Labour - Bullying and Intimidation
I think it's fair to say that if Jeremy Corbyn had shown real leadership and spoken out strongly before now, that Labour would not be in the mess it's in today over antisemitism.
But as things stand the Labour leader cannot mange to shake off the accusation that he does indeed have "a long track record of embracing antisemites as comrades".
Jeremy the Jellyfish (07/11/19)
Jeremy Corbyn might just as well have said - 'there's not an antisemitic bone in his body'!
Jeremy Corbyn on Chris Williamson - January 2019
“Chris Williamson is a very good, very effective Labour MP. He’s a very strong anti-racist campaigner. He is not anti-Semitic in any way.”
Chris Williamson - November 2019
As I made clear to the NEC in April, this witch hunt primarily serves the objectives of the far-right activists - including members of the Britain First and Jewish Defence League - who led the campaign for the Labour Party to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism and its examples.
Labour - Bullying and Intimidation (21/02/19)
Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson tries to rise to the occasion with this measured response to the news that some Labour MPs are so disillusioned with Jeremy Corbyn's leadership that they have decided to resign.
"I love this party. But sometimes I no longer recognise it."
Damning words from a politician who is a least prepared to face up to the scale of the problem facing Labour whose leader has allowed a young woman Jewish MP to be hounded out of the party after a vile a campaign of bullying and intimidation.
If Labour can't stand up against this kind of behaviour, I think it's fair to ask - what exactly does the party stand for?
Jeremy the Jellyfish (25/11/19)
Jeremy Corbyn doesn't have the reputation for being a real grafter, but the Labour leader has worked incredibly hard at alienating most of the UK's Jewish community.
Maureen Lipman, a life-long Labour supporter, lends her voice to those who say Jeremy Corbyn is responsible for:
"The bullying, the hectoring the driving out of good Jewish MPs, the sitting down with people he shouldn't be sitting down with."
Fair comment, if you ask me.
Jeremy the Jellyfish (19/11/19)
The problem with Jeremy Corbyn is that while the Labour leader is careful not to make antisemitic remarks in public he nevertheless does have "a long track record of embracing antisemites as comrades".
In a thoughtful for The Times Hugo Rifkind suggests that the Labour leader has always been able to distance himself from such company by saying something along the following lines:
“You know what?” he could have said. “I have embraced antisemites as comrades! I see that now! I mean, it’s undeniable, isn’t it? Sheesh! Dodgy clerics, Chris Williamson, Raed Salah, the bloke who painted that mural, my friends from Hamas and Hezbollah, that dead wreath guy, and so on! Wow, put like that? So here’s why it happened, and here’s why I regret it, and here’s why I wouldn’t do it again.”
But Jeremy has ducked the issue time and again which is why it's coming back to haunt him as a general election looms.
Read Hugo Rifkind's article via the link below to The Times.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/corbyn-an-antisemite-no-says-angry-hulk-md8r3wcvw
Corbyn an antisemite? No, says angry Hulk
By hugo rifkind - The Times
It’s late in the day to claim the Labour leader is a blemish-free ‘anti-racist’ but there are still celebrities ready to do it
I’m a big fan of the actor Mark Ruffalo. Or actually, now I give it a little more thought, I’m a big fan of the way the actor Mark Ruffalo looks in a leather jacket in The Kids Are All Right, and I have a modest preference for him as the Incredible Hulk over Edward Norton. This morning, though, the main thing I am thinking about Mark Ruffalo is, “what does this Hollywood superstar imagine he knows about the experiences of my great aunt twice removed up in Hendon?” And I am wondering if the answer to that question is, actually, that he hasn’t even thought about her, or anybody like her, for a single second.
Ruffalo is a signatory to an open letter sent this weekend in support of Jeremy Corbyn. Well, sent-ish. Actually, the only place it seems to have arrived was NME, which had it as an exclusive. “NME?” you may now be thinking, “The music newspaper? Mark Ruffalo? What?” To which I’m afraid I can only reply that I don’t get to shape reality, but just to write about it, and we’re all in this together.
Most of the celebrity signatories don’t appear to have said much about this letter after signing it, even on their own social media feeds. Bringing to mind the troubling philosophical question, “is an open letter still open if you aren’t terribly open about it?” The list includes some people I generally admire (Steve Coogan, Rob Delaney, Mark Rylance), and some I admire only for very specific things (Mike Leigh for films, Michael Rosen for children’s books, Mark Ruffalo for wearing leather jackets) and some on whom I’ve frankly never been that keen. All agree, anyway, that they are “outraged that Jeremy Corbyn, a lifelong committed anti-racist, is being smeared as an antisemite by people who should know better”.
It seems likely that the “people” they are referring to include the signatories of another open letter last week. This one was signed by people such as David Cornwell, Fay Weldon, Joanna Lumley, William Boyd and our own Sathnam Sanghera. “We refuse to vote Labour on December 12,” it concludes. Having said, along the way, “Mr Corbyn has a long record of embracing antisemites as comrades”.
That one strikes me as a much better written letter, if you’ll forgive the likes of me patting John le Carré and William Boyd on the back for their prose skills. In particular, you may notice that saying “Mr Corbyn has a long record of embracing antisemites as comrades” is a quite different thing from calling him an antisemite. What I like particularly about this phrase is how neatly it encapsulates precisely what Labour’s antisemitism problem has been these past four years, and how easily Corbyn could have dealt with it. But only, perhaps, if he had been somebody else.
