How bad is the Jeremy Corbyn fiasco in Great Britain becoming?
One example is a social-media post that came in response to the idea that the Labour Party, in a reversal, would adopt in full the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which holds that double-standard criticism of Israel or making Nazi-like comparisons to it is wrong. The person published, as The Times of London reported:
“Could Jon Lansman [the Jewish head of Momentum] be a MI5 or Mossad agent? Anybody remember in 1979 one of the union bosses was being paid by MI5 to spy on the other union bosses. This is just speculation.”
Are anti-Semites such dullards?
Several times a week now, Corbyn statements, actions and those of his closest allies are being published and broadcast and, finally, in the U.K. mainstream media. Even J.K. Rawling has come to the defense of Jews. And even The New York Times.
But it is Corbyn’s anti-Zionism posturing that is the real danger. If Corbyn had lived in the period of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine entrusted to Britain, he would have been one with E.T. Richmond, an early anti-Zionist working in the Palestine administration, or Lord Islington [Corbyn coincidentally represents Islington North] and Lord Sydenham, who attempted to sabotage the British Mandate in 1922. He would have supported the 1939 White Paper, by which Britain reneged on its responsibility to reconstitute the Jewish national home. He would be receiving advice from George Antonius, the veritable creator of the “Palestinian Arab” myth. He might have been advising Sir John Singleton, member of the Anglo-American 1946 Commission and he would have been urging Ernest Bevin to oppose Israel’s establishment.
Corbyn’s language reflects his deeply held Socialist-nigh-Stalinist worldview. His pronouncements as we view in the videos show a self-righteous self-esteemed know-it-all about Zionism, Palestine, Jews and Arabs. He is a revolutionary and supports revolutionary violence. I suspect he considers Jews the capitalist enemy and Jews who are his allies must, perforce, be not only non-Zionists but anti-Zionists. The United Nations’s 1975 “Zionism is racism” decision, led by the Soviet Union, surely was in line with his ideological overview.
Corbyn’s anti-Semitism is not so much anti-Jewish, as strange as that reads, but in his preference for the Arabs-called-Palestinians. In championing their cause, in going to Tunisia to lay a wreath, to shout “war crimes” at Israel’s actions in Gaza and in suggesting Zionists have no irony, Corbyn has made a principled decision that his preferences lay with the Arabs. And he chooses them over the Jews, despite the total lack of comparison indications between the two groups.
What has convinced him that Arabs are better than the Jews in the Middle East is not hatred of Judaism and Jews per se, but of a total rejection of Jewish history, culture and national identity. We don’t fit his conception of the world. Combine that with his subliminal support for revolutionary violence and one realizes that not only is Corbyn an anti-Semite but a terrorist fellow-traveler.
His many hosting of events or participation in rallies and demonstrations promoting the cause of an Arab Palestine, as well his total backing for the most extreme positions the Arabs-called-Palestinians promote indicate his rejection of and refusal to acknowledge any parallel Jewish national rights. I would think that he would be horrified to discover he hates Jews as Jews but to dislike Jews as Zionists is political, he considers, not personal nor physical (in the sense of riots, as in August 1947 in England). But that is what will happen if Corbyn gains more power or is not cordoned off at present.
His language, as discovered, blurs the line between “Zionists” and “Jews,” and exactly fits the very IHRA definition he seeks to avoid (at the time of this writing). Of course, there will be those who will think that Jeremy Corbyn is an “unwitting ally of the Israeli right” while that same writer is a “convinced convert to the belief there’s something sick in this man’s mind.” I doubt Corbyn is witless. His anti-Zionism and his retelling of the “history” of how Britain betrayed the Arabs is what allows Arabs to mortar and rocket Israel, shoot at its soldiers and civilians, and kill and maim Jews.
He may or he may not hate Jews, as Jews or for supporting (and being) Zionists. But his love for a dishonest Arab cause is just as dangerous to Jewish lives as if he truly hated them.
Yisrael Medad is an American-born Israeli journalist and author.
