Why British Jews are worried by Jeremy Corbyn - and what does election portend for Americans?

What will neo-Left antisemitism portend for Jewish-Americans (and Christian Zionists) in 2020?

Why British Jews Are Worried by Jeremy Corbyn

Has denying the reality of anti-Semitism become a left-wing loyalty test? By Helen Lewis in The Atlantic December 11, '19

Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson debate

It is an astonishing statistic: Some 87 percent of British Jews believe that Jeremy Corbyn—one of two men who could be prime minister in a few days’ time—is anti-Semitic. How did we get here? Corbyn’s party, Labour, has strong connections with the Jewish community, dating back to its earliest days. Yet a deep distrust has developed between the two since he became Labour leader in 2015, and the issue has dogged Corbyn throughout this election campaign. . . .

At the same time, the other plausible candidate to be the next prime minister—the Conservative leader, Boris Johnson—has faced his own questions over his use of racial epithets and his attitudes toward minorities. Racism directed at faith communities in Britain has therefore become a deeply partisan left/right issue: Any mention of “Labour anti-Semitism” is met with cries of “Tory Islamophobia.” ... 

Yet the question of anti-Semitism is also divisive within the left. Jewish voters I spoke with over the past several weeks told me of feeling as though the entire community had been “gaslit”—that the reality of anti-Semitism was being minimized by the party leadership—and that denying this reality had become a way to demonstrate loyalty to Corbyn and his radical anti-austerity agenda. This feeling is aggravated by persistent suggestions from the hard left that anti-Semitism is merely the pretext for a “smear campaign” against Corbyn and the left in general.

Britain’s Jewish community is small, about 284,000 people, or about 0.5 percent of the population, and heavily concentrated in a few areas of North London. That means many incidents that are widely noted by British Jews—such as Corbyn’s over-pronunciation of Jeffrey Epstein’s name as “Ep-schtein” in a televised debate—go unnoticed by the wider population.

A Survation poll found that 39 percent of Britons overall believe Corbyn is anti-Semitic. While that is still a remarkably high number, it is far short of the consensus that has formed among Jews.  The gulf has exacerbated the sense that their concerns are not being treated seriously by the rest of the population. As Britain’s chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, wrote in The Times: “Just a few weeks before we go to the polls, the overwhelming majority of British Jews are gripped by anxiety. The question I am now most frequently asked is: What will become of Jews and Judaism in Britain if the Labour Party forms the next government?”

British orthodox Rabbi Lionel Rosenfeld of The Western/Marble Arch Synagogue, returned for the AIPAC Policy Conference in D.C. this spring with a dire warning to North Americans regarding the Socialist/Islamist influence in the Labour and Democratic Parties in the UK and the US.    

Question: We have had a year of the Labour Party getting closer to office and - what's the condition of Zionism and Zionists in the political zeitgeist in Britain today, in the UK today?  

Answer: Well I don't know if you heard the Labour MP Joan Ryan on Sunday evening Labour Friends of Israel. She's not even Jewish  - she was almost crying because what's happened to the Labour Party is really is what's happened to Zionism in the country. It's just tragic. We're on a downhill slope from last year when I spoke to you.  We have a Conservative government that is sleepwalking towards Brexit with no real discernible leadership. Everyone agrees on that and we, on the other hand, we have a Labour possible government who haven't really increased in the polls. 

Normally with them they would be miles ahead - but they're not because of this man, Corbyn. Because of his refusal to eject antisemites from his party, and because of the general fear of so many Jews in Britain that anti--semitism is taking a real hold on what was a great supporter of the State of Israel, the Labour Party.   

Question: Hasn't the Jewish community in the UK traditionally been a liberal-minded politically?  

Answer:  Very much so. Very much like the Jews of United States of America, great Democratic supporters - so have - I mean I happen to know that many of great rabbis have been quietly Labour supporters but not anymore. How can they be? Labour does not have any of the values that we espouse.  

Question: Particularly with regard to the Middle East and the growth of the spread of anti-semitism in Europe? Answer: Particularly with that. And also because they condemn the United States and Israel as two colonialist powers and that's how they see the world. It's becoming a left Marxist party that no one wants to touch with a bargepole, as you would say.

Question: And when you say Marxism, do you mean the beginnings of Socialism leading to Communism?

