Jeremy Corbyn's Anti-Semitism Is a Feature Not a Flaw

On the eve of the UK election, it seems appropriate to post Anthony Julius's open letter on the subject of Labor Party anti-Semitism. For those who do not know him, Anthony Julius is among the UK's preeminent attorneys as well as an outstanding historian. He is most well-known for representing Princess Diana in her divorce and defending Deborah Lipstadt against the Holocaust denier David Irving.

Here is his open letter:

An open letter to Sir Richard Evans: Labour’s anti-Semitism cannot be disregarded

In 1996, Anthony Julius and Richard Evans defended the author Deborah Lipstadt against libel accusations by the Holocaust denier David Irving. Here, Julius responds to Evans’s expression of support for the Labour leadership.

By Anthony Julius

Dear Richard,

I see that you made an intervention yesterday [25 November] in the election. You tweeted your support for Labour. You will vote for the party notwithstanding the “cancer of anti-Semitism that has infected” it. Later in the day, you tweeted that responses have prompted you to ask your Labour candidate “for her views on the controversy about anti-Semitism in the party”. You have not asked me for my views, but in the spirit of the exchanges we had when you were an expert in the Lipstadt case, let me give them to you anyway. Please think again about how you cast your vote.

Let me remind you, on the subject of the Jews, the party has become cruel, malicious, stupid and dishonest. The cruelty has been persistent and extreme – death threats, shouted abuse at branch meetings, online trolling. The malice has been patent, incontinent and pervasive. As with Trump, we are inured to party (and Corbyn) outrages, because they are so frequent. But recall Corbyn's disparagement of  “Zionists who, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, they don’t understand English irony”. My friend David Hirsh got it right: Corbyn was enjoying the old, sneery English view of Jews, and he was doing it to humiliate the Jews he was talking about. They live among us but they’re not really one of us. This wasn’t Corbyn’s usual political anti-Semitism, it was a spillover into ordinary old-fashioned English anti-Semitism. It was as if the political requirement to humiliate the “Zionists” found its words in the anti-Semitic subconscious of an English middle-class man. This, from the “lifelong campaigner against anti-Semitism”, as a Labour spokesperson described him, following the Chief Rabbi’s recent intervention.

Anti-Semitism is stupid. It makes people stupid. It is not a coincidence that the least accomplished leader of the Labour Party is also its only anti-Semitic one. If you live in a world of conspiracies, if you think the world is divided into the blamelessly good, the victims, and the unqualifiedly evil, the oppressors, then anti-Semitism is for you. It is the commonest outcome of just such conspiratorialist, Manichaean thinking. As for the dishonesty, look at party equivocations on the number of disciplinary cases against members. The unapologetic Corbyn says that there are none left to resolve (“we’ve investigated every single case”); by contrast, a spokesperson is only able to quibble over the precise number outstanding. Corbyn’s ignominious career in relation to Jews has been recast by a party spokesperson as the career of a “lifelong campaign against anti-Semitism”. Is anybody really fooled by this? Is there anything more threadbare – indeed, Trumpian – in the insouciance of the party’s response to its own anti-Semitism? This is not a party that cares about the concerns of the Jewish community, save insofar as those concerns might have a damaging impact on its electoral fortunes.

In response to your second tweet, about individual candidates: Anti-Semitism, long a fugitive, has acquired institutional authority in today’s Labour Party. Within the party itself, compelling evidence exists of extensive spoken and online abuse of Jewish party members; exclusion of Jewish members from participating in party activity; signalling by the party leader that anti-Semitic views are acceptable; the failure to implement processes to protect Jewish members from anti-Semitism; hostile responses to those calling out anti-Semitism; and appointment of anti-Semites to positions of power (indeed, as the Panorama investigation exposed, interfering in disciplinary processes “to let off their mates”, reported a whistle-blower). This anti-Semitism taints the passive enablers in the party – to start with, the whole front bench. This is how the Corbyn period will be remembered. This is his legacy to the party.

This anti-Semitism concerns us all, Jews and non-Jews. A party that cannot be trusted in relation to Jews cannot be trusted at all. No party of reform and justice can be trusted if it makes exceptions of a minority community. British Jews have heard for some weeks now the argument that the anti-Semitism is all very unfortunate; it is limited (to the leader, to a small fraction in the party enabled by him); there are bigger issues (Brexit, austerity, etc). There is even an implication that it is a little parochial – perhaps even, selfish – of Jews to insist on their own special suffering, their own local fears, in these times of national crisis. So what if the party is contaminated by Jew hatred if it is also the party that will save the country? Of course, formulating the question in this way does more than justice to the capabilities of the Labour Party. But the point goes deeper. Anti-Semites cannot be social reformers. Their anti-Semitism incapacitates them. As a result, anti-Semitism does not just injure Jews. It encourages misconceptions about the causes of social conflicts – of human suffering and social deprivation – and therefore prolongs their existence, to everyone’s loss. By denying Jews the opportunity of making contributions to society, anti-Semites injure all of us. Anti-Semitism corrupts political discourse; it taints political life; its injustices towards Jews are precedent-establishing – people who start with the Jews, do not end with the Jews. Anti-Semitism even injures anti-Semites, because it degrades them.

To purge the party of anti-Semitism will be the work of a generation. The evidence that the political will exists to undertake this task is not compelling: members are not yet ashamed enough of their party’s anti-Semitism. The driving out of leading Jewish (and non-Jewish) politicians from the party, who cited its anti-Semitism, did not have a substantial impact on party morale, still less commit its officials and elected members to decisive action. We cannot leave the work to the party itself. Supporters have to lend a hand. Depriving the party of a vote is a start.

