Left media and antisemitism
JVL Introduction
Since Owen Jones has chosen to defend his approach to antisemitism accusations against left-wing Labour member Jackie Walker, Talal Hangari decided to look more generally at left media’s treatment of the whole antisemitism furore that surrounded the Corbyn leadership.
He focuses mainly here on how such media treated one high-profile intervention – that of the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s report on antisemitism in the party.
To do so he looks at the positive evaluations of the EHRC report from various left-wing commentators and faults them for having been far too uncritical and trusting. Indeed, a number of them have now come to the view that the EHRC is not credible.
Wouldn’t it be nice if more of these commentators were to publicly revisit their earlier judgments…
RK
Left media and antisemitism
Talal Hangari
Good criticism consists in knowing the strengths, as well as the weaknesses, of what you propose to criticise: hence I will begin by giving Owen Jones the full measure of praise, before I give the full measure of his errors.
Jones has produced admirable commentary on the genocide in Gaza: he has shown not only a desire to seek the truth—a desire seldom felt by our journalists—but he has also felt and expressed real indignation at the horrors inflicted on the Palestinian people, with the support of our government, and the quiescence of the official opposition. When we look back upon this period, and assess how our commentators responded to this unconcealed atrocity, Jones will be one of very few journalists who can say that he acquitted himself with honour.
I would not have written this article, therefore, if it were not for Jones’s decision to defend his approach to antisemitism accusations against left-wing Labour members, and to exhume the case of Jackie Walker to do so. Walker was expelled from the Labour Party in 2019.
To understand left media’s treatment of high profile disciplinary cases like Walker’s, it is essential to recall that these cases were thoroughly political. It was no accident that those who were targeted for such expulsions were mostly left-wing supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, including Walker, who had been vice-chair of Momentum. At the same time, right-wing Blairite members of the Labour Party, who were involved in odious political activities, were not punished, and remained members in good standing.
Take, for instance, Labour Friends of Israel. During the overwhelmingly peaceful 2018 Gaza “March of Return” protests, Israeli snipers deliberately shot Palestinian civilians, including children. In the words of Amnesty International, Israel was “carrying out a murderous assault against protesting Palestinians, with its armed forces killing and maiming demonstrators who pose no imminent threat to them”.
In a since deleted tweet, LFI said: “Tragic events on the Gazan border; all civilian deaths are regrettable. Hamas must accept responsibility for these events. Their successful attempt to hijack peaceful protest as cover to attack Israeli border communities must be condemned by all who seek peace in the Middle East.”
Were the Labour MPs who supported LFI threatened with withdrawal of the whip if they did not denounce this statement? Were LFI’s leading parliamentarians expelled? The answer, to both questions, is No. In short, Labour’s disciplinary system upheld free speech for the apologists of an apartheid state, and severely restricted the speech of left-wing activists.
There is, indeed, a meaningful debate to be had about what limits should be placed on speech inside political parties. But whatever one may think about that question, there can be no doubt that the expulsion of Walker was an act of flagrant hypocrisy, when numerous Blairites, who had engaged in far worse conduct, were never punished. Left media, instead of questioning the wisdom of this expulsion policy, tended to support it.
I cannot remember seeing similar calls from Left commentators, for the Corbyn leadership to expel all the old Blairite MPs who had voted for the Iraq war, or to expel MPs active in Labour Friends of Israel. The absurd implication of this is, that Walker’s expression of an opinion about the historical involvement of some Jews in Caribbean slavery in a Facebook comment—an opinion which she later publicly clarified—was more deserving of punishment, than practical support for enormous violence against innocent people.
Left media erred in its commentary on more than one occasion. Another example of left media’s failure to properly scrutinise the allegations against Labour was its response to the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s report on antisemitism in the party. The table below collects different evaluations of the EHRC report from left-wing commentators:
Evaluation of the EHRC Report
Positive Evaluations_____________________________ |
Negative Evaluations_____________________________ |
| The EHRC report, from what I’ve read, is measured and thorough (even if there were a couple of instances where I differed with the assessment of inappropriate intervention).
_____________________________ |
The report itself is underwhelming and comes nowhere close to substantiating the media hype. There is a striking discrepancy between the facts it presents and the way it interprets such evidence – a competent lawyer could drive a coach and horses through some of the conclusions that it reaches. (Daniel Finn)
_____________________________ |
| I thought the EHRC report was excellent, and sadly overshadowed yesterday. I also think it’s insane to say “if you don’t agree with everything here you are a racist”. It’s a line of reasoning any normal person would reject in any normal situation 99% of the time.
…the EHRC report was a strong document that should be adopted. _____________________________ |
It claimed to have found the law had been broken in only two cases of harassment and two of indirect discrimination, all of which findings … were highly disputable. Predictably, what hit the headlines, when the report was published, was the humiliating conclusion – by the Commission Labour had itself created – that the Party had broken the law. (Sir Geoffrey Bindman)
_____________________________ |
| The EHRC report’s solid recommendations need urgent implementation.
_____________________________ |
a new Party leadership, eager to wash its hands of an embarrassment that could be blamed on its predecessors, lamely accepted without challenge and in its entirety, even with perverse enthusiasm, the flawed package delivered by the Commission.
(Bindman again) _____________________________ |
|
The EHRC report contains lots of decent insight and practical suggestions. Unfortunately, its also put rocket-boosters under the McCarthyite tendency that exists within Britain’s media class.
_____________________________ |
Its key findings, at the culmination of this exhaustive and exhausting process, may be summarised in a sentence: One National Executive Committee (NEC) member and one local councillor made between them a handful of harassing comments, the Labour leadership at times intervened in politically sensitive disciplinary cases and the Labour Party did not adequately train its complaints staff.
Yet even these findings, limited as they are, cannot withstand factual or legal scrutiny. (JVL, How the EHRC Got It So Wrong) _____________________________ |
| …it was a sober and earnest document which focused on procedural issues … In its essence, the EHRC report calls for natural justice to be respected.
_____________________________ |
The Report is unlikely to have any lasting impact on antisemitism in Britain. But its pernicious implications for freedom of expression are already evident … it has emboldened those elements in the Labour Party as well as ‘the Jewish community’ that are set on stifling dissent.
(JVL, How the EHRC Got It So Wrong) _____________________________ |
| The EHRC’s statutory inquiry into Labour is a sober, conservative and often lawyerly examination of the problem.
_____________________________ |
The claim that the EHRC is authorised … to police the internal debates of any political party it chooses to investigate – would be remarkable enough were it made of an impartial, well-qualified and democratically accountable organisation and not a politically appointed body of amateurs which lacks political balance and is known for the publicly stated prejudices of several of its commissioners.
_____________________________ |
[Web editor’s apology: we haven’t a clue how to get lines in table to align in html and have done our best. The table above is not very pretty…]
It is striking to observe the number of positive evaluations of the EHRC report on antisemitism in the Labour Party, when we consider the defects of the report, and when many of the same commentators have now come to the view that the EHRC is not credible. Owen Jones, for example, has since described the EHRC as “a Tory front organisation”. Is it plausible that such an organisation, which refused to investigate Islamophobia in the Conservative Party, would have produced an accurate and impartial report on antisemitism in the Labour Party?
My aim is not to chastise individuals, or to make them targets of contempt. Instead, I have tried to draw attention to errors, to prevent their repetition in the future. I sincerely hope that this article will help to foster a productive discussion about past mistakes.
What are jvl’s thoughts on Hope Not Hates hit piece on George Galloway ?
I just did a search to try and find out how many people have been arrested on the national marches (and how many have been charged) and, as such, came across the following article in The Telegraph from May 5th entitled ‘Pro-Palestine demonstrators ‘spat and spewed anti-semitic remarks’ at counter-protestors’, in which it says that pro-Israel counter-demonstrators told the Telegraph that the police response had been ‘entirely unequal’. Ring any bells? Read it and decide for yourself:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/05/pro-palestine-allegedly-spat-and-spewed-anti-semitic-ucl/
Anyway, I then went onto the Stop the War Coalition website to see if there was anything on there re the number of arrests and, as such, came across the following article from May 21st entitled ‘Palestine March Organisers Demand Met Police Meeting After Stewards & Protestors Threatened by Pro-Israel Demonstrators’, with the sub-heading “Only the sheer determination of the line of stewards prevented a serious incident”, in which it says the following:
On Saturday, 250,000 demonstrators marched through London on what was one of the biggest of the national Palestine protests so far.
