceptable and I would have thought it’s very obvious what antisemitism is, just as much as would be very obvious what Islamophobia is. If you cri’icise Moslem people for what they are - what they are alleged to believe - even if they believe in it or not, and I think in the report Ms Chakrabarti makes it very clear that we have to condemn both of those with great vigour equally.”

Is everyone expected to swallow that?  Yes, he really did use a glottal stop, and yes, I think he really does believe the above. It seems he doesn’t actually think Muslims believe what they profess to believe, namely Islam. He evidently doesn’t believe that the more devout they are the more antisemitic and homophobic they’re likely to be. He equates antisemitism (hatred of Jews) with Islamophobia, (criticism of Islam) both of which he regards as racist. 

James Berry: 

“Mr Corbyn, do you agree that Israel has the right to exist? " 

“Sorry?” 

“Do you agree that Israel has the right to exist?” 

“The State of Israel exists of course” 

“Then you agree that it has the right to exist?” 

“Yes, and all proposals that are put forward are actually -- that our party’s policy is for a two state solution.” 

“Do you understand why Jewish people find it at best offensive and at worst downright antisemitic to have to continually justify Israel’s right to exist?” 

“I’m sure they do. There are issues about Israel and its treatment of Palestinian people and occupation of the West Bank and the siege of Gaza, and all proposals for a peace process are based around the removal of the settlements and of course an end of the siege of Gaza. Listen! I’be been there many times, and what’s happening is wrong. The killing is wrong..” 

“On both sides, presumably” 

“Absolutely, but there isn’t a way forward that doesn’t involve dialogue, that doesn’t involve acceptance of the rights of Palestinian people  and recognition of a Palestinian state, that surely has to be the right way forward.”

The siege of Gaza!

The settlements!!

The ‘treatment’ of the Palestinian people!!!

The occupation!!!! 

No-one challenged him on any of that, so I think Jeremy Corbyn could safely say “I was antisemitic a couple of times, but I think I got away with it.”

Home affairs enquiry

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. 

transcript

 video

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 fact that 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.