The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #159827   Message #3803160
Posted By: Keith A of Hertford
02-Aug-16 - 06:57 AM
Thread Name: BS: (UK) Whither the Labour Party
Subject: RE: BS: (UK) Whither the Labour Party
Returning to the subject, this author details some more examples of antisemitism from the Labour Left.

""The Jews are rallying!" wrote Naz Shah in an infamous Facebook post just months before she was elected Labour MP for Bradford West. "Your school education system only tells you about Anne Frank and the six million Zionists [my emphasis] that were killed by Hitler", declared a Facebook post shared by Khadim Hussain, then a Labour Party councillor and formerly Lord Mayor of Bradford. "Many people know about who was behind 9/11 and also who is behind Isis. I've nothing against Jews … just sharing it!" declared Beinazir Lasharie, a Labour councillor in the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

Most notoriously, Ken Livingstone, then a member of the Labour Party's National Executive Committee and a former Labour Mayor of London, claimed in a radio interview in April this year that Hitler had been a supporter of Zionism before he "went mad and ended up killing six million Jews". Livingstone's bizarre and mischievous allegations have been refuted by a raft of eminent historians including Rainer Schulze, Professor of Modern European History at Essex University. Schulze unequivocally dismissed Livingstone's arguments, emphasising that: "[a]ny claim that Nazis and Zionists ever shared a common goal is not only cynical and disingenuous, but a distortion of clearly established historical fact."

The statements by Shah, Hussain, Lasharie and Livingstone – along with numerous other allegedly racist, anti-Semitic or inflammatory comments by individuals associated with Labour – have led to fifty suspensions from the Party. They also prompted Labour's Leader, Jeremy Corbyn, to convene an Inquiry into anti-Semitism and other forms of racism within the Party."

"As several commentators have pointed out, there is a growing tendency on the Left to disregard basic and important distinctions between such categories as Jews, "Zionists" and citizens of the state of Israel. Instead, Jews are frequently viewed by those on the Left as collectively responsible for the actions of Israel. As the Guardian columnist, Jonathan Freedland, has observed, the term "Zionism" has become "a codeword" in the rhetoric of the Left "that bridges from Israel to the wider Jewish world, hinting at the age-old, anti-semitic notion of a shadowy, global power, operating behind the scenes"."
https://www.socialeurope.eu/2016/08/where-left-meets-right-anti-semitism-in-europe/