Labour Party and anti semitism

Your views Anniebach and Lemongrove on a split in the Labour Party. Do you think that with these latest revelations about the growth of antisemitic attitudes in the LP and the latest report about Corbyn's public support of Hamas and anti Western comments on Syrian TV, that this could be the the last straw for the Labour Party moderates . What do you think?

I really don’t know Allyg, I have discussed it with some MP’s, some labour activists, my LP and party members .

Party members many take little notice, i think for some anti semetism doesn’t trouble them , like the corbynites here , denial.

Activists many are driven by - a labour government regardless

I can't repeat what some MP’s have said

I am sticking with the party untill certain MP’s are deselected or leave , but my feelings for Corbyn with his lies , hypocricy and what I believe is his drive to turn the Party into a trots Party I now only have contempt

When it comes to the next election I think we will have a repeat of the 1983 election, voters do not want communism

We can only live in hope Allygran!

Allygran

Apology accepted.

To be fair I have been waiting for this mistake to happen as it is obvious both usernames are similar. It is fair to say POGS and PECS can easily be mixed up .

As for your post :-

" Do you think that with these latest revelations about the growth of antisemitic attitudes in the LP and the latest report about Corbyn's public support of Hamas and anti Western comments on Syrian TV, that this could be the the last straw for the Labour Party moderates . What do you think? "

I would say that again these are discussions held on GN for 2 years and they are not ' latest reports' either on Gransnet or in the media.

So to put it bluntly unless John McDonnell goes on manoeuvres. ( I always said he could ) Corbyn is now and always has been in a safe place . From the start of the Jeremy for Leader/Momentum formation the Parliamentary Labour Party MP's have been shunned and they knew that from the start, they learnt very quickly !

Remember the Corbyn 'Hostile' list?
Remember the denials of calling for 'deselections'
Remember the unprecedented 'resignations' from his Shadow Cabinet.

I could go on.

This outright condemnation of some people and the worship and lauding of others is exactly what causes wars and conflicts. At the time of the IRA activism there were catholic people (British people) denied civil rights, murdered by police and generally treated as second rate citizens. The priveleges enjoyed by the Royal Ulster Police were not only disgusting they were inflammatory. So before posting about IRA horrors consider that had the British government behaved properly and ensured that civil rights were instituted in N Ireland the IRA would never have become so active.
There is much invective in some of the posts about the activities of Hamas and Hezbollah. It should be remembered that Hamas is the elected representative of the Palestinian people in Gaza and a political party. To have conversations with such people is essential if a peaceful solution is ever to be found.
As for Hezbollah it was founded as a direct result of the invasion of Lebanon by Israel. So much as we may condemn it the responsibility for its origins rests with them.
There has been much written about how Israel is a small country threatened by its Arab neighbours, yet Israel is in fact sometimes described as a "Mini military super power" both because of the amount and standard of weaponry it possesses and the number of soldiers it can field in any conflict.
In fact some of the posts on here have illustrated perfectly why there is support for the Palestinian people and why some of that carries over into anti-semitism. There is anger and prejudice on both sides. There are Israeli Jews who hate and despise Arabs and do not believe they deserve a country or any rights just as there are Arabs who wish to destroy Israel. Only by recognising that these extremes exist on both sides but that most people would welcome a peaceful solution can the debate move forward. This whole concept of Me good, him bad should be left where it belongs in the school playground!

Most kind of you to explain the anger of the IRA trisher, someone will find it interesting I am sure. Both my sons in law’s families are from Ireland, R.C. one has a family of many many generations who lived in Derry, they witnessed Bloody Sunday. We need to remember too the English people , Birmingham pub bombings, 21 killed, 128 injured. Harrods bombing 6 killed 90 injured , Bristol a shopping district 17 injured, too many to list, these victims crime ? Living in England, going to a pub for a drink, Christmas shopping. Let’s not forget there were innocent victims in N I and England.

