Weaponising antisemitism is a busted flush

The mask has slipped. Backing Israel does not protect Jews.

By Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi

There is a unifying factor in virtually all media coverage, whether pro- or anti-Labour, of Keir Starmer’s Rochdale election fiasco – the assumption that the party remains in the grip of an antisemitism crisis bequeathed to it by Jeremy Corbyn.

Even as some commentators start to question whether Graham Jones deserved to be suspended for using the F word about Israel in the meeting that got Azhar Ali into such trouble, few of them doubt that Labour is – to quote a typical media line –  “engulfed in … scandal surrounding comments made about Israel and Jewish people.”

This assumption holds true even as use of the term “weaponisation” is spreading in ways that can only be helpful. It’s not so long since I and another member of my then CLP were suspended for using the word.  We were far from the only ones! Now Michael White, former political editor of the Guardian, declares himself “disturbed by weaponisation” of antisemitism, not only by “cynical Tory media against Labour” but also “by Labour Jewish activists demanding investigation of anyone present at Ali/Jones meeting who failed to challenge them.” One can only approve of White’s incredulous comment: “So now it’s a crime to listen? This is madness.” About eight years too late, but it’s good to see a media grandee calling out Mike Katz over the Jewish Labour Movement’s attempts to crush pro-Palestinian voices.

Nowhere did Labour’s factional cynicism find clearer expression than in the pronouncements of former Shadow Chancellor and current Good Morning Britain host Ed Balls, gleefully exposed by Michael Walker on Novara Media. Balls is very clear that his anti-Corbyn, pro-Israel, military loving friend Graham Jones should not have been suspended for saying “expletive Israel” or Brits who fight for the IDF should be locked up. But it was perfectly correct for left-wingers Kate Osamor and Andy McDonald to be suspended over pro-Palestinian remarks that were not antisemitic, so that Starmer could claim he was “clearing up antisemitism of the Corbyn period”.

Do not under any circumstances discuss what is or what it not antisemitism in a way that might educate people who are increasingly confused about it. Let’s just use it where it suits us to destroy our political adversaries. Even the Vatican is fair game, attacked by Israel after a senior cardinal criticised the carnage in Gaza and called Israeli action disproportionate. His Holiness Pope Francis felt obliged to apologise for criticising Israel in order to reaffirm “the special relationship between Christians and Jews.” This is the kind of absurdity that results from conflating Jewish people with the state of Israel, as required by the IHRA re-definition of antisemitism.

Let us now turn to Dame Louise Ellman, squirming at the end of an interview on Channel4 News when presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy obliged her to admit that she won’t tolerate any anti-Zionist views in the Labour Party – or presumably anywhere else either. A telling admission so soon after an Employment Tribunal ruled that anti-Zionism is a protected belief under the Equality Act 2010.

We should not forget Dame Louise’s role in the demonisation of pro-Corbyn Labour Party members, including Jews, in her former Liverpool Riverside constituency. Her admission on C4 should be seen in the context of the position taken by Labour Friends of Israel of which she is a leading member.

As the Gaza genocide unfolds, leading Jewish figures like Ellman, the Chief Rabbi and the writer Howard Jacobson, raise the spectre of a new Holocaust facing Jewish people – not at the hands of far-right neo-Nazis, but at the hands of people protesting for an end to the slaughter of Palestinians. This evident nonsense is rightly causing widespread outrage and disbelief. Is it making British Jews safer? Certainly not.

Even taking into consideration some dubious attribution of antisemitic motivation to much anti-Israel behaviour in the latest report from the Community Security Trust, there is no doubt that it demonstrates a real rise in anti-Jewish incidents. There is zero proof that much, or indeed any of these, originate with the anti-Zionist left. Conflating Jews with Israel and Zionism with Judaism, as Israel’s defenders habitually do, far from reducing anti Jewish sentiment and making Jews safer, is having the opposite effect. So surely it must be time to abandon the myth that fighting antisemitism requires unquestioning support for Israel and Zionism. Nor can it be used any longer to justify unrelenting opposition to Palestine solidarity.

A word to the media

While the Rochdale fiasco was unfolding, JVL received a number of requests for interviews from media organisations including Sky, Times Radio, Talk TV, GB News and LBC (not the BBC or ITV). The majority of requests were withdrawn, politely but with no convincing reason given. As Media Officer I wrote to those who had disinvited us to let them know what they were missing.

I’m one of many Jews who want Labour to win against the Tories but who are appalled the party is taking the same line as Sunak on Gaza.

Questions I want to see asked about the Rochdale fiasco:

1. Why is the Labour Party destroying its credibility among the many thousands of Brits who are horrified at what Israel is doing to Palestinians, by banning expressions of support for them? It’s not just Muslims who are appalled that our government continues to arm Israel while it is acting in defiance of a ruling of the world’s highest court, the International Court of Justice, to cease acts of probable genocide. Palestinians are Christian and secular as well as Muslim. Portraying Jews as threatened by expressions of sympathy for Palestinians is divisive and dangerous. The Labour Party’s refusal to criticise Israel will lose it votes in Rochdale from all sections of the community there – votes that George Galloway will be only too pleased to pick up.
2. Why does the Labour Party use its disciplinary procedures in such a blatantly partisan fashion (and why do my fellow journalists apparently not notice that it’s happening!)?

Azhar Ali was eventually dumped by Labour after reports of some unacceptable comments about Jewish media. But look how he was treated before that.

Azhar Ali was the chosen official candidate in Rochdale. He made an inept comment when he suggested Israel had allowed the Hamas attack to happen. “Allowed” is too strong a word, but there’s little doubt that warning signs were ignored, which is why so many Israelis are so furious with Netanhayu’s government. He could have explained that his remark was directed at the Israeli state and was not anti-Jewish. But he was forced to apologise and his apology was accepted by Labour.

What a glaring contrast with the treatment of two MPs on the Left of the party.

Andy McDonald was deprived of the whip last October when he made a speech saying he would not rest “until all people, Israelis and Palestinians, between the river and the sea, can live in peaceful liberty.” This is neither anti-Jewish nor anti-Israeli, and yet McDonald seems unlikely be allowed to stand for Labour again. This is sheer factionalism, nothing to do with fighting antisemitism.

More recently Kate Osamor MP commemorated Holocaust Memorial Day noting that it is a day to remember all victims of genocide, including in Gaza – as South Africa’s legal team explained to the International Court of Justice. This is not by any stretch of the imagination anti-Jewish, and yet Osamor is now forced to sit on the independent benches in Westminster.

Labour used to be a pluralist party. Starmer thinks he can make Labour electable by crushing internal dissent. By showing contempt for masses of people who are in sympathy with Palestinian men, women and children dying, starving and driven from their homes, he is losing Labour a lot of potential support