Ken Livingstone

KL has always made controversial and outrageous remarks .

I think that is valid criticism. After all if we all started editing Shakespeare to rid it of all the stereotypical/disparaging characters where would it end? Feminists removing questions about Kate from Taming of the Shrew, Muslims taking out Othello questions? Scots absolutely refusing to do Macbeth?

Iam64,

In previous posts I've referred to Jewish schools' being 'failed' by Ofsted. One of the reasons was that one of the schools removed the questions about Shylock from the English Lit GCSE they gave their pupils. :-(

grumppa,

I agree that it provides balance. If I'm honest, I don't really know what I make of any of it, although dj's link to OpenDemocracy is worth a read. It shows how all sorts of contradictions can be true at the same time.

As far as the Electric Intifada article is concerned, it does in fact support gossip and rumours I'd heard (admittedly second/third hand). I've also read in other sources about the back-biting and 'politics' of the Oxford University Labour Club. Being students, they take principles very seriously and it appears there has been conflict between Blairites and Corbynites for some time. Somehow or other supporters of both Palestine and Israel have become involved, but they didn't start the claims that Corbyn is antisemitic, which started before Corbyn was even elected leader of the Labour Party.

Grumppa , Corbyn wouldn't seek an Ingram or Cambell, call this naive perhaps , I think it's his principles , he is an honest politician who wants to work with the people not PR teams .

JessM 's summary of the antisemitism in the UK during the 1930's is correct. The reasons so many Jewish people became involved in money lending is similar to the reasons they became tailors and traders. They were excluded from owing property in much of Europe and had to earn a living.
The suggestion up thread that Shakespeare be banned as antisemitic is equally offensive given the history that led to characters such as Shylock and Fagin. Studying those texts enables the stereotype to be discussed and challenged.

Granddaughter,

The State of Israel wasn't established until 1948. However, Livingstone is correct that there was a deal between Nazi Germany and the Jewish Agency in Palestine to send German Jews to the land which was then the Palestinian Mandate.

The historians are nit picking over the name.

grumpaIt isn't -it is just something to balance the other articles. But it is certainly worth a read.

May I ask why the Electronic Intifada, whose article is quoted in full by Jews for Jeremy, should be regarded as a more reliable source of objective information than any of the other links plastered all over this and other threads by Gransnetters seeking support or justification for their views?

More generally, it is clear that the anti-semitism theme is being used to attack Jeremy Corbyn. Of course it is; politics is a dirty game: look at Livingstone's record. But where is Corbyn's Bernard Ingham or Alastair Campbell?

Will that then give the Muslims to destroy others with impunity?

I really do not know enough about the subject to be very objectives, though I do know Livingstones actual words were inaccurate, in that Isreal did not actually exist in 1932.
My Mums brother was a Labour Councillors and though he is 92 he is very active, most karticulate and outspoken. When I asked him if he thought the Blairites were stirring it he was most emphatic in saying No.

He said Ken Livingstone is a publicity seeking individual with a massive ego who knows how to capture headlines, in his view it was Ken on one of his own ego trips that has generated all the backlash and knifed his pal Corbyn in the back.

He then made a very rude comment which I shall not repeat about those trying to blame the Blair supporters and what he described as the lethargic attitude of present leadership.

He also said the Labour Party over the years has often kicked itself in the teeth and then quickly recovered.

Just wondering how many would have to be ousted from the Tory party for being openly anti-Muslim?

I'm sure that one day soon, the destruction of Palestine and the Palestinians will be seen as the most dreadful example of ethnic and religious cleansing- and with the approval of a large part of the world's Governements.

POGS,

The Madagascar Plan wasn't hatched until after the beginning of the war (about 1940 I think) and was abandoned.

Livingstone was referring to the Haavara Agreement, which was an agreement in 1933 netween Nazi Germany and the Jewish Agency in Palestine to home German Jews.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haavara_Agreement

The British weren't keen to accept the new immigrants in Palestine and restricted the numbers.

I've read 'Mein Kampf' and Hitler had an irrational hatred of Jews even by the standards of the day. He didn't want them in Germany or Austria, but it's not clear what he wanted and he didn't care what did happen to them. The Final Solution (ie gas chambers) wasn't planned until much later, after the Nazis realised they couldn't starve all the Jews or shoot them individually.

Of course Hitler wasn't a Zionist and I'm still baffled about what point Livingstone was trying to make.

For centuries European Christians have been extremely antisemitic - so the conditions were there for the Nazis. Jews were excluded from most occupations - and many became jewellers and money-lenders - some, eventually, bankers and financiers.
You only have to read a selection of 19th century novels (Trollope etc) to understand why London has anti-semitic roots that run deep. Gambling and high-living were rife and young upper class men regularly got into serious debt. In order to raise loans they went to the money lenders - and these were Jews. Interest rates (if the novelists are to be believed) were high and debts were called in. Families were ruined. Huge estates were lost due to gambling debts. This would have inevitably fuelled hostility to the Jews amongst the ruling class. In the 1930s many upper class British people were supporters of Hitler (including, some say, the Duke of Windsor). Once Hitler started targeting Jews some tried to come to the UK and the doors were closed to adults. (The kinder transport was set up to allow children to come here unaccompanied because their parents were not allowed in).

Would Madagascar have been much worse than the British proposal to establish a Jewish homeland in Uganda/Kenya?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_a_Jewish_state

Reading POG's list of all those anti ex members of the Labour Party, leave aside the union, seems six equals a crisis

The London elections this week is between a Muslim and son of a Jew who happens to be married to a Rothchild and who is obviously anti Muslim as shown by his use of the 9/11 bus .

Lord Levi bestest friend of Blair was involved in this crisis claim - who is also a Jew - and the MP's POG's listed are blairites .

bags read the last link put on by Dj.

Read something this morning that said Hitler's proposed homeland (i.e. his supposed Zionist suggestion) for the Jews was Madagascar. And the SS would be in charge.

This sounds rather like a concentration camp sort of "Zionism" to me.

AND THE POOR MADAGASCANS!!!!!!! Bloody Hell!

Elsewhere someone wondered if Hitler was sane enough to be a mere Zionist when he wrote Mein Kampf. In 1923. That's nineteen TWENTY-three.

If these things are true, Hitler was never a Zionist. I expect Ken Livingstone knows all this. If he doesn't, he should.

Thanks for the interesting and detailed link, dj

It really doesn't surprise me. I had heard rumours via my daughter's friend, who is at Oxford, is Jewish and fairly left-wing, that this sort of thing was going on.

The link to OpenDemocracy is interesting too...and very true.

jewsforjeremy.org/2016/04/29/antisemitism-in-the-labour-party/

Not what you think by the title.

POGS

Just to repeat...it did NOT all start with the Oxford University Labour Club allegation!

Corbyn was being put under pressure even before he was elected as party leader.

The Jewish Chronicle’s August 12 editorial stated. “... in this rare instance we are certain that we speak for the vast majority of British Jews in expressing deep foreboding at the prospect of Mr. Corbyn’s election as Labour leader.”

You have come up the same tired cliches.

pogs your reply to my previous post moves the argument not one whit. You have merely re-digested links that we have seen over and over again. It would help to understand why you feel the need to continually to do so rather than moving the debate forward more constructively.

I have suggested a possible way forward, which you have ignored.
Others have put forward arguments and rather than addressing them

What's the difference between what Downing says and what Goldsmith says?

Does Corbyn have to suspend everybody that Cameron accuses of being extremist?
Why does it not work the other way?

What is the connection between Gerry Downing who was expelled over comments about 9/11 and anti semitism ?