But the organisers are now demanding to meet with Metropolitan police commissioner Mark Rowley after both protestors and stewards were subjected to frightening abuse, insult and provocation from a pro-Israel counter protest.
Head stewards… were horrified to discover pro-Israeli protestors, who police had assured them would be behind barriers well away from the march, had been allowed to assemble directly on the agreed route, with only a space of three meters between them and hundreds of thousands of people trying to pass through. Many of the counter protestors were holding placards accusing marchers of being ‘rape supporters’.
Yep, trying to provoke the pro-Palestinian marchers etc (and no doubt film it and pass it on to the MSM) appears to now be a regular thing by the pro-genocide mob.
https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/palestine-march-organisers-demand-met-police-meeting-after-stewards-protestors-threatened-by-pro-israel-demonstrators/
I didn’t realise how much Novara Media lined up behind the EHRC Report. It demonstrates the paucity and shallowness of their analysis.
The first point to make it was that the Commissioner who drew it up, Aladair Henderson liked the tweets of Roger Scruton and Douglas Murray, both of whom could be considered fascists. See
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/nov/30/ehrc-board-member-under-scrutiny-over-social-media-use
The second and equally obvious point is that the two named people, Pam Bromley and Ken Livingstone were accused of discrimination and harassment for contesting the bad faith accusations of antisemitism which were made in the Labour Party. Since when is the espousal of a political opinion or disagreement equaL to harrassment? Who were the victims?
Jewish Labour Party members presumably but which ones? Clearly Zionists so that was the agenda of the EHRC Report. That anyone claiming to be on the left didn’t see through it is amazing.
And who is the EHRC anyway? Is it some neutral academic body? Not its Commissioners are handpicked by the Tory government. They are the last people to judge what is and is not race discrimination.
The real tragedy is that Corbyn and others didn’t call out the EHRC BEFORE it began its work and challenge its right to intervene in a political party. Especially given their failure to probe the very genuine Islamaphobia in the Tory Party.
If they had wanted to investigate anti-Semitism they could have started with Boris Johnson’s book 72 Virgins and the comments of Jacob Rees Mogg about the illuminai.
But of course that wasn’t the antisemitism they were interested in
With the likes of Jones, Sarkar and Novara Media, I really think that they need to really reflect on their actions during that period and learn from it. They should apologise to the persons who they slandered as antisemitic, and to admit to the general public, they were wrong, that they aren’t experts when it comes to antisemitism.
To do otherwise is arrogant and it personally conveys to me Jones, Sarkar etc are unashamed and rather mercenary in their approach to these issues, always pushing ahead because of their fame, not taking responsibility for the hurt they have caused to others*, and it is because of this behaviour that I am distrustful of them.
The sad thing about Jones, is that Mark Fisher (RIP) wrote ‘Exiting the Vampire Castle’ in response to other people on the left, treating Jones horribly…Jones has since gone full circle and become as awful as those who intimidated him.
*How does it feel to be a victim of a witch hunt, with your reputation ruined? How does it impact your mental and physical health?
“Civilians” in Israel are usually military reservists or ex members of the oppressors’ military machine.
Anti- (Judeo-Christian), colonial Zionism is NOT anti-semitism. Just two points to remember in discussions as above.
This is still going on! Today on Radio 4 there was a report on harassment of MPs , but it was nearly all blamed on Gaza protestors and the far-right was barely mentioned.
To me, it is very noticeable that 3 of the +ve Evaluations come from one, supposedly, left-wing entity, Novara Media; one of whose *journalists* [who often appears in more mainstream media outlets] called Jackie Walker a *crank*, and, to date, has not withdrawn that smear.
Jackie, Ken Livingstone and Pam Bromley have been ill-served; the latter 2 [denigrated in the EHRC Report] victims oF *Lawfare* [i.e. it costs a lot to defend oneself].
The left itself should also take a good, hard, critical-but-constructive look at how it dealt with the onslaught, as well as its tactics and role during the Corbyn years, and especially its use of social media, which turned into a ferocious attack vector against us.