“You know what?” he could have said. “I have embraced antisemites as comrades! I see that now! I mean, it’s undeniable, isn’t it? Sheesh! Dodgy clerics, Chris Williamson, Raed Salah, the bloke who painted that mural, my friends from Hamas and Hezbollah, that dead wreath guy, and so on! Wow, put like that? So here’s why it happened, and here’s why I regret it, and here’s why I wouldn’t do it again.”
Instead he has reluctantly conceded to the half-arsed cleansing of his membership by various officials, like a pop diva who studies her nails while her record company throws her hometown friends out of the afterparty. Never once has he seemed to consider himself culpable for there being a problem in the first place. Indeed, if there is a link between the Jeremy Corbyn who stood alongside all those antisemites and the Jeremy Corbyn who now presides over a party that the Equality and Human Rights Commission is investigating for institutional racism against Jews, then Jeremy Corbyn still doesn’t seem capable of recognising what it is. And, as a result, it’s not so strange if, despite his oft-trumpeted anti-racist credentials, many of Britain’s Jews aren’t 100 per cent confident he’s totally their guy.
The front page of The Jewish Chronicle explains why Jeremy 'The Jellyfish' Corbyn has failed to combat the ugly spread of antisemitism in the modern Labour Party.
Read Hugo Rifkind's article via the link below to The Times.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/corbyn-an-antisemite-no-says-angry-hulk-md8r3wcvw
Corbyn an antisemite? No, says angry Hulk
By hugo rifkind - The Times
It’s late in the day to claim the Labour leader is a blemish-free ‘anti-racist’ but there are still celebrities ready to do it
I’m a big fan of the actor Mark Ruffalo. Or actually, now I give it a little more thought, I’m a big fan of the way the actor Mark Ruffalo looks in a leather jacket in The Kids Are All Right, and I have a modest preference for him as the Incredible Hulk over Edward Norton. This morning, though, the main thing I am thinking about Mark Ruffalo is, “what does this Hollywood superstar imagine he knows about the experiences of my great aunt twice removed up in Hendon?” And I am wondering if the answer to that question is, actually, that he hasn’t even thought about her, or anybody like her, for a single second.
Ruffalo is a signatory to an open letter sent this weekend in support of Jeremy Corbyn. Well, sent-ish. Actually, the only place it seems to have arrived was NME, which had it as an exclusive. “NME?” you may now be thinking, “The music newspaper? Mark Ruffalo? What?” To which I’m afraid I can only reply that I don’t get to shape reality, but just to write about it, and we’re all in this together.
Most of the celebrity signatories don’t appear to have said much about this letter after signing it, even on their own social media feeds. Bringing to mind the troubling philosophical question, “is an open letter still open if you aren’t terribly open about it?” The list includes some people I generally admire (Steve Coogan, Rob Delaney, Mark Rylance), and some I admire only for very specific things (Mike Leigh for films, Michael Rosen for children’s books, Mark Ruffalo for wearing leather jackets) and some on whom I’ve frankly never been that keen. All agree, anyway, that they are “outraged that Jeremy Corbyn, a lifelong committed anti-racist, is being smeared as an antisemite by people who should know better”.
It seems likely that the “people” they are referring to include the signatories of another open letter last week. This one was signed by people such as David Cornwell, Fay Weldon, Joanna Lumley, William Boyd and our own Sathnam Sanghera. “We refuse to vote Labour on December 12,” it concludes. Having said, along the way, “Mr Corbyn has a long record of embracing antisemites as comrades”.
That one strikes me as a much better written letter, if you’ll forgive the likes of me patting John le Carré and William Boyd on the back for their prose skills. In particular, you may notice that saying “Mr Corbyn has a long record of embracing antisemites as comrades” is a quite different thing from calling him an antisemite. What I like particularly about this phrase is how neatly it encapsulates precisely what Labour’s antisemitism problem has been these past four years, and how easily Corbyn could have dealt with it. But only, perhaps, if he had been somebody else.
“You know what?” he could have said. “I have embraced antisemites as comrades! I see that now! I mean, it’s undeniable, isn’t it? Sheesh! Dodgy clerics, Chris Williamson, Raed Salah, the bloke who painted that mural, my friends from Hamas and Hezbollah, that dead wreath guy, and so on! Wow, put like that? So here’s why it happened, and here’s why I regret it, and here’s why I wouldn’t do it again.”
Instead he has reluctantly conceded to the half-arsed cleansing of his membership by various officials, like a pop diva who studies her nails while her record company throws her hometown friends out of the afterparty. Never once has he seemed to consider himself culpable for there being a problem in the first place. Indeed, if there is a link between the Jeremy Corbyn who stood alongside all those antisemites and the Jeremy Corbyn who now presides over a party that the Equality and Human Rights Commission is investigating for institutional racism against Jews, then Jeremy Corbyn still doesn’t seem capable of recognising what it is. And, as a result, it’s not so strange if, despite his oft-trumpeted anti-racist credentials, many of Britain’s Jews aren’t 100 per cent confident he’s totally their guy.
Labour and Antisemitism (07/11/19)
Here's our front page this week - addressed not to our usual readers but to our fellow British citizens
4,370 people are talking about this
The front page of The Jewish Chronicle explains why Jeremy 'The Jellyfish' Corbyn has failed to combat the ugly spread of antisemitism in the modern Labour Party.