James Kirchek's further observations are here.

And more here on women who are leading the fight against anti-Semitism in the UK.

Comments

[J.Bogart]

Thanks.

[Kevin Jon Heller]

I look forward to your post on Boris Johnson's vastly more obvious antisemitism: https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/labour-attacks-boris-johnson-for-novel-that-depicted-jews-as-fiddling-elections-1.494175.

Perhaps in that post you'll also discuss the serious antisemitism problem among the Tories: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/07/tories-investigate-three-candidates-over-alleged-antisemitism.

There is even an entire report on Tory antisemitism: https://www.antisemitism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/MASTER-CONSERVATIVE-PARTY-BRIEFING-12-04-2019-PDF-Version-4.pdf.

My favourite is Lord Gold's comment, in response to a Tory MP wearing an SS uniform to a Nazi-themed bachelor party in 2011, that the MP was not antisemitic. (For its part, the Party insisted that the MP had "a lot to offer in public life.")

[Steve Diamond]

The perverse logic of Labour's reliance on the "socialism of fools" is explored by two UK academics here: https://www.thejc.com/comment/analysis/jeremy-corbyn-s-rigged-system-is-a-template-for-antisemitism-1.478759

[Steve L.]

Sorry for the delay, Kevin and Steve; the links caused your comments to be caught in the spam folder.

Good to see that you are still reading the blog, Kevin. Thanks for the references to anti-Semitism among the Conservatives. The comments of various Tories, including Johnson, have been distasteful indeed.

Corbyn is different, of course, because he goes far beyond smarmy insults. He associates with terrorists who present an existential threat to Jews and Jewish life, as detailed below and elsewhere:

"Corbyn also associates with terrorists, both secular and Islamist, who actively seek the destruction of the state of Israel. On numerous occasions he shared a platform with Leila Khaled, the convicted plane-hijacker and former mastermind of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). In 2014 he was photographed, alongside the exiled PFLP chief Maher Taher, laying a wreath at a memorial ceremony for the Black September operatives who carried out the murder of eleven Israelis at the 1972 Munich Olympics. He has spent time with high-ranking figures from Hamas and Hizballah, including those whom in 2009 he welcomed to the British parliament 'as friends.' In a 2010 visit to the Palestinian territories, he met with Hamas officials in Gaza. In 2016, he declared on British television his support for engagement with Islamic State, asserting that the West needed to understand 'where [IS’s] strong points are.'” https://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/israel-zionism/2019/01/the-genius-of-jeremy-corbyn/

There is more, of course, but the bottom line is that British Jews, who have historically supported Labour in great numbers, are overwhelmingly opposed to Corbyn. Many long time Labour members have resigned from the party, or have been pushed out of it. Is it really possible that they are all misguided?

Johnson is no prize. But even Richard Evans changed his mind about voting Labour after he read the open letter from Anthony Julius:

"As much as Corbyn's lamentable failure to apologise in his TV interview, or the intervention of the chief rabbi, this has persuaded me to change my mind and not vote Labour." https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/holocaust-historian-changes-mind-after-saying-he-would-vote-labour-in-the-general-election-1.493711

[anon]

Ahhh, the joys of academic debate. As always, the world as it is need have nothing to do with the passions that animate the fury of the contentions/comments.

The "obvious" truth, KJH? You are of course correct: they are ALL anti-Semites. Or, more precisely, most of them.

Now, let's hear the analysis of US ... ? Trump or the Squad? Who is/are the anti-semites among us? Would we more likely find an anti semite among the working people of this country or among a group of leftist university academics? (BTW, if the answer is, "Looks at all the left-leaning Jews in academia!" then we can all have a good laugh, no?)

[Anon]

Not even a close call, Kevin

https://labourhatesjews.wordpress.com/2017/06/05/29-examples-of-labour-anti-semitism/?fbclid=IwAR0fFwqKE8mzWGQClWbamt7hJX0A5D1k4MNABxUJku01z5QuD2PDWimIbvo

[tb]

If you want to avoid the antisemitism of labour and the islamophobia and racism of the tories, it seems the liberal democrats are the only moral choice.

[anon]

How is voting for the pro-EU, technocrat-fascist super-state possibly a moral choice, let alone the exclusive one?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUDjRZ30SNo

[anymouse]

Corbyn and his ilk got shellacked today. It is schadenfreudelicious.

[twbb]

By overt racists and Islamophobes, anymouse. Not sure why you get enjoyment from that.

[anon]

Why do leftists always demean the voters, call them awful names, and basically convey hateful, angry messages (or worse, assert bogus theories to explain) when they have lost an election? Is anyone who doesn't agree with a leftist by definition not worthy of any respect?

[Twbb]

You’re projecting anon. Leftists don’t come anywhere near the level of demonization that rightists do.

[Ever and Anon]

Keep telling yourself those things, twbb. It's certainly far easier than actually learning about why people voted the way they just did in Blighty - especially the North!

In fact, you're in good company: your M.O. is perfectly in accord with the way most American law professors 'keep ignorant and carry on'.

[anon]

"Boris won by reason of the votes of overt racists and Islamophobes. Anyone who says this is name calling is name calling. Anyone who says this is demonizing Boris voters is demonizing. My colleagues and I don't demonize others!"

[anymouse]

"Leftists don’t come anywhere near the level of demonization that rightists do."

Busy is Hitler.
Romney is Hitler.
Trump is Hilter.

Yeah, sure Twbb.