Answer: The people who are now running the Labour Party want to eject all previous Labour members of parliament
who had an idea that Tony Blair was the correct leader the new Labour are you as it used to be which was so successful and popular. They want them all out! They want to start again! 

Question: What was the psychological adjustment that it took for Liberal British Jews to say that this this party which I've voted reflexively for so long to be able to say "I'm going to vote against them now"

Answer: Because of the way they treated first of all the Jewish MPs who are in the Labour Party. And and of all the tweets and the terrible anti-semitic slurs against them. And they realized now that we are in a very toxic atmosphere politically and they don't know what to do!

No one really wants to leave and go on aliyah that's they have no intention of leaving Britain - this idea that Jews are going to be leaving Britain. I don't think it's going to happen. We just have to fight to make sure that the Conservative Party comes to its senses and can win this general election.

Question: Is the Jewish population of Britain - are they supporting the Conservatives now against Labour?

Answer: I would think there's very few Jews that I know that would vote Labour in the next general election. How can they when they are controlled by a small clique of left-wing, previous Marxists and Communists?

Occupy Wall Street movement rationalizes Christian anti-Semitism with classic, socialist anti-Semitism

The leftist, Occupy (Wall Street) Movement is rife with Jewish conspiracy - which depicts Jews as historically controlling and determining nature and human destiny. It presents an explanation of the world by attributing such extreme powers to its motive force—the Joos!

 

Top blogger, Debbie Schlussel, writes in article Occupy Wall Street Morons & Jew-Hatred; Plus Sean Hannity’s Attack on Wall St is the Same "Muslim and pro-Palestinian groups have set up tables to pass out their pamphlets of hate against Israel and the Jews."

Learn more about leftist anti-Semitism in Briton, Steve Cohen's 1984 book, "That's Funny- You Don't Look Anti-Semitic - An anti-racist analysis of left anti-Semitism."

The Anti-Semite’s Pointed Finger

Ruth R. Wisse published in "Commentary" November 2010

Ruth R. Wisse is a professor of Yiddish and comparative literature at Harvard University and the author of, among many other books, Jews and Power (Schocken/Nextbook). The present article is based on a talk delivered in August at the Conference of the Yale Interdisciplinary Initiative for the Study of Anti-Semitism.

... Yet here is the paradox: the fiercer anti-Semitism grows, the more it forces a choice on liberals. The choice is between protecting the Jews and protecting the orthodox liberal belief in rational compromise, world peace, “getting to yes,” and all the rest. Protecting the Jews requires confronting hostility that is not subject to rational persuasion, does not obey the liberal version of the rule of law, does not abide by liberal ideas of fairness, and does not extend peace and goodwill to others. To side with Israel, therefore, leaves one exposed to the same hostility that assails the Jews—an uncomfortable position for individuals and governments alike. The dictates of self-interest persuade some to ignore aggression that presumably doesn’t concern them, and then to justify their callousness by holding Jews responsible for the aggression against them. Some Jews try to demonstrate their own innocence by dissociating themselves from those of their fellow Jews who are under attack.

The politics of anti-Semitism strikes again: blaming the Jews succeeds by persuading liberals that it is aimed only at the “culpable” Jews. By casting these Jews as aggressors, it invites liberals to join the attack on them, on behalf of the Jews’ alleged victims. It congratulates liberals for joining the anti-liberal side by persuading them that they stand with the weak against the strong . . .

I have tried to show (a) that anti-Semitism cannot be arrested by any remedial action of the Jews; (b) that there are harmful consequences for pretending that concessions from Jews can stop the aggression against them; and (c) that anti-Semitism forces a choice between protection of the Jews and, under the guise of liberalism, complicity with their enemies. And though anti-Semitism is often compared to cancer, there is no comparable effort to finding a cure. The reason seems plain: where the carriers of an illness are also its casualties, they and their well-wishers have incentives to tackle the problem. But the carriers of anti-Semitism do not experience themselves as its apparent victims. At-risk Jews cannot halt the malignancy, because they are not itscarriers. And its carriers, the anti-Semites, will not seek a cure, because they don’t recognize its harm to them. Not until enlightened Arabs recognize that they, not the Jews, are its ultimate casualties will this political threat be contained.

