Current Affairs The Labour Party

[orchard]

It got closed I think when some Tory posters got racist

Haha, any chance we can keep the distraction out of here please @Bruce Wayne ?

 

[tsubaki]

No, certainly not. Attacking the Israeli state for their actions is exactly the same as denouncing any other state and indeed they should be called out for many of their actions...but it should be identified as the Israelis doing this and not Jews as a collective....

They should be, but the problem is (as FLHD notes above) that there are elements in politics and the media for whom criticism of Israel is reason to believe that someone is an anti-semite. Take this article from the JC's Stephen Pollard from 2010 for instance, in which William Hague has doubts cast on him solely for calling the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon "disproportionate" - please pay careful attention to how the article starts:

Hague is no friend of Israel

The new Foreign Secretary has taken a worrying position on the Middle East

There's a lazy theory among some in our community that - to be blunt - the Conservatives are good for the Jews, and Labour less so. Specifically, that Labour's backbench army of anti-Israel zealots stands in contrast with the more generally pro-Israel stance of the Tories.

The sordid tale of the last government's handling of universal jurisdiction would seem to back that theory. Gordon Brown, it's clear, was personally minded to change the law, as was David Miliband. But they were frustrated by what our political editor, Martin Bright, described a few weeks ago as Jack Straw's masterclass in the black arts of politics - and by the fear that Labour backbenchers would vote against, forcing the government to rely, embarrassingly, on the votes of Conservative MPs.

But that's a misleading case on which to mount an entire theory. In the round, it would be difficult to imagine a more pro-Israel PM than Gordon Brown. Difficult, but not impossible, because his predecessor, Tony Blair, was just that.

Can I share with you my theory about what eventually did for Mr Blair?

The received wisdom is that it was the Iraq war - that, by 2006, his own backbenchers were so sick of him and his war that they wanted shot, and that Gordon Brown's plot to remove him was welcomed with relief.

Received wisdom it may be, but it's wrong. Iraq was a running sore, and made his position close to untenable. But only close to untenable. What really did for him was Israel.

By which I mean the Lebanon war. It was Mr Blair's heroic, principled and politically suicidal refusal to condemn Israel's military action in Lebanon as "dis-proportionate" (to use the buzz-word of the day) that finished him off. He was just about the only Labour MP in the Commons who refused to utter a word of criticism of Israel's right to defend itself from Hizbollah.

That was the straw that broke the camel's back. Despite near-universal criticism of his stance, he stood firm - and paid the price as, that summer, Labour MPs decided he had to be removed. Not, I repeat, because of Iraq, but because of Israel.
And that's where the lazy theory to which I referred at the start comes in. Because the condemnation of Israel was near-universal. There were some admirable Conservatives who refused to attack Israel for acting to protect its citizens from terror. But that group did not include the then Shadow Foreign Secretary, William Hague, who indeed led the attack on Israel's "disproportionate" action.

Why do I rake this up again? Because it is fascinating - and worrying - in the context of Mr Hague's debut as Foreign Secretary in Washington last week.
Among his meetings was one at the British Embassy in DC. Mr Hague was asked by a guest about a phrase he used a lot during the election, when he said that the UK would have "solid but not slavish" ties with the US under a Conservative government.

What specifically, he was asked, did this mean? Leave aside the gratuitous insult to Mr Blair, who is surely only regarded in agitprop as the "Bush's poodle" caricature. In what way would Mr Hague have acted differently?

"Israel," the Foreign Secretary immediately replied, before elaborating: "The Lebanon war."

There was, I am told, a pregnant pause as the guests realised the import of what Mr Hague was saying. A Conservative Foreign Secretary was using US (and UK) support for Israel as a stick with which to attack the US-UK special relationship.

So let's have none of this idea that a Conservative government is going, by definition, to be good for Israel. Mr Cameron is an unknown quantity. Mr Hague, the evidence suggests, is all too known. And that is a worry.

 

[magicjuan]

No, certainly not. Attacking the Israeli state for their actions is exactly the same as denouncing any other state and indeed they should be called out for many of their actions...but it should be identified as the Israelis doing this and not Jews as a collective....

But Israel has de facto declared itself a jewish nation state thereby conflating the two. You by its new definition have just made an anti semitic statement.
This isn't about anti semitism at all, it's about freedom of the right to criticise and the denying of opportunity to do so. The semitic part is a misnomer, most semites aren't jews and most jews aren't in any way at all semitic. The phrasing is especially designed for political motives.

 

[tsubaki]

But Israel has de facto declared itself a jewish nation state thereby conflating the two. You by its new definition have just made an anti semitic statement.
This isn't about anti semitism at all, it's about freedom of the right to criticise and the denying of opportunity to do so. The semitic part is a misnomer, most semites aren't jews and most jews aren't in any way at all semitic. The phrasing is especially designed for political motives.

The problem is that there really are loads of cases, especially online, where people have taken British Jewish people to task for the crimes of the Israeli Government and/or accused them of being more loyal to Israel than their own country, or part of a plot etc etc.

 

[Joey66]

The problem is that there really are loads of cases, especially online, where people have taken British Jewish people to task for the crimes of the Israeli Government and/or accused them of being more loyal to Israel than their own country, or part of a plot etc etc.

