Neviim Tovim, blogs by Gillian Gould Lazarus

Since Labour’s defeat in the General Election, less than two weeks ago, the Corbyn supporting forums on Facebook and the Corbyn loyalists on Twitter have, like the rest of us, been discussing how it happened that the Conservatives were elected with a majority of eighty while Labour sustained heavy losses, especially in the former Labour strongholds in the north of England.

There is a consensus on the Labour forums about the reasons for Labour’s defeat. These are said to be:

Rigged elections

Rigged counting

Bias from the press and broadcasting

Interference from Israel

Disloyalty from Labour centrists

There is a clear preference in these groups for Jeremy Corbyn to remain as Labour leader for the forseeable future. Those in the running to succeed him are all considered tainted, either by good relations with the Jewish Labour Movement, membership of Labour Friends of Israel or, as in Rebecca Long-Bailey’s case, having at least once spoken out against an instance of Labour antisemitism.

There is also much discussion of possible candidates to replace Mr Corbyn in the spring. Certain objections come up repeatedly to some of the likely candidates. Emily Thornberry and Rebecca Long-Bailey are perceived as being too close to Israel. Keir Starmer is perceived by some as disloyal to Jeremy Corbyn. Angela Rayner has not yet been called ‘Israel’s puppet,’ but I fully expect that will happen when they realize that she once attended a Chanukah Party. Jess Phillips is deplored for being hostile to Corbyn, friendly to Jewish organizations, and prone to using strong language, for which they decry her as a ‘f***ing gobshite’.

Richard Burgon and Ian Lavery have been suggested as preferred leaders. Although they are no longer in the Labour Party, Ken Livingstone, Chris Williamson and George Galloway have also been mentioned, as worthy successors.

My own feeling is that many of Corbyn’s most loyal supporters are so thoroughly opposed to Jewish organizations and institutions that the Labour Party’s problem with antisemitism is here for the long haul.

Below are some of the threads from three or more Corbynist forums. Some of them have changed their names since the General Election; for example, ‘Jeremy Corbyn Leads Us To Victory’ is now called ‘Jeremy Corbyn T’ for reasons I cannot fathom. The former ‘We Actually Support Jeremy Corbyn’ is now ‘Supporting Active Socialism. ‘Jeremy Corbyn Will Be Prime minister’ has kept its name. Hope springs eternal.

On about the sixth night of Chanukah, antisemitic graffiti appeared overnight in Belsize Park and Hampstead: a red Star of David had been painted at various locations, including South Hampstead Synagogue, accompanied by ‘911,’ attributing the 9/11 attack to Jews, a conspiracy theory favoured by both right and left. Immediate reaction on Labour forums included the view that Jews were to blame, as they had enabled the Conservative election victory, and also that the graffiti was correct, 9/11 being the work of the Jews. After twenty-four hours, the SWP run organization ‘Stand Up to Racism’ was planning a ‘vigil of solidarity’ with Jews, to be held in Hampstead, occuring in fact as I type this. The hypocrisy and cynicism of this demonstration has been noted by many, if not THE Many. We Few also have our Many.

The General Election is just three days away and the whole nation is anxious, although not all for the same reason.

My own anxiety is explicitly dread that Corbyn will be Prime Minister, since he has unleashed antisemitic discourse, the quantity and intensity of which I have never before seen in the UK, .

I am sure that Mr Corbyn is not conscious of meaning harm to the Jewish community. This is why he is so emphatic in condemning antisemitism in front of the television cameras. Unfortunately, he has been filmed making countless rabble-rousing speeches & has linked himself with so many violent or murderous antisemites, that his anti-racist messages don’t cut through to his supporters, at least, not when the racism in question is antisemitism.

I was expelled from some closed Labour forums many months ago so the images I compiled are quite out of date.

I am therefore putting together a few more recent screen shots. These come from ‘We Support Jeremy Corbyn’ and ‘We Actually Support Jeremy Corbyn’, from ‘Jeremy Corbyn Leads Us to Victory’ and ‘Jeremy Corbyn Will Be Prime Minister’. I have not included the Corbynist forum ‘Truthers Against Zionists Lobbies’ as Facebook appears to have closed it down at last, just this week.

The synagogue hall in our previous building was too small to accommodate the whole congregation on the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, so these services were held in the large, draughty but capacious hall of a local sports centre. As a parent, I was sometimes obliged to do security duty, so in late September 2001, I was outside the sports centre with a walkie talkie in my hand, to connect me to the security officers in the event of anything untoward.

At about 4pm, when school was out, a group of boys, aged perhaps twelve, thirteen or fourteen, straggled cheerfully along the nearby road, chanting ‘Osama Bin Laden!’

Those children are thirty now, grown men, and perhaps they put aside their hero-worship of the man who masterminded 9/11. At the time, I wondered what was the appeal for them in the person of Bin Laden who brought death and injury to some thousands of innocent people. Urban legends which have proliferated over nearly two decades throw doubt on the role of Bin Laden and Al Qaida, preferring to finger the CIA, the FBI, George Bush, Israel and various other agents, but two weeks after the atrocity, it was not contentious to believe in the involvement of Osama Bin Laden.

