Believe it or not, I often refresh my brane by looking (through my impartial spectacles) at arguments diametrically opposed to my own. We all know how easy it is to slip into the habit of confining yourself to your own circle, if only to snaffle new currency to revitalise your tired old arguments.
So many articles have appeared about the Chakrabarti fiasco that I wasn�t even going to add to the verbiage, but on the other hand, I didn�t think hiding in a cupboard would look much better. I�ll leave the disastrous launch to everyone else, incriminating videos and all, and stick to the other disaster - the allegedly inadvertent insult within Corbyn�s speech.
I followed a link (via Guido) to Labour List, a website I wouldn�t ordinarily read.
I admit I only skimmed Shami�s report, but from a quick perusal I got the impression that it was largely autobiographical. Also, it seemed to me that she was trying to create a new, cast-iron definition of antisemitism of her own, a task that has defeated many better qualified minds than hers. Was it necessary to reinvent the wheel instead of looking at the recent antisemitic outbursts and analyzing the underlying zeitgeist in the Labour Party? I thought the inquiry into antisemitism in the Labour Party was originally set up to investigate antisemitism in the Labour party. It seems to have migrated, transmogrified into something rather different.
However, John Mann MP, a supporter of Israel, praises Shami�s work, which surprised me.
I wonder if he was flattered that she followed several of his recommendations. Maybe it got better as it went along?
In my view, banning the word "Zio� will only generate a substitute euphemism.
Shami recommends that: �Labour members resist the use of Hitler, Nazi and Holocaust metaphors ..� which looks almost as though she believes that the temptation to use such terms is practically irresistible - you know, naughty but nice! And they say Jeremy was never a great wordsmith.
Shami has taken full responsibility for Jeremy Corbyn�s infamous comparison between Israel and Islamic State. She thinks it�s merely a re-worded version of a paragraph in her report. By way of an explanation a commenter called Peter contributed this:
�And just in case anyone is in any doubt, below is the substantive point that the author of the report made, and which the Labour leader was referring to (the below text is taken directly from the report):
�To suggest, for example, that all or most Jewish people are wealthy or interested in wealth or finance or political or media influence or less likely to be of the left or likely to hold particular or any views on the subject of the Middle East is a classic stereotype. Equally, to doubt the political or national loyalty of a Jewish person on account of their actual or perceived connection to fellow Jews elsewhere around the world including in Israel is (unwittingly or otherwise) to tap into an age-old antisemitic conspiracy trope that will inevitably and understandably leave your Jewish friends, neighbours or fellow activists feeling vulnerable, excluded and even threatened.....
Similarly, I have heard Muslims (en masse) being derided as inherently sexist and/or antisemitic and potentially of split or dubious loyalty in the context of Party membership and political participation. Once more, they are sometimes expected to explain and condemn the actions of Isis or particular terrorist acts before, or more vehemently, than anyone else. This is simply not fair.�
Let�s look at that statement.The first paragraph is all well and good. Peter may be right. Shami was doing what Shami does, bringing an imaginary Muslim equivalence into all matters related to Jews and Judaism. It�s her way of �testing� an argument, and it throws us back onto the insoluble, catch 22, circularity of the status quo. (Antisemitism is racism. Islam promotes antisemitism. Accusing Muslims of antisemitism is racist.)
People like Shami believe every example of antisemitism must be compared with a similar example of �Islamophobia� in order to test its validity.
To Shami this is fair, but supporters of Israel and critics of Islam see it as constructing an unnecessary and inappropriate moral equivalence. That is one reason why Shami was the wrong person to conduct this inquiry.
As for Jeremy Corbyn�s reworded version of Shami�s essay, well, what can I say.
�Our Jewish friends are no more responsible for the actions of Israel or the Netanyahu government than our Muslim friends are for those of various self-styled Islamic states or organisations.�
If you�re going to create an analogy to explain the unfairness of mindlessly associating one thing with another, you could take (as in this case) �Jews� and �Israel�, and compare them to two other benign things that are often unfairly linked. For example:
�Our Jewish friends are no more responsible for the actions of Israel or the Netanyahu government than our feathered friends are for....the fashion for fascinators�
Well, I couldn�t think of a good example, but you see what I mean. Why was it necessary to bring Muslims into it at all? And after all, the analogy he presented pitted "Jews" and �something bad� against "Muslims" and �something bad�. Not all of us agree that Israel is something bad, or, for that matter, that the Israeli government is doing anything more than protecting its citizens from something that is extremely bad.
And it all leads back to the BBC and the way it has successfully demonised the Jewish State till it automatically becomes �something bad� in the minds of the gormless and the uninformed, and when Jeremy Corbyn speaks as if that is a given no-one bats an eyelid.
Somewhere online, in a comment or in an article, it was pointed out that only Corbyn and his strategists could have turned the launch of a serious report about antisemitism in the Labour Party into another bog standard promotional event for the politics of Jeremy Corbyn. Good point. They�re unstoppable.
Sorry for the tardiness and belatedness of this post. Others have tackled it before me but let�s go ahead anyway. The other parliamentary event that took place this week was the Home Affairs Select Committee enquiry about the rise of antisemitism.
This was chaired by Keith Vaz, who pronounces antisemitism with an ��e�, as in �antisemetic� .
Watching Keith Vaz being forensic and painstaking in that laboured manner of his is very annoying, and it makes him look a bit thick. He began by making Jonathan Arkush define antisemitism, dragging it out as though he�d never heard of such a thing in his life. It was quite an emetic, in fact. He used attitudes to �the right to self-determination� as a kind of litmus test.
For all the laborious, misdirected unpickings of what is and what isn�t antisemitism, those familiar, lazy, defamatory generalizations were left hanging in the air.
This enquiry left an overriding impression of unchallenged falsehoods and inaccuracies, ranging from the ubiquitous �What Israel is doing to the Palestinians� to Ken Livingstone�s �700,000 Palestinians who were driven out of their homes illegally at gunpoint� - not to mention the factthat Hitler supported Zionism because he was keen to rid Germany of all its Jews by deporting them to Palestine (before he went mad and killed 6,000,000.)
What was the point of it all? Does it relate to Shami Chakrabarti�s ill-conceived chairmanship of the inquiry into antisemitism in the Labour Party, which is morphing into an enquiry into all kinds of racism including Islamophobia? It happened; therefore it was.
MPs who were sympathetic to Jonathan Arkush and hostile to Ken Livingstone still appeared to be in agreement that condemnation of Israel was understandable because of �What it is doing to the Palestinians�, but they seemed to think that the elusive affliction known as antisemitism was shameful and a real menace. Nobody seemed to wonder why Israel kept on �doing� stuff to the Palestinians. It was unanimous. Everyone, including forensic examiner Keith Vaz agreed that criticism of Israel was not antisemitic.
Mr Winnick:
The last question I want to ask is arising from what the Chair asked you about Israel. You accept entirely that criticism of Israel is perfectly compatible with non-racism, and that it is not connected automatically in any way with antisemitism. The criticism of Israel, which could be very strong indeed�some, indeed myself would say that it is often very much justified�is not antisemitic.
The most interesting sound-bite and quotable performance arose from Chuka Imunna�s dramatic speech, somewhat marred by his consciousness of the need to preempt the inevitable trolling. That says a lot about the atmosphere in Corbyn�s current Labour Party, and is a tacit admission that antisemