Labour’s lanyard of hate

The reverberations from Tuesday’s Jew-baiting hate-fest at the Labour party conference rumble on, as well they might. David Collier’s blog post here on what he experienced at the conference is a must-read.

I found this observation particularly chilling:

“At the Labour Friends of Israel event, there were anti-Israel activists actually taking photos of the MPs who were present. No doubt to add new faces onto existing expulsion ‘lists’… To my knowledge, I had my photo take twice at the conference. Once as I was leaving the ‘Free Speech’ event, an activist Elleane Green spotted me and reached for her camera, whilst the second time was at the Labour Friends of Israel event, where Tapash Abu Shaim was camera ready.”

And this:

“The PSC had brought ‘Palestine Solidarity’ lanyards, and it is clearly the item they want everyone to take from their stall. I also note they have ‘runners’, people walking off with several PSC lanyards in their hands. One was looking for people running other stalls, who were willing to wear them. This badge of identification was eventually seen on many of the visiting crowd.”

What they were hanging from their necks was the lanyard of hate. For as Collier observes, these people think that by supporting the Palestinians they are supporting peace; but in fact supporting Palestinianism leads them inexorably to supporting the extermination of Israel.

“As soon as you place that PSC lanyard around your neck”, writes Collier, “from the moment you believe you support ‘Palestine Solidarity’ as it is represented in the UK Labour Party, then you explicitly align with a maximalist Arab position, that is also heralded by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Assad, Hezbollah and Iran. Don’t believe me? Walk up to your nearest PSC activist and ask them if the organisation supports a two-state solution. Watch them stutter.”

Although these Labour members are shy exterminators, that’s the agenda to which that lanyard signs them up. The vast depth of their ignorance, however, means they have no idea that they are thus making a mockery of the very causes they profess to espouse.

For they purport to be against racism and colonialism. But by supporting Palestinianism they are backing racism and colonialism. Jews are the only extant indigenous people of the land of Israel, the only people for whom it was ever their national kingdom. The Jews were driven out of that land by the Romans and kept out by subsequent Arab and Muslim colonisers. And that’s the agenda of today’s “Palestinians”, who have assumed a fictional historic identity with the sole purpose of occupying the historic homeland of the Jews and subjecting them instead (those who are not killed or driven out) to colonialist rule.

By supporting the bogus cause of Palestinian rights, the left has thus signed up to racism, colonialism and – since the Palestinians say there will be not one Jew in a future state of Palestine – ethnic cleansing.

The left tell themselves, though, that being anti-Israel or anti-Zionist is not antisemitism. Well, their anti-Israel and anti-Zionist demonisation and delegitimisation campaign most certainly is just that, since it subjects Israel to exactly the same characteristics of unhinged obsessions and deranged canards to which Jews have been subjected over the centuries. And in denying the Jews their right to national self-determination, moreover, they are attacking Judaism itself.

What’s more, the British government has endorsed the Working Definition of Antisemitism of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. Although the accompanying guidance rightly states that “criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic”, it says: “Manifestations [of antisemitism] might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity”.

Its examples of antisemitism also include:

• Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g. by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
• Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
• Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
• Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.

All this and more was on display at the Labour party conference. It is also on display week in, week out on university campuses, in the media, in the theatre, in churches and around the dinner-tables of the so-called progressive classes.

In its demonisation of Israel, the left has simply reversed good and evil. That’s why what was seen at the Labour conference was intimidation by thugs and enforcers, more redolent of the tactic used by tyrants and dictators.

That’s why the Labour party is finished as a moral force. It cannot pretend to be a progressive movement while it promotes the antisemitic, colonialist, exterminatory endeavour that is the Palestinian cause – which has become nothing less than the warped signature motif of its own social conscience.

It will only begin to recover if it finally acknowledges the symbiotic connection between Palestinianism and antisemitism and then deals accordingly with both. The chances of it doing so? Zero.