What then? Some might argue that, even granting my thesis of a Zionist misdiagnosis, the scourge of anti-Semitism is so protean and so venerable that it can never be entirely expunged. They may have a point about the “entirely,” but I beg to differ about the realities of the present situation. A longstanding political attack has repeatedly called forth a defensive reaction of negotiation, accommodation, and no small amount of self-blame. This response has been shown to fail, and will go on failing with ever mountingconsequences.

To say that anti-Semitism persists and succeeds does not mean that anti-Semitism is politically invulnerable. Tactics in fighting anti-Semitism may and should vary. But what is required strategically, from Jews as from all decent human beings, is no more than what justice and truth and genuine liberalism demand: namely, to reject vigorously the role of defendant at the bar of world opinion and to instigate political, diplomatic, moral, and intellectual countersuits on every front.  Read full story . . .

A history lesson for ashamed, 'progressive' Jews by Briton, Ray Cook

Jewish actor visits West Bank camp in quest for peace

'It's very hard to talk about Palestine to Jewish people – they see me as a betrayer,' says British actor Miriam Margolyes

Miriam Margolyes, who plays Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter films,
 with retired Palestinian farmer Said Ali Banat Hajarah.
 Photograph: Claudia Janke in The Guardian 

"Why I'm an ashamed Jew" by Raymond Cook

Yep, you read right. I’ve had to admit it. I can’t live a lie any longer. 

I’m deeply, deeply ashamed.

Ashamed of being Jewish? No way. I’m very proud to be Jewish and a member of the Jewish people.

Ashamed of Israel? Wrong again. I’m proud of Israel’s achievements. I worry about its policies, sometimes; I’m concerned, sometimes about some of its actions and those of some of its citizens, but I could say the same for Britain and I’m still proud to be British.

So why am I ashamed?

I’ll tell you. I’m ashamed of Jews who say they are ashamed to be Jews or Jewish.

I don’t hear Palestinians coming out to declare they are ashamed to be Palestinian and denounce suicide bombs or missiles.

I don’t hear Arabs writing they are ashamed to be Arabs because of Al Qaeda or Sudan or Yemen.

I don’t hear Muslims forming groups of shame because of what Sunni does to Shia, or 9/11, or 7/7, or Madrid, or Mumbai.

I don’t know of any Ashamed Catholic groups forming because of the paedophilia apparently rife in Catholic clergy.

In fact I know of no other group of people who so often announce their ashamedness to be who they are as Jews do.

And you know what? It makes me ashamed. I’m an ashamed Jew who is ashamed of ashamed Jews. If that’s a paradox, so be it.

And I’m not ashamed to declare my shame.

Shame on me!

I don’t see why Arabs or Muslims or Palestinians or Brits or Americans or Chinese or anyone else should be ashamed of what they are because of the actions of a few.

If I’m ashamed to be a Jew because I don’t like what Israel does that is a form of self-hating, it’s bigotry – by golly, its anti-Semitic. If I hate all of a group because of the actions of some, then I am a bigot. And if I am the target of my own bigotry then I’m a pretty sick bigot. 

On the Andrew Marr program this morning on BBC 1, the eponymous Scottish interviewer had the (Jewish) actress Miriam Margolyes in the studio, reporting on a recent visit to Israel and the West Bank.

We see her approaching a young Palestinian woman and asking through an interpreter whether she can see where she lives. The woman, carrying a young child, takes her to a canvas tent.

Miriam is shocked and says ‘no-one should have to live like this’.  
I absolutely agree with her. No-one in the West Bank should be living in a tent. So why are they? Miriam believes it’s because of the terrible Israelis who make her an ‘ashamed Jew’.

Neither she nor Marr question why this woman lives like this?  
No-one asks why after 62 years a young woman whose grandparents left or were driven out of what is now Israel should be a refugee and have refugee status uniquely different from all other refugee groups in history.

Neither Margolyes or Marr wanted to mention or even wanted to entertain the idea that refugee camps, so-called, exist for one reason and one reason only: to deliberately perpetuate the victimhood of Palestinians and to preserve the idea, which Margolyes and other ashamed Jews have swallowed whole, that it is Israel who is responsible for these conditions.

Margolyes appears unaware that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians live comfortably on the West Bank in normal housing.  She seems unaware that despite the billions of dollars poured into the Palestinian economy, people are still allowed to live in tents and camps.

