There’s a bit of a ‘grateful for small mercies’ flavour to some of the responses to Shami’s antisemitism report. John Mann and Jonathan Arkush both seemed reasonably satisfied with it.
Incidentally, Ed Stourton began the interview by mentioning the death of Elie Wiesel.
The BBC’s obit was respectful, but the early morning reports of his death on radio 4 bulletins - not so much. For some reason they shoehorned something about Wiesel’s critics (who doubted the enormity of the Holocaust) into the report Work experience guys on night duty I suspect.
He called it a ‘scratchy job interview” (I wonder if Speccie writers make up their own headlines) I didn’t think it was scratchy at all - at least any scratchiness came from the direction of the interviewer rather than the interviewee.
This business of trying to destroy ‘Leave’ people by bashing them over the head with a wet Nigel Farage is beginning to grate. The media has managed to toxify Nigel Farage so that letting slip the merest whiff of agreement with anything he’s ever said or done is to commit virtual suicide by association. The very mention of “That Poster” is enough to trigger sufficient unsafety to reach outer space. My god. It’s almost like “Settlements”
Mention “Settlements” and you’re finished. Poleaxed by misdirected outrage.
The media has been really mean to Gove, amplifying the back-stabbing label for all it’s worth. I actually believe his version of how events panned out with Boris. As Gove says, Boris could have stood if he really wanted to. The downside of it all is that it reveals a lack of judgment on Gove’s part - or at least a prolonged case of hope triumphing over experience.
I think the media despises honesty whenever they suspect an MP is suffering from it. They want their MPs to be back-stabbing, ruthless and robotic. I don’t know why. That’s my honest opinion and, for now, I’m sticking to it.
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.
