Is support for Corbyn ignorance or something worse?
Rowan Dean: 'Many Jews have now fled the British Labour party. But if Corbyn wins, how many will start contemplating fleeing Britain itself?'
THIS week the people of Britain may choose to elect an openly antisemitic government.
The absolute horror that has haunted Jews in their nightmares since 1945, an antisemitic Western government, could occur in Britain through the ballot box.
Although I believe and hope that Boris Johnson will win this election and I believe Nigel Farage’s Brexit party will help rather than hinder that process the reality has to be faced up to. And it is a hideous and truly frightening reality. In alliance with the Scottish Nationalists, Jeremy Corbyn could actually form government.
The depressing conclusion of this campaign is that accusations of antisemitism levelled against Jeremy Corbyn and his repeated refusal to deal with them or properly apologise to the Jewish community has been greeted with at best indifference and at worst has actually increased Labour’s popularity among certain communities.
For this, every single British leftist should hang their heads in shame.
In particular, those luvvies, top movie stars, pop stars, celebrities of one sort or another, who have chosen to either gloss over Labour’s chronic antisemitism or to deny it deserve the utmost condemnation.
Lots of big names in Britain are urging people to vote for Jeremy Corbyn. I can assure you none of their movies, albums or comedy sketches will be finding their way under my Christmas tree this year.
As the UK Daily Telegraph warned in an opinion piece last week, a vote for Labour on Thursday is a vote for an institutionally antisemitic party led by someone the writer accuses of being an antisemite.
This came after horrific details emerged from the leaking of the Jewish Labour Movement’s submission to the Human Rights Commission which along with a slew of damning evidence against Corbyn himself concluded that the British Labour Party is, and I quote, no longer a safe place for Jewish people.
However, as another writer pointed out, the public’s fatal ignorance about antisemitism is letting Labour get away with this.
But is it just ignorance, or is it worse?
Is it, as another writer claims, simply that the public doesn’t care about the Jews and antisemitism? Or is it even worse, as some fear, that disgracefully the scandal itself is attracting antisemitic voters to the Labour Party?
Indeed, the progressive left in Britain and around the world have spent many years demonising Israel, demonising Jewish leaders and successful business people, deliberately conflating anti-Zionist commentary with centuries-old blood libels and other sick antisemitic garbage and at the same time portraying Jews and/or Israel – they mix them up as they feel like – as the enemy.
They’ve done it so successfully that much of the public, particularly the young, and sadly many young Jewish kids, are confused and no longer have sound moral clarity or guidance on these complicated issues.
So pop stars and movie stars who should know better call for the election of a government that reeks of Jew-hatred.
The same poisonous cocktail simmers away beneath the surface in the hard left and its cheer squads in the media here in Australia too. Endless bias against Israel. Subtle denigration of Jews and snide references to their influence. Support and blind sympathy for those who have sworn to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. The BDS movement. Sending taxpayers’ money to sinister Palestinian outfits through corrupt United Nations’ bodies. A blind eye to antisemitism within Islam including the worst excesses of Palestinian terror. Antisemitism cunningly shrouded in seemingly innocent disguises.
Lord Falconer of Thornton, a former Labour justice secretary, told The Times, “I have the gravest, gravest concerns in the light of the antisemitism problems” and Sam Matthews, the former acting director of Labour’s governance and legal unit in the UK, has said he contemplated suicide because of the hideous antisemitism he found within his own party.
Many Jews have now fled the British Labour party. But if Corbyn wins on Thursday, how many will start contemplating fleeing Britain itself?
Rowan Dean is co-host of Outsiders on Sky News and editor of The Spectator Australia. This is an edited version of an editorial he delivered on Outsiders on December 8.
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