People are accusing a political party of being anti-semitical and pushing ethnic cleansing policies, because one MP re-tweeted a parody post, and another MP foolishly tried to refer to a time when Hitler’s policies were aligned with zionist policies.
According to a number of posters, this is proof that the party as a whole has a problem with anti-semitism.
So, if I can reference a Chief Rabbi making a far more direct “Get the non-jews out” statement, then surely we have to conclude that the organisation he represents must have a similar problem as an entire entity?
Oh goody, fall-back position number two. It’s always going to be a bit trickier to dismiss Jewish critics of Palestinian policies as anti-semites. Instead they should be labelled as self-haters, or uncle Toms.
I’m guessing we’re just a few steps away from the other standard meme of “Israel has no choice but to defend itself from Arab aggression, whatever that takes”.
Yosef’s political party, Shas, is indeed a fundamentalist religious organization with strong racist elements. This is not news - I’ve been protesting them (and voting against them) for years. He was appointed to his position by a spineless, opportunistic right-wing government. Again, this is nothing new. My country has some serious problems, including a history of electing total dipshits.
Again - what does this have to do with the price of tea in China, or with anti-Semitism in the Labour party? Are you claiming that it doesn’t exist? That all British anti-Semites vote Tory?
As an aside, it’s understandable that Jews hate Palestinians a bit, just as it’s even more understandable that Palestinians hate Jews, too. It’s still wrong, and I’m not excusing it, but at least I can see where they’re coming from - it’s hard to fight a war with someone for nearly a century without hating them just a little, you know? What I can’t understand is why the Israeli-Arab conflict is even an issue in UK politics, let alone such a big one. Why is it any of your business? Don’t you have enough problems of your own?
The Arab-Israeli conflict is thought to affect relations between Muslims and Jews within Britain. It probably doesn’t matter, actually. Muslims aren’t fans of gays either, and gays haven’t established a state on Muslim lands.
I think it’s important to distinguish between two different claims here:
*The Labour Party is anti-semitic. *It is not.
The Labour Party has a problem with anti-semitism. It does.
A quick review of incidents which support 2):
Naz Shah shares a tweet suggesting that the easy solution to the Israel-Palestine crisis is to move Israel, commenting “Problem solved”. She also used the phrase “The Jews are rallying” as an exhortation to her supporters on Facebook. She has admitted these were anti-semitic and apologised sincerely for them.
Ken Livingstone defends her post-apology by saying that Hitler supported Zionism and that it’s only real anti-semitism if you despise the Jews in Golders Green and not just the ones in Israel.
Labour confirms 18 local councillors have been suspended for anti-semitic comments, including claims that Adolf Hitler was the greatest man in history because he stopped the Jews from taking over Palestine, that Israel is behind ISIS, that there’s a Jewish lobby controlling the Oscars, that Israel is conducting a new Holocaust in Palestine, and that six million Zionists were killed by Hitler. (The last revealing how hollow the claim that “I’m not talking about Jews, I’m talking about Zionists” really is).
An investigation into the Oxford University Labour Club following the resigning co-chairs claims that:
There are further leaked claims that the compliance unit is struggling to keep up with number of complaints being made.
The majority of these involve low-level party functionaries; many predate Jeremy Corbyn’s election. Nevertheless, it seems that the barriers to people with nakedly anti-semitic views joining Labour and winning official approval for candidacy and elected office aren’t as high as they should be. Which suggests that at best, too many people have heard these views and not blinked. It’s hard to believe, by contrast, that anyone could become a Labour councillor if they casually referred in conversation to racist tropes about blacks, for example.*
No doubt the reason that many anti-semitic comments of these are cropping up is because Tory/right-wing media researchers are gleefully searching for them. They are absolutely being used for electoral advantage. But the problem Labour has to deal with isn’t that people are looking for them, it’s that they are being found.
*Please also note that when a string of UKIP councillors were found to be casually making racist remarks online, the conclusion “UKIP has a racism problem” was not considered controversial.
well said. I’m also very curious why Muslims of all stripes, not just Palestinian ones, but ones from far flung places like Indonesia, Bangaledesh, Sudan, Britain, France, and even American Muslims, have such uniform views on the issue and care so much, whereas there’s actually real discourse among Jews across the world on the issue.
That’s easily answered: they don’t. If you consider actual Muslims rather than the one-dimensional cartoon versions you seem to be endlessly discussing, you’ll find an extremely diverse range of views on any subject, with quite a lot of internecine squabbling (up to and including warfare) and arguments over who is a “true Muslim”. If you genuinely think 1.6 billion people of ANY stripe are capable of having “uniform views” on any issue, you really don’t understand people.
Speaking of diversity of views, look at the responses to Sadiq Khan’s tweets sometime - they range from calling him a radical jihadist planning to enslave women and kill all gays, to calling him a Zionist puppet and traitor to Islam. And it’s still his first week.
Why don’t you look at the Muslim world media, or the countries that don’t have diplomatic relations with Israel (they’re nearly all Muslim, and have a large combined population. Much of the populations in the countries that do have relations with Israel want to cut them off, as did the Islam Brotherhood when they ran Egypt).
There are plenty of pro-Palestinian Jews. Look whathappenstothefew pro-Israel Muslims;
Stop the obfuscation! Did you actually read the other links about the reaction to these outliers? Death threats, fleeing, arrests, you name it. Or did you not look at the clips Memri translated?
The Mayor doesn’t have that power. It was discussed in Parliament and (reasonably) rejected as being an inappropriate reaction to Trump’s objectionable views, as other means of expressing dissent with them were more suited to international diplomacy.
I didn’t say no Muslims held those views. I said that those views don’t reflect those of all Muslims. Your cherry-picked articles don’t refute that point. (And I’m not even going to get into the potential issues with the objectivity of MEMRI.)
I’ve met many Muslims, and the ones I met for the most part were great people. But I think Churchill said it best:
[QUOTE=Winston Churchill]
“Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.”
[/QUOTE]
Also, re Memri, you have a better way to see what media from the dar al-Islam says? Also, most of the criticism doesn’t actually criticism the translations (save for a few incidents, which happen with many news orgs) but its raison d’etre, which is basically saying they’d rather surpress the truth about the Muslim world in the name of “peace.”