The appeal, I came to believe, was in the successful execution of the act; it’s uniqueness and drama; the manifestation of terrorist force against civic might.

I would probably have forgotten about the boys outside the sports centre, except that there ensued a perceptible axial shift in political discourse.

The USA and George Bush were more hated than before. Tony Blair was disliked but re-elected in the General Election of 2005, though with a much reduced majority. The anathematization of Tony Blair did not reach its full fury until a year or two later and intensified after he stood down as Prime Minister in 2007.

Was it because facts relating to the war with Iraq war were not known until this time? I think not. When the findings of the Chilcot Report were made public, there was some disappointment among many on the left that Blair was not to be prosecuted. In the ensuing years, a staple of left wing discussion was to call for the trial and imprisonment or even execution of Tony Blair. Many who considered themselves opposed to capital punishment expressed a preference for a public hanging. The talk became increaingly bloodthirsty and when Blair’s name was mentioned on political debate programmes such as BBC Question Time, the audience would howl execrations.

Blair had become fair game because, like Sejanus, he had fallen. It is not only the toppling of statues which signifies the end of both authority and reputation. Thus, when the Twin Towers collapsed so hideously and apocalyptically, there plummeted also the authority and reputation of the West, the USA, the allies of the USA and the First World. Some of those suffering anomie no doubt rejoiced and the London schoolboys chanted Bin Laden’s name.

Today, we are four days away from a UK General Election, after which the Prime Minister will be almost certainly either Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn. It is unlikely that an MP from one of the smaller parties, Jo Swinson for example, will be asked to form a government. I feel more profoundly invested in this election result than ever before in my life. In the past, as a member of the Labour Party, I performed grunt-level actions to help the campaign: leafleting, stuffing envelopes, checking electoral registers. More often than not, I suffered the deep disappointment of Labour losing to the Conservatives.

This time, being Jewish has made a difference to me. More than that, it has reversed my previous sympathies and, believing as I do that antisemitism is now out of control in Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, I would like to see Labour lose and lose badly.

I have heard Sir John Major and Tony Blair agreeing that a hung parliament would be the best outcome, enabling the Remainers’ cause. I am a Remainer myself, or was. However, the danger to British Jews weighs even more heavily with me than Brexit.

In the General Election of 2017, Labour did better than expected, which showed that Corbyn was far from unelectable, an accusation which had so often been leveled against him. As the Tories lost their majority, the Labour performance was hailed as a great success. There was a triumphalist mood among the membership and Corbyn achieved cult status. It was the summer of Oh Jeremy Corbyn, the Absolute Boy.

When we persisted in opposing the antisemitic ethos gathering pace in the Labour Party, we were seen as spoilers, traitors and fifth columnists; condemned as agents of Israel, paid members of Mossad, racists, apologists for child-killing and so on. Such was the language every day on the online Corbynist forums to which I had access. Celebrities who spoke out for Corbyn and against Israel became the saints of Corbynism and those who were Jewish had particular status: Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Michael Rosen, Miriam Margolyes, JVL (born fully clothed from the forehead of Free Speech On Israel) and the ultra-orthodox outliers of Neturei Karta. These individuals and organizations were transfigured by the Corbyn movement into instantly recognizable memes. The momentum was with Momentum, the Corbynist grass roots and the front benchers who had risen like Corbyn from relative obscurity.

Now we must vote, or make our civic contribution by not voting. It seems that much of the country will be voting against, rather than voting for; voting against the empowerment of whichever side they think will be worse.

Why has support for the LibDems, Greens and Brexit Party fallen away? Because nothing succeeds like success, and it is discouraging to vote for a party you think has already lost the battle. The outcome of the election seems less predictable than usual because of rewritten alliegances due to Brexit.

My hope is that Labour will lose so that the triumphalism which characterizes Corbyn’s supporters will topple, like the statue in Firdos Square and we will not have to look at it any more. Otherwise I fear others will fall and it will be a catastrophe.

8 December 2019

Post script 21 February 2022

The exit poll on the night of the 2019 predicted a large Conservative majority and so it turned out. There has not been a day since then when Corbynist social media does not assert that the result was rigged, either by corrupt Tory counting in all the constituencies, or by lies fed to a credulous public by media and broadcasting, or by Jews, in the form of Israel or ‘the Rothschilds’. A legend grew up that Jews and our allies somehow stopped Corbyn being Prime Minister.

After the General Election of 2019, a Jewish campaigner made a video, to wish a happy Chanukah to his followers. ‘And well done everyone, we did it!’ he congratulated those of us who campaigned against Corbyn. The video is shown regularly on Corbynist social media as evidence that Jews rigged the General Election. They do not understand that everyone who campaigns and gets the election result they want, exclaims ‘We did it!’ It means that we were effective. It does not mean that we went round with space lasers which chewed up ballot sheets. So rooted is this notion among disappointed Corbynists that I feel the need to add the words ‘Space lasers – LOL’.