Apologia continued: Antisemitism on Corbyn Supporting Labour Forums
Posted on: July 24, 2018
I added many screen shots to this post over a period of months and am dispensing with most of my introductory observations so that the reader can cut to the chase, as it were.
It is never up to date as every day brings new material .
As before, I emphasize it is the way that Israel is criticized that is problematic. One can hardly even call it criticism. Often, the language segues seamlessly into classical antisemitism.
I thought we had left all this behind in the twentieth century.
Albert Camus said:
… le bacille de la peste ne meurt ni ne disparaît jamais, qu’il peut rester pendant des dizaines d’années endormi dans les meubles et le linge, qu’il attend patiemment dans les chambres, les caves, les malles, les mouchoirs et les paperasses, et que, peut-être, le jour viendrait où, pour le malheur et l’enseignement des hommes, la peste réveillerait ses rats et les enverrait mourir dans une cité heureuse.*
…the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen-chests; that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks and bookshelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city.
4 Responses to "Apologia continued: Antisemitism on Corbyn Supporting Labour Forums"
July 27, 2018 at 3:56 am
There certainly does seem to be quite a bit of anti-Jewish rhetoric employed, and it is certainly true that words of this type are dangerous. It seems that there is a strand of anti-Jewish feeling existing within the Labour Party; strangely, there is a fair degree of anti-Jewish sentiment among the staunchly pro-Israel Christian evangelicals, and most certainly too, with Prime Minister Orban and his supporters in Hungary.
Neviim Tovim, blogs by Gillian Gould Lazarus 
July 26, 2018 at 2:24 pm
I think it is right to highlight and protest anti-Jewish sentiments and actions, whatever their source. However, I feel it is highly problematic to label oneself a Friend of Israel. Israel is a country which, whatever the reasons for its foundation, ethnically cleansed/expelled 750,000 Palestinians at the time of its independence, in May 1948. It proceeded to ignore Security Council resolution 194, calling for the return of Palestinian refugees then, and many, many Security Council resolutions since. It is true that those Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel may vote, carry passports, and exercise many, though hardly equal, rights, to their Jewish fellow citizens, but there are about 4 Million Palestinians on the West Bank who are locked into a permanently occupied status; the 2 Million Palestinians in the Gaza strip are in still worse straits, in a kind of open air prison. Israel is a country which is assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists who may well have been trying to assist their country in gaining the technology to have the capacity to build nuclear weaponry; meanwhile, it has never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, while it has perhaps 60, perhaps 100, perhaps more, nuclear weapons.
It has attacked its neighbour, Lebanon, multiple times, wreaking massive destruction, and was complicit in civilian massacres.
The Israeli government and its main lobbying support in the U.S., the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, were partially responsible for the decision by the U.S. administration to invade Iraq; Israeli intelligence services have, for the last 50 years, been, both together, and apart from the U.S. involved in training torturers around the world, from Central America to Iran.
Israel as a country does have many achievements. It has a thriving economy, with some of the most dynamic and successful entrepreneurs. Its science, engineering, art, architecture are all a great success story. It has managed, by and large, to integrate its diverse set of Jewish citizenry, whether European, Middle Eastern, Latin American, or African.
However, ‘democracy’ for only a segment of one’s population is no democracy at all. particularly if the segment excluded was the one initially expelled, and most probably, a majority of those on Israeli controlled land.
That perhaps 80% of the Israeli Jewish population supports this suppression, perhaps even enthusiastically endorses it, does not either excuse it or justify it.
As you undoubtedly know, I say this as, not only someone whose paternal grandparents were killed at Chelmno, but as someone who has numerous cousins living in Israel, and even more numerous family members who feel ‘attached’ to the country; I must part company with them; one should not be so blind as to excuse anything because of blood ties.
July 26, 2018 at 4:25 pm
There is a situation here in the UK Robert, especially in Labour,which is detrimental to Jews UNLESS they are prepared to demonise Israel. I agree with some of what you say here, but I doubt it would pass muster on a Labour forum. David Baddiel, David Schneider are similarly unattached to Israel but are considered zionists by the people who troll them on twitter, in the name of Corbyn.