Catholicism has for a long time had a strain that has been very left wing economically.
As you clarified, ring wing Catholic Republicans, I have no idea. But the IRA was decidedly left wing economically. The split between the Official and Provisional IRAs had to do with embracing Marxism (Official did, Provisional preferred Democratic Socialism).
Here’s the reason: most people who criticize Israel and sympathize with the Palestinians want Israel to cease to exist.This is pure Anti-semitism, pure racism and it is close to advocating genocide.
Yet plenty of educated people believe it.And many of them are not aware of how racist they are when they say it;They honestly believe, like you said , that they are just offering a political opinion. They honestly (and naively) think that being critical of Israel is just like, say, being opposed to Brexit, or being opposed to some proposed change to tax laws. They don’t understand that there is a deep,profound difference. People opposed to Brexit do not want to erase England from the map and kill all its citizens.
These naive people naturally assume that since they oppose Israel, they should support the Palestinians. Fair, is fair, right?
Well…no, it is not fair, and not right.
The Palestinians are publicly and openly racist*. They proudly call for the total destruction of Israel, and the forced removal of all its Jewish citizens, preferably by killing them.
If you want to criticize certain policies of the Israeli government regarding the Palestinians, that’s fine. There are lots of Israeli citizens who will join you.
But when you support the Palestinians, you are , often naively and unintentionally, supporting one of the most racist cultures on earth.
So–after all my ranting…let’s get back to the issue of British politicians criticizing Israel: It is okay to offer some support for fair treatment of Palestinians, on the condition that the Palestinians agree to fair treatment of Jews.
It’s okay to criticize Israeli policies.
It is not okay to deny Israel’s right to exist, or support the racists who do. That is a line which must not be crossed. And Corbyn seems willing to cross it, with no apologies. The Labour party is right to remove him from their ranks.
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*yes, I use the word racist, even though Jews aren’t a race, they are an ethnic group. But over the past 10 years or so, the word ‘racist’ has taken on the meaning of “bigot”, but with more forceful and more offensive connotations.
And it is the proper word to use.
Like Jews, Hispanics are not a race, either, they are and ethnic and linguistic group. But the word racist is always used to describe anyone who hates Hispanics. And so the word racist should be used for anyone who hates Jews.
Because Jews = Israel when it is convenient and and antisemitic slur when it isn’t. See the above post.
Thank you, both - that all makes sense. I will make sure that should I wish to criticise Israeli government policy, it is clear that I am not denying Israel’s right to exist.
Modnote: In fighting prejudice, you made a blanket statement against and entire country of people. That is pretty hateful. Please do not do this again.
I apologize for painting with much too broad a brush.
Implying that all Palestinians are openly racist was simply wrong, and I won’t do it again…
I should have been more careful, and specified that “the elected leaders of Palestine are openly racist.”
There are two main leaders–Mahmoud Abbas , and the Hamas organization. Abbas wrote his Phd dissertation supporting holocaust denial, and the constitution of Hamas openly calls for jihad against Jews.
The Israeli/Palestinian complex is a devilishly complex, often tragic affair and Israel is definitely not exempt from scrutiny and criticism. That said, there are hundreds of equally oppressed and marginalized groups of people around the world. One cannot escape the niggling suspicion that the only reason the Palestinians get all the attention, is that Jews are involved.
I suppose I’m guilty.
I believe every nation, and culture, has been guilty of oppressing others at some time or other. My country (USA) certainly deserves blame. But when I read of oppression committed by Israel, sometimes my reaction is, “Really, Israel? Shouldn’t you, of all people, know better?”
I know this is unfair.
There is a big phenomenon among the left in general and the British left especially of people “identifying as” Jews only when discussing why Israel should be destroyed and/or why there is no anti-Semitism on the left. One could argue in circles forever about who has the right to “identify as” anything and about what the borders of being a Jew are, but the facts are that for many people in “Jewish Voice for Labour” you would be hard pressed to find any ethnic, cultural, or religious connection to Judaism whatsoever.
For example:
I could not, in some amount of searching, figure out why Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, a person mentioned in this thread, is considered either “Jewish” or a “left wing activist” in general - she first appears in a published source I could find at age 55, always as an anti-Israel protestor, never once in connection to any other issue or any Jewish organization or cause. She exists in politics solely so that people can point to an allegedly Jewish person in the virulently destroy-Israel movement and we’re supposed to simply take her word for it.
Ms Manson [the chair of Jewish Voice for Labour] recently admitted she only “began to identify as a Jew in order to argue against the state of Israel”
Jackie Walker, one of the closest Corbyn associates and leader of the anti-Jewish movement in the Labour party until her expulsion, wrote an autobiography in which she identifies her ethnicity as black and her religion as Catholic. After being expelled from Labour for anti-Semitism, she began “identifying as” Jewish at age 61 despite no record of ever doing so before and no affiliation with any Jewish religious or cultural organization.