As I have family on both sides of the Irish border, I hardly need a lecture on the ‘Irish Problem’ from a Corbyn supporter who has probably never ever set foot there trisher
Typical of the extreme left wing to blame the British Government for everything, Corbyn and friends did, Abbott even said at the time of the IRA ‘that any enemies of the government were friends’ !
Hamas and Hezbollah have much blood on their hands, as do the IRA.
You, like others ,are allowing dislike of the State Of Israel to colour your judgement.

Trisher, surely talks with Israel and Palestine is the way forward not calling Hamas friends and snubbing Israel?

The Momentum backed LP would no doubt spout exactly the same excuses that you have done trisher.

trisher I appreciated your measured and thoughtful post.

At the Peace Museum in Guernika there was a lot of testament from Catholics and Protestants in NI who had suffered dreadfully explaining their process of reconciliation on a personal and a national level as well as testament from Israeli Jews and Palestinians who wee working hard to appreciate each others point of view, learning that they had much in common as humans. It was very humbling.

I agree lemon, devotion to Corbyn does seem to blank out some facts for some

Ally The LP have left it too late to do anything now,( a split) the right time was in the first year when Corbyn was elected.
With all efforts being directed to leaving the EU, it would be the wrong time to do anything like that now in any case.
They have no real choices now but to stick things out for the next few years.If Corbyn is beaten at the next GE that would mean a new leader, if he won, he would only serve one term
(If that) I think once in power they would be planning on replacing him.

Measured and thoughtful, but wrong IMHO.

Until LP members accept there is a problem within ( anti-semitism) which comes from the extreme left of the party,
Those attitudes/rants/ insults to Jewish people will continue to grow.
Until JC grows a pair and actually tackles the anti-Semites head on, those problems will continue to grow.

Allygran as the risk of being accused of talking in clichés etc. consider the idea that ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’. Your assumption is that these people who are given ‘a platform’ are indeed the bad guys. I’m not sure I’d be so certain.

Was Mandela, as one example, a terrorist or a freedom fighter?

Anyway that’s my last word on this thread. I find that such phrases as ‘devotion to Corbyn’ utterly meaningless and puerile, except inasmuch as they reveal a ‘black and white’ mind set closed to any reasonable discussion. No point.

Today's Woman's Hour interview with Margaret Hodge left me in no doubt about the severity of the crisis within the Labour Party in the unstable hands of Jeremy Corbyn. I advise both sides in this argument to listen to her and then make up your minds.
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bcddz7

I don't want to prolong the 'you said/ he said ' style of this thread BUT posters on here have complained that JC only listens to 'one side'... Margaret Hodge is only one side of this and whilst she is a valid voice she is not the only one.
For example, there has been no voice for Palestinians at all as far as I can see and, as many of the accustions of anti Semitism arose because of the perceived support for Palestinian Human Rights, it might be balanced to hear from that perspective too, to help understanding of why some people are not supportive of the current Israeli government.

What good advice annodomini!

PECS some of what you say makes sense to me, there are always two sides to every story. However, that is how we got into the antisemitism in the Labour Party on this thread because the only voices were against the Jews and not just the current Israeli Government but Israel very right to exist.

As for the Palestinian voice, my response to that would be that Jeremy Corbyn has often shared a platform with Hamas, Hezbollah and spoke out in support of the PLO and PLA amongst other Muslim Arab groups, who have a stated intention to deny the Jews the right to the State of Israel. It is an interfada of long standing with historical and religious dimensions stretching back more than 2000 years.

Now what I was asking as were other on this thread was not about the Palestinian Arab Muslim voice but where was the Jewish Israeli voice, who was speaking for them in the antisemitic Labour Party of Jeremy Corbyn. All those that did and do are persecuted, threatened with deselection and shouted down to the point where they are forced into silence. Now as you implied and I said earlier there are indeed two sides to every story.