Corbyn in the manure again today over this he is becoming unelectable........ as is may but the Tories will have the commonsense to throw her out before the next GE......

 

[Number_25]

Corbyn in the manure again today over this he is becoming unelectable........ as is may but the Tories will have the commonsense to throw her out before the next GE......

Unelectable?

• 59.5% of the vote in the 2015 Labour Party leadership election (in a four horse race)
• 61.8% of the vote in the 2016 Labour Party leadership election (in a two horse race)
• 73.0% of the vote in the 2017 Islington North constituency.
• 40% of the vote in the 2017 General Election, increasing the vote share by nearly 10%, wiping out the government's majority in a campaign that was fought defensively?

For someone whose unelectable, a lot of people sure do vote for him...

 

[tsubaki]

Corbyn in the manure again today over this he is becoming unelectable........ as is may but the Tories will have the commonsense to throw her out before the next GE......

TBH that latest story (about him organizing a speech by Hajo Meyer) is nonsense; are the likes of John Mann saying that someone who survived Auschwitz is someone unfit to attend Parliament and talk to an audience?

I also note that very few of the stories about it seem to report the substance of what Meyer was talking about (this is from an article on Huffington Post from the same time as he was doing his talks):

Auschwitz existed within history, not outside of it. The main lesson I learned there is simple: We Jews should never, ever become like our tormentors — not even to save our lives. Even at Auschwitz, I sensed that such a moral downfall would render my survival meaningless.

Like most German Jews, I was raised in a secular and humanist tradition that was more antagonistic than sympathetic towards the Zionist enterprise. Since 1967 it has become obvious that political Zionism has one monolithic aim: Maximum land in Palestine with a minimum of Palestinians on it. This aim is pursued with an inexcusable cruelty as demonstrated during the assault on Gaza. The cruelty is explicitly formulated in the Dahiye doctrine of the military and morally supported by the Holocaust religion.

I am pained by the parallels I observe between my experiences in Germany prior to 1939 and those suffered by Palestinians today. I cannot help but hear echoes of the Nazi mythos of “blood and soil” in the rhetoric of settler fundamentalism which claims a sacred right to all the lands of biblical Judea and Samaria. The various forms of collective punishment visited upon the Palestinian people — coerced ghettoization behind a “security wall”; the bulldozing of homes and destruction of fields; the bombing of schools, mosques, and government buildings; an economic blockade that deprives people of the water, food, medicine, education and the basic necessities for dignified survival — force me to recall the deprivations and humiliations that I experienced in my youth. This century-long process of oppression means unimaginable suffering for Palestinians.

It is not too late to learn a different lesson from Auschwitz. For example, in the last year, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network has become a means for many — including young Jews in the United States — to challenge the precepts of Zionism and support the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. Their goal, and mine, is to challenge the dispossession and exclusivity of a Jewish state, in their names and in mine. They understand the urgency of the classical Jewish concept of teshuvah, return from the wrong road. Further, they understand that the pursuit of justice and making ethically positive sense out of senseless suffering is not only part of an ancient Jewish interpretation and shaping of history, but is crucial for all of us in creating the world we want to live in, and to our moral survival.

... all people have been told is that Meyer "compared Israel to the Nazis".

 

[Mikey_Fitzgerald]

 

[magicjuan]

The problem is that there really are loads of cases, especially online, where people have taken British Jewish people to task for the crimes of the Israeli Government and/or accused them of being more loyal to Israel than their own country, or part of a plot etc etc.

Put that way the charge is nationalism based on the now Israeli position. I wouldn't dare deny cases of anti semitism shown as such, but that particular torch is only shone in selective corners, those that paint Corbyn/Labour in a particular way.
This is beginning to get very dangerous for the ability to object to something that doesn't fit a particular narrative or agenda.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Haha, any chance we can keep the distraction out of here please @Bruce Wayne ?

It's boring as hell, but is nonetheless about the Labour Party so not sure we can really moderate it?

 

[Number_25]

It's boring as hell, but is nonetheless about the Labour Party so not sure we can really moderate it?

Ideally, I'd rather this thread be about ideas - but this is what the entire thing has been about. Anything to redirect the conversation away from real policies.

 

[orchard]

It's boring as hell, but is nonetheless about the Labour Party so not sure we can really moderate it?

Like #25 said really dude, can you not re-open the toxic thread and then thread-ban when it gets out of hand?
Or get them to use the Israel/Palestine thread?

 

[degsy]

i havent got the time to read up on everything really but essentially is the message, if you dont support what isreal are doing in the middle east and in general to palestine you are anti semetic?

Yes.

If you dont support a rougue state that has in place a system of apartheid and indiscriminatly kills men, women and children it means you hate all Jewish people and should be roundly condemned.

extremely strange logic

...and there we have the whole problem in a nutshell.
People refusing to buy into the whole 'doublethink' aspect of the situation...that both are right and yet wrong at the same time.

 

[tsubaki]

I suppose the only thing that could have gone worse for Labour this past week is if one of its donors, whose wife was a former PPC and a current director of the Policy Forum, had just been found guilty of stealing millions of pounds off vulnerable members of the Jewish community.

 

[peteblue]

Ideally, I'd rather this thread be about ideas - but this is what the entire thing has been about. Anything to redirect the conversation away from real policies.

The floor is yours.....which real policies do you wish to talk about.....