The sickening reality of Labour party Jew-hatred

The Jewish Labour Movement’s submission to the inquiry by the Equality and Human Rights Commission into Labour party antisemitism has been leaked.

The document, which shows in detail how Labour has become institutionally antisemitic, has been described by the party grandee Lord Falconer as “utterly damning”.

The document, linked here, needs to be read in its entirety to grasp the full horror of the depravity and derangement over Israel and the Jewish people with which the Labour party has been consumed. But here are some extracts:

… Antisemitic abuse is now a common experience for Jews attempting to attend CLP and BLP meetings… Examples of these include being called “a Tory Jew”, “a child killer”, “Zio scum”, being told that “That he’s good with money”, “to shut the f*** up Jew”, “that Hitler was right” and being threatened with physical violence.

… At one meeting, a member claimed that, “The only reason we have prostitutes in Seven Sisters is because of the Jews”. No-one is said to have challenged this statement.

… At the 2017 Party conference, one member describes how he was leafletting for an NEC-backed rule change that would prohibit all types of discrimination within the Labour Party. As a result of his open affiliation with JLM, members called him a racist and said that they would not support the change because JLM was “financed and controlled by the Israeli government”. At a meeting later that day, he was recognised. Audience members shouted and humiliated him. A neighbouring audience member tried to force his phone out of his hand and other members, including Jackie Walker15, shouted at him to hand his phone over. The chair of the meeting did nothing to intervene. The Respondent was only 16 years old at the time.

… At the 2018 Labour party conference, the room was reported to erupt in applause when a delegate on the stage said: “As the prospect of a Jeremy Corbyn-led government gets ever closer I’m afraid the campaign is going to get ratcheted up, the list of people being denounced for being antisemitic; is going to stretch all the way from here to Jerusalem.” That same year, one member described how he shared a breakfast table with two delegates who had not met before. They quickly agreed that Jews were “subhuman”, “didn’t deserve to be allowed to define what constitutes antisemitism” and should “be grateful we don’t make them eat bacon for breakfast every day”.

… Online abuse submitted as screenshots and/or described to the Commission use the full range of antisemitic tropes. They accuse Jews of: being right-wing; controlling the banks and media; being controlled by Israel; being connected to Mossad, the CIA or M15; being connected to Isis or 9/11. Posts also: deny the Holocaust; draw equivalences between Jews and Nazi; use references to pigs and pork to insult Jews; hold all Jews responsible for the policies of the Israeli government; and refer to Jews as traitors, or in one example “bent-nosed manipulative liars’.

As well as using traditionally antisemitic language such as “kike” and “yid”, they commonly use the lexicon of “Zionism” and a “Zionist cult” as terms of abuse, whether or not the post is commenting on anything specifically to do with Israel.

Images submitted and described to the Commission demonstrate that the most base and shocking imagery is being posted on these platforms. Examples include: yellow Stars of David (sometimes dripping with blood, and in one example combined with a swastika dripping with blood); caricatures of Jewish people with exaggerated hooked noses (sometimes rubbing their hands greedily); an alien creature, tattooed with a Star of David and covering the face of the Statue of Liberty: and people being knifed in the back by Jews.

One member describes how this kind of content would appear in his inbox via Party mailing lists. An article arguing that Jews are overrepresented in the capitalist class was defended on official mailing lists, as well as on social media and at meetings.

Another member, made a litany of antisemitic posts on social media, including referring to “cockroaches of the Jew kind”, that Jews were organising white genocide, Rothschild conspiracies, allegations that Zionists ran the concentration camps in the Holocaust and promoting the conspiracy theory that Jewish people are from a region known as Khazaria.

And so on and sickeningly on.

The document provides evidence that complaints about such behaviour were not only ignored but actively covered up. It says:

Members and agents up to and including Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell are comfortable participating on platforms where antisemitic content is routinely shared, without calling out that behaviour.

… One staff member in the GLU said: “It became increasingly common for those under investigation to email [the leader’s office]…and if they were high status enough the case would disappear.”

Another worker claimed they were told to bypass the complaints process by loading complaints onto a USB stick and deliver them to the leader’s office and “was instructed to lie to anyone who asked her where she was going or what she was doing”.

“… over time, this interference became institutionalised. The party’s response has been characterised by denial, discrediting of victims, defence of perpetrators, cover ups and active victimisation of those calling out antisemitism.

“New incidents occur on a daily basis and have become normalised and forgotten as the Party’s machinery finds more ways of ignoring, denying, relativising and accepting the antisemitism that has consumed it.”

It is horrifying that this party might possibly find itself governing the country after next week’s general election. It is appalling that so many people are planning to vote for it, and that its opinion poll ratings have actually gone up since the Chief Rabbi issued his dramatic warning about the threat it poses to the Jewish community. It is shameful that, in this election campaign, so-called “moderate” Labour candidates are  campaigning to put this disgusting party into power.

But above all, this evidence leads to the inescapable conclusion that a spiritual sickness has not just spread within the Labour party but British society. A culture that produces so much derangement and moral depravity as is being directed at Israel and the Jewish people – and has been for decades, long before Corbyn became the Labour leader – is a society that has lost its moral compass.

Of course, Britain has a history of profound and enduring antisemitism. Its literature is infused with it; in the Middle Ages it burned Jews alive in pogroms and eventually threw them out of the country; in the 1930s and 40s, it was an accomplice to the Holocaust by barring European Jews from entry to Palestine, in flagrant repudiation of its treaty obligation as the Mandatory power to settle Jews in their ancient homeland. Its two periods of active philosemitism, under Oliver Cromwell in the 17th century and the heyday of evangelical Christianity in the 19th century, were exceptions to the rule. And there was a period after the Holocaust when antisemitism went underground and was regarded as utterly beyond the pale.

Epidemic Jew-hatred always signals a society in crisis. Its current eruption – which is happening not just in Britain but in America and Europe too – is sounding the alarm not just for diaspora Jews but for a western culture in freefall.