You ask an interesting question "why some people are not supportive of the current Israeli government". In an earlier post I put up an article that might help to answer your question from a Jew a young man and a Labour supporter:

^Alastair Thomas writes:

It is not a new problem either. Hannah Arendt, the political philosopher who fled Germany in 1933, wrote that in 19th–century Berlin a Jew could only be accepted into wider society if he rejected his own people’s values and beliefs. He ‘had to stand out — as an individual who could be congratulated on being an exception — from “the Jew” and thus from the people as a whole’.
Strange as it seems, I find the same attitude prevalent in the left today. Jews are expected to apologise for Israel’s wrong-doings, oppose any right to a homeland and condemn the capitalists who rose from Jewish communities. If you do this, then you get to be a ‘good Jew’. But this idea of the ‘good Jew’ is very dangerous. It legitimises and excuses general anti-Semitism. Only a ‘good Jew’ is deserving of protection against hate speech; the rest of us bad Jews can go hang

Corbyn is often described as a nice guy, and I’m sure he is in person. But it’s no coincidence that the anti-Semitism epidemic within Labour really kicked off when he became leader. He appealed to the young, and it’s the young these days who refuse to see Jews as an authentic minority. For them, Zionism is now a synonym for white supremacy, neoliberalism and western colonialism. As the years pass, the historical association changed. So now, for my generation, Jews are not oppressed. They are the oppressors.
Part of the problem is that millennials — especially millennial socialists — find self-reflection very hard. We tweet and post constantly in response to our emotions.

It’s almost painful for net-natives to pause for thought before doing so. It’s this inability to reflect that allows my Corbynite friends to ignore and even defend the most egregious of sins committed in the name of socialism. At university, I met a young Corbynite who wanted to rename the Socialist Society ‘-Jezbollah’. It never crossed his mind that this was hugely offensive.
Why would it? St Jeremy attends rallies that include Hezbollah flags and offers words of solidarity to anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists. This his fans accept as reasonable behaviour^^Nice guy or not, he has turned terrorists into freedom fighters in the eyes of the young and hate preachers into outspoken activists.

Corbyn’s apology spoke of the ‘pockets’ where anti-Semitism exists — but the problem is the party as a whole. Time and time again, Jewish Labour members are threatened and abused at local meetings, conferences or online, while the ‘anti-racists’ turn away in wilful ignorance. To them, Jews are simply not a minority worth caring about As Jewish protestors demonstrate in Parliament Square to declare ‘enough is enough’, it is likely that young Corbynites will continue to ask ‘So what?’

This is the danger, that being antisemitic in the Labour Party becomes acceptable. Those who don't yield to being apologists for being either Jews or supporters of Israel will be excluded as we are already seeing, hence this thread.

Sorry some of this is from a previous post, PECS, but you may not have read it, and it makes an insightful point.

Hi OldMeg, yes I would consider that. Your point deserves further consideration:
‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’. Your assumption is that these people who are given ‘a platform’ are indeed the bad guys. I’m not sure I’d be so certain

This statement is two questions. Let's take a look at "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter". I think it is even more than that Meg and you use a great example of Nelson Mandela. It wasn't man that changed him from a terrorist to a freedom fighter, it was time and distance from the terrorist acts, which were vile, read the history.

In 1961 Nelson Mandela went underground, earning a reputation as the “black pimpernel” while evading arrest as commander of the ANC’s armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation). ^He was imprisoned for life in 1964. www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/winnie-mandela-dead-madikizela-nelson-wife-life-story-obituary-anc-football-club-soweto-apartheid-a8285581.html

Enter the eventual fall guy Winnie Mandela. She was an activist not a terrorist, and through her eventually the ANC became a political party to be reckoned with, once that happens then terrorist, become legitimised.

She made Nelson Mandela, she turned him into a living martyr for a political organisation rather than a bloody terrorist indiscriminately killing and maiming civilians. By the time he came out of prison, he was hailed the natural leader of a political party, which with some not very legitimate methods, indeed some terrorist and murderous methods Winnie had created from a terrorist group and developed into a political organisation which he stepped into, he then of course, this very “nice, kind” man ditched her as soon as he could so that none of the s—t stuck to him.

As with all terrorist groups and let's just define what makes a terrorist group.
^Indiscriminate violence, murder and maiming of civilian population and civil policing, they operate outside the Law. What makes a freedom fighter they use indiscriminate violence, murder and maim civilian populations and civil policing, politicians etc, they operate outside the Law. There is no difference.

How do they become legitimate, they move from violence to poltical activism and then into legitimate political power over time.

Just as it is reported that Hamas is wishing to follow in the steps of Hezbollah who have already become a Political organisation taking on legal status. In doing this of course there is always the risk of a split in the terrorist who wish to remain violently active and those who wish to fight through the ballot box. As with the IRA and SinnFein. Only relatively recently: the last 20 year has the IRA been disbanded.
There has been some research carried out to establish a legal definition for what is a terrorist and what is not, take a look at this:

A correct and objective definition of terrorism can be based upon accepted international laws and principles regarding what behaviors are permitted in conventional wars between nations. This normative principle relating to a state of war between two countries can be extended without difficulty to a conflict between a nongovernmental organization and a state. This extended version would thus differentiate between guerrilla warfare and terrorism. The aims of terrorism and guerrilla warfare may well be identical; but they are distinguished from each other by the targets of their operations. The guerrilla fighter's targets are military ones, while the terrorist deliberately targets civilians. By this definition, a terrorist organization can no longer claim to be 'freedom fighters' because they are fighting for national liberation. Even if its declared ultimate goals are legitimate, an organization that deliberately targets civilians is a terrorist organization.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1561426022000032060

There is a lot more to read in the research and it is worth clicking on the link to read it.
The second question about who are the “bad guy’s”?

I hope this helps to determine who the ‘bad guy’s” are. I am pretty certain that once a group indiscriminately attacks ‘soft’ targets, civilian’s or civil police or political figures etc, then they are the bad guys. They cannot call themselves ‘freedom fighters” by the research definition. No matter their cause, the end does not justify the means, ever.

In the case of Arab Muslims from the Lavant area of the Middle East it would seems that Hezbullah has legitimized itself into a Political organisation, whilst Hamas is still struggling with it’s terrorist roots. The PLO also transformed into a Political organisation whilst forming the PLA, the Palestinian Liberation Army, who are larger in numbers and arms than Israel.
There are a dozen or so more Arab Muslim terrorist groups in the Lavant area from Palestine, Lebanon etc.

Please don't leave the thread. We can discuss without falling out. This has been a really good thread, civil and extensive. Amazingly so many issues from the thread title without taking us too far off track.

That makes sense Lemongrove. Not good times for the LP moderates, it must be Hell for them.

allygran do you think the IDF ever attack a 'soft target' ?

Allygran1 you stated that the PLA are larger in number and arms than Israel. Could you tell me where thei information come from? I have looked and most sources agree with Wiki At its largest, the PLA comprised eight brigades with a total of some 12,000 uniformed soldiers. They were equipped with small-arms, mortars, rocket launchers, wheeled BTR-152 armored personnel carriers and T-34/85 tanks. However, the PLA was never deployed in the form of a single fighting unit for the PLO, but instead battalion-size elements were utilized as an auxiliary force by its controller governments.
Absolutely nothing compared with the weaponry -including satellites and remote control weapons, not to mention the numbers of soldiers, Israel commands.
Wouldn't it be nice if the posters on this thread could actually consider my posts on the basis of a life time of belief in peace activism and non-violence instead of attributing my views to some sort of Corbyn worship.
Annie the extent and connections of your relatives always astounds me. But yes I have visited Ireland, researched Irish history and had a dad of Irish decent who was stationed in Belfast during WW2 and was fired at by republican supporters. So I think I see both sides of the discussion. Unlike some.

trisher I empathise with that view. I have stated that I do not tolerate anti Semitism, that I am disappointed in JC leadership style but it is,all overlooked. I just add this short list to illustrate how it is possible to overlook what people say/do if it does not fit your narrative.

Where can that list be found PECS?