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The British Labour Party, Palestine and Antisemitism



The biggest cheers of the whole speech given by Jeremy Corbyn to the Labour Party Conference in September were generally reckoned to go to his plea for an end to the oppression of the Palestinian people.

There is indeed much to applaud in this. Labour has traditionally been a party of the oppressed and the Palestinian people are widely acknowledged, including in several UN Resolutions, to have legitimate demands for restitution, focused particularly on the annexation of land by Israel following the 1967 war. 

For many in the Labour Party Palestinians are, however, seen as uniquely oppressed. 

Moreover, support for Palestine allows some in Labour to turn a blind eye to antisemitism.

Worse, support for Palestinians for some Labour members moves over into being actively antisemitic.

So why are some in the Labour Party so concerned with Palestinian rights compared to many other oppressed people across the globe; why is antagonism towards Israel as a state so much stronger than towards other states that have truly awful records in terms of using force against their own people and other countries and why does all of this lead to a worryingly prevalent strain of antisemitism in the party?

The answers seem to be assembled from several building blocks:

- Britain in its Imperial past was heavily involved in paving the way for a Jewish state in Palestine, the Balfour Declaration being the starting point. 

- Israel is regarded as a product of colonialism and settlement and hence its very foundation was oppressive towards the indigenous population

- For some the Jewish people in this context are regarded as 'white' in obvious contrast to the Palestinians

- The principled stance of anti-racism is then engaged in a binary manner so that Israel is judged to be engaged in white oppression

- Israelis are then characterised only as oppressors

- For some this opposition to the oppression of the Israeli state moves over to viewing not just Israel, not just Israelis but the Jewish people as a whole as oppressors. The fact that Israel is far richer and far more powerful than the oppressed is tied in to longstanding antisemitic tropes about 'the Jew' as privileged and powerful.

So tragically the very principles of anti-racism, anti-colonialism and support for human rights have become warped to the point that for some in the Labour party the actions of the State of Israel particularly human rights abuses are used as an explanation for criticisms which are just anti-semitic. 

Opposition to oppression has ended up demonising the entire Jewish people - who have of course themselves been oppressed for centuries and subjected to systematic genocide. 

This includes many Jewish people who are themselves strong critics of the actions of the Israeli state.

The effect within the Labour Party is increasingly severe. Group think -  part and parcel of increasing factionalism - is emerging (or perhaps in some case re-emerging) in some local Labour party branches which is highly and aggressively antagonistic towards any criticism of this explicit or implicit anti-semitism. 

More sadly still this antagonism is couched in terms of protecting free speech; but the intention is anything but free speech. In fact it is about denying the validity of criticism and, particularly when accompanied by a strong 'no platforming' stance, is a way of closing down discussion. 

This failure to respond to anti-semitism seems to be metastasising within the Labour party. Allowing it to become a peculiarly revolting aspect of virtue signalling to a factional in-group is a catastrophe.









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