Long-Bailey’s Sacking Shows How Antisemitism Has Been Dangerously Redefined
Published
by
Richard Kuper
JVL Introduction
Barnaby Raine is concerned that antisemitism is being harnessed to agendas other than protecting Jews.
“Anyone who thinks throwing Palestinians under the bus is the price to pay for really cherishing Jews should ask themselves this: when Keir Starmer treats an attack on Israeli police brutality as an attack on me – on all Jews – what does that tell us about how he sees me, and how he thinks of Jews?”
This article was originally published by Novara Media on Fri 26 Jun 2020. Read the original here.
Long-Bailey’s Sacking Shows How Antisemitism Has Been Dangerously Redefined
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It is worrying how to even mention injustices that those in power in Israel implement can be labelled as anti semitism. It seems that it is almost meant to scare people from speaking out about wrong doings,to silence and shut down debate. We must not be silenced. We must call out all injustice. Thank you for writing this article.
This is a good piece from Barnaby Raine because it develops the cynical exploitation of antisemitism in terms of ‘power and the economy’. Until more people understand what’s at the root of this confected crisis we will just go on failing at symptoms not causes.
Plenty to chew on here, though I’m confused by Barnaby Raine’s comment about Israeli protection of LGBT groups: I’d regard that as a redeeming feature of the Israeli regime.
Those who say that attacks on the rich are by definition anti-Semitic are very cunning: they manage to make an anti-Semitic point, stereotyping Jews while pretending to defend us.
I wonder how Keir Starmer sees me, too. Does he think I’m such a snowflake, someone so ill-disposed to the Palestinians and so alert to the possiblity of any slight against my people, that I’ll fall for his humbug about RLB sharing a Jewish conspiracy theory? What an insult to me, as well as to Maxine Peake and RLB.
I heard an interview with Neil Coyle MP on Radio 4 PM 25/06/2020 ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000k8fr starts at 38.00 mins) wonder what JVL members think about his description of JVL and Maxine Peake and gives a classic example of how this episode is being exploited in the LP to attack JVL.
Great article Barnaby, having a PhD would identify you as an expert and as such you can be ignored as instricted by that intellectual giant, Michael Gove.
Keep writing, keep educating us, keep fighting for truth. Stay safe.
I feel uncomfortable with my scant academic knowledge on this complex subject. Yet I feel deeply uncomfortable with this knee-jerk sacking and this article has helped me understand why. I want to support my friends who are Jews, but I find the Palestinian situation distressing. Thank you.
Excellent article.
I didn’t hear the interview on the PM Programme with Neil Coyle that David Roderick Joyce refers to above, so I’ve just listened to it. He calls for Maxine Peake to be thrown out of the LP and for JVL to be proscribed for “denying there is a problem” and then basically calls all of us racists and antisemites.
I so agree with your assessment. To me it appears that goalposts (definitions of what As is) have become very flexible and can be pulled into any direction deemed useful. Also I feel that the concept of AS is being used and kicked about like a football. If you want to get rid of someone in politics these days in a more ‘acceptable’ manner, just accuse them of AS. RLB is yet another politician/MP who lost her job, yet another Labour MP who expressed her esteem for Nancy Astor who was known as expressing As views and openly sympathised with nazism in the last century, is still on the front bench without any repercussions.
To me that is hypocracy and dishonest.
It appears that the AS accusation appears to be mainly aimed at leftwing socialist members/MPs of the Labour Party.
Illuminating
Thank you Barnaby… This is such an excellent article crammed with truths…’The wording in the Telegraph was telling. “Extreme anti-racists” hate Jews, they said. That might seem a bizarre claim, until you reckon with this philosemitic image of Jews as the protected minority of European civilisation. They need that image. It gives a thin progressive hue to their deep anxieties that the wretched of the earth – in the 1990s it was Muslim youths in France, after 2015 it was a social-democratic electoral project, now it’s black protesters on our streets – constitute a threat to the white world order. Jews are conscripted as the alibi of white society… ‘ I left the Labour Party since the sacking… I’ve had real concerns for a while with their avid, relentless and yet somehow unspeakable approach on AS…
Again JVL reaches me. Explains the unexplainable to me. Thank you
It is somewhat puzzling that Long Bailey chose to get involved in this issue given a)the lack of evidence to link the murder of Floyd to Israeli training and b) the urgent issue of the Trump/Netanyahu misnamed “peace plan”. It seems a pity that she then refused to take down the offending treet when asked to do so by the party leader – surely a breach of party discipline – followed by going “off line” for several hours. And now we have lost the benefit of her leadership on education. What a shame.
This article fully exposes the attempt of many in the British Labour party to silence people on the treatment of Palestinians by Israel through invoking the term Antisemitic whenever Israel racism is mentioned. No wonder most voters deserted the Labour Party as it is no longer a party for Justice.
Congratulations to Barnaby Raine for a brilliantly succinct and thoughtful analysis. The characterisation of attitudes of the UK elite towards Jews is particularly apposite:
“Once they saw us as dangerous Semites infesting European society. Now instead we are their favourite pets: heroic colonists in the Middle East and successful citizens in the West”
though 100 years ago Winston Churchill famously managed to combine both attitudes in a single short text
https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Zionism_versus_Bolshevism
I would however add one word of caution to Barnaby’s characterisation above by replacing the word “pets” by “disposable pets”.
No one seems to acknowledge that Semites and Anti Semites are not born, they are socially produced.
Along with the nonsense of nationalism what we must counter is their cause, mistaken identity.
Our true identity as family is demonstrated by our DNA, proving we all share the greatest of all great grandparents, with that recognised and acknowledged, we will all live as family.