There is no need for it. Pakistanis are not living in tents three generations after their forbears fled India.

There are no refugee camps in Israel for the hundreds of thousands who were forced from their homes after 1948 from Egypt and Iraq and Syria and North Africa.

Marr asks ‘Do you think being a Jew gives you a different authority, ability to talk about [the Palestinian question]?’

‘The only authority I have is as a human being’, Margolyes replies. So far, so good.

Then she says that it should not make a difference being Jewish or not Jewish to be able to comment on the situation but then says, somewhat in contradiction that she is ‘embarrassed and ashamed’ (that word again) because ‘my “lot” is doing “it” to them’.  She then says ‘that’s why I wanted to go there, to see for myself’. Fine. But it appears she had already made up her mind that ‘her lot’ where doing ‘it’ to ‘them’.

Marr asks for her reaction and she then puts on a faux Arab accent and says that some said ‘why do you come? You are a Jew. We hate you.’  And then in her own voice ‘And I totally understood why’. Yet, she doesn’t understand why at all.

She doesn’t understand that this hatred predates the Jewish state. She doesn’t understand the daily diet of anti-Semitism that is fed to Palestinians in schools, newspapers and on TV.

Marr then asks a question which links the Holocaust to what he clearly believes is a given Israeli/Jewish paranoia.

He asks that, given Margolyes and her generation know what it’s like growing up in the shadow of the Holocaust, does she not realise that Israelis feel hemmed in and beleaguered by Iran, suicide bombs and missiles.

She admits her sympathy. She knows what anti-Semitism is. But ‘treating people the way the Israelis are treating the Palestinians is not making things better’. In other words, the blame for the situation is all on the Israeli side.

An then, lo and behold, the old ignorant trope comes out. ‘What people forget over there is that the Palestinians were not responsible for the Holocaust.’

Arghhh!  I’m so ashamed. What the hell has the Holocaust got to do with the situation? Is she suggesting that Israel exists because of Holocaust guilt? Is she suggesting that the Palestinians are paying for the crimes of Europeans?

If so, she is ignorant of her own people’s history.
‘They (Muslims) were not the enemy at that time’, she says. But THEY WERE! The Mufti of Jerusalem was a friend of Hitler and organised Muslim Nazi brigades in Yugoslavia. He assured Hitler that he would solve the Jewish Question in Palestine.

Hamas and the PLO are the ideological progeny of the Muslim Brotherhood and its anti-Semitic policies.

Margolyes and other ashamed Jews need to educate themselves. I am sick of being ashamed of them.

What is she saying now? Oh yes, the Israelis should understand and accept that they owe reparation to the Palestinians just like the Jews expect it from the Germans.

So she, perhaps unwittingly, makes a moral equivalence between the way Jews were treated in the Holocaust and  the way Palestinians, who have been hell-bent on another Holocaust for 100 years and certainly 60, have been treated by the Israelis.

Who attacked Israel in 1967? Why was the PLO formed in 1964 before there was any ‘Occupation’?

The Israelis are behaving ”so cruelly’. Yes, sometimes all those with power over others behave cruelly. Maybe she should understand why Israelis might do so to Palestinians who want to kill them, and blow up their children on buses and in their beds. Why can she only see one side to this conflict?

Even Marr has to remind her about suicide attacks and rockets.

And then we get the real answer to Margolyes ashamedness. She is not a two-state solutionist.

She wants  ‘those people to be back in their own villages, which is what they want.’

How ignorant is this. They just want to go back to their villages. But their villages are Haifa and Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and Eilat and Beersheva. Margolyes is clearly advocating the end of the Jewish state as a deluded one-stater who believes the Palestinians, who she admits hate the Jews, just want to go back peacefully to their homes.

How often do we see people in the media like Miriam Margolyes, Jews and non-Jews, well-meaning, decent people who just do not understand. They live in their cosy left-wing bubbles dreaming of world peace where all will be luvvies.

Sorry Miriam. You are a very nice woman and a wonderful actress, but you are a deluded Jew. Go read some history. Go read the PLO charter and the Hamas charter.

Don’t pose as a woman of peace when you clearly want a second Holocaust – because if you don’t, then you need to wake up out of your deluded lefty dreams, you and all the ashamed Jews.

Until you do so, I will continue to be an ashamed-of, ashamed-Jews Jew.