The recently-reported Scotland Yard investigation into the Labour Party’s anti-Semitism is the “logical consequence” of scandals that have plagued the party since Jeremy Corbyn took over its leadership in 2015, Julie Lenarz, Senior Fellow for The Israel Project, argued Saturday in an essay published in the National Review Online.
The dossier, which was leaked, consists of 80 pages of allegations about the Labour Party’s anti-Semitism, including Holocaust denial. Statements attributed to party members include “We shall rid the Jews who are cancer on us all” and “Zionist extremist MP who hates civilised people about to get a good kicking.”
Moreover, the climate within the party has become so toxic that Luciana Berger, a prominent Jewish Labour MP, required police protection at the party’s conference this past September. Other incidents include the assault of a woman as she protested the anti-Semitism of the Labour Party, and the harassment of Labour MP John Mann, who was told by Corbyn supporters that his grandson was ill for opposing the party’s leader.
Corbyn, Lenarz charged, remains oblivious to his anti-Semitism. In an article he wrote this past summer, Corbyn claimed that he wanted to drive “anti-Semitism out of the party for good,” and also that he mourned “the killing of many unarmed Palestinian protesters in Gaza.” By mentioning both issues in the same article, Corbyn, “encouraging the very conflation — between British Jewry and the policies of the Israeli government — that is at the heart of many of Labour’s anti-Semitism scandals,” Lenarz observed.
“Once you understand that mindset,” she continued, “you understand why anti-Semitism in the Labour party has been nurtured and is now endemic at every level within the institution.”
In an incident which was recently reported, Corbyn, in 2010, accepted an invitation from Hamas, which has been designated as terrorist organization by both the United States and the United Kingdom. He considered the invitation to be “very nice of them.”
That Scotland Yard is investigating anti-Semitism in the Labour Party shows that “no one is above the law, no matter how hard the party tries to make the problem go away,” Lenarz noted.
She added that this message is especially important in the wake of the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre last month, which was committed by a man who believed that Jews had too much power. This is “the same conspiracy theory we hear from Islamists and Corbyn supporters,” Lenarz wrote.
“Hatred and intolerance should have no place in modern political movements, not on the left and not on the right,” Lenarz concluded. “No more mental gymnastics. No more whitewashing. No more excuses.”
[Photo: The Telegraph / YouTube ]