There are many more examples. The likelihood is that an absolute majority of “Jewish Voice for Labour” is not Jewish by any reasonable use of the term. The fact that Corbyn’s disciples set up a lobby of fake Jews in order to compete with the actual Jewish sections of the Labour Party should be a pretty big clue as to how seriously they take anti-Jewish racism.
It would be amazing the changes wrought in politics worldwide if only there could be an enforceable “truth in labeling” law on the names of groups, organizations, and factions.
Even better if somehow we could enforce congruence between their mission statements and their actual goals and actions.
The argument between the Labour Party factions and becomes down to their position on the on the one of the great geo-Political questions of our time: ‘The Palestine Question’.
In the UK, this is not a political question that dominates the national conversation. There are much more pressing issues that are closer to home. ISIS terrorism and the far right trying to stoke up Islamophobic reaction leaking into the prejudicial treatment of asylum seekers and refugees and immigration policy in general. Those issues are on the political radar.
For this reason, I don’t really take this debate seriously. It is being used as a conveniently abstract issue as a proxy battle to identify two different factions struggling to control the political policy. These politicians are all fundamentally Socialists and I am sure there many political positions share. The Labour party is ‘a broad church’. This kind of spat is fairly typical behaviour at this point in the political cycle.
It has happened before. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Labour Party had a similar factional fight between the Radical Left supported by the Militant Tendancy group and the Social Democrat wing without a leader that could unite the party. They spent a lot of energy on deciding what parts of the economy to take into public ownership and how much to raise taxes. This gave Thatcher and the Conservatives a clear run in the face of an unelectable Labour Party who could only watch from the wilderness were out of power for 18 years until Blair reinvented the party as ‘New Labour’ and managed to create a credible ‘government in waiting’ - a party ready for government.
Then it was the Conservatives who indulged in a factional fighting over policy on Europe, for 13 years until it was united under Cameron and he fell on his sword after the disasterous tactic of using a referendum on Brexit, to solve what should have really been limited to an internal party issue.
Political parties in the UK need leaders with a clear vision of that their party is about and vision of a political program that will benefit the country that will appeal to the voters. But there are always factions and the leadership is always under threat unless they are agile enough to head off rising sources of discontent within the party. Obviously events in the real world, outside of the goings on in the Westminster bars and tea rooms have an impact and their leadership political judgement is tested on an international stage.
Here we have the Labour Party in opposition, where they are not running the government and so can have a fulsome internal debate. Here is a party leader that is trying to consolidate his position by marginalising the radical Left.
It is not as if this is going to result in any significant policies regarding Palestine. It has little bearing on the real world. I see these arguments within the opposition as very like a student politics where they really have no power except to write a letter to someone, but nonetheless have passionate debates about principle.
The Brexit fiasco is the kind of disaster that happens when one of the policies that feature in internal party squabbles becomes national policy. Sadly this matter priniciple is going to have important economic consequences for the country.
The rest of the world scratches its head and says WTF were they thinking.
This argument within the Labour Party about their position on the Palestine Question, is a safer bet. It will have little relevance to real world, though it does nothing for the parties image. Hopefully in a few years time,the UK will have an opposition party that looks like a credible party of government suitable to inherit whatever remains on the tatterd UK economy and its prospects in the world.
This is a perceptive and insightful post and I thank you for the time you spent writing it.
Thank you.
USA is quite odd when it comes to Israel though. Some states (their 2nd tier of government) in USA nation make their people sign pledges of loyalty to the (to them) foreign nation of Israel.
It’s hard to imagine that elsewhere. Also many billions spent to help buy Israel many weapons.
USA probably showed Israel how to make their atomic weapons too but that may have been a woopsie by USA.
It tells you a lot about Corbyn’s decent good man personality that he didn’t throw Palestine to the wolves despite it not being a winnimg cause politically.
It’s also interesting to see that people genuinely fall for the deliberate slander by right wingers of Corbyn as anti-Semitic when the right wingers just hate his pro poor people policies. I thought it was entirely insincere but lots of honestly deceived people above have educated me.
Cornyn a decent good man? This ain’t the Twilight Zone. Corbyn has been and always will be a vile piece of shit. Corbyn doesn’t care about the Palestinians, he just likes the terrorists who support them.
It’s hard to imagine anywhere since it’s utter nonsense. Or in other words - cite?
One of their big famous states is Texas and it happens there, although not the only state.
It’s quite the surprising event.
Yes, Houston Chronicle is owned by a famous group of propagandists and capitalist bad people but they can be useful in this case I think. Not sure who else to link to.
Ah, that is what you were talking about. Yes, those anti-boycott laws are nuts and I have hard time seeing how they even pass constitutional muster. But I would not consider them the equivalent of a pledge of loyalty to a foreign government except as hyperbole.
In America, you need money you make yourself or from rich parents so if the government holds back money from you life can be difficult. So people have to choose supporting a white supremicist foreign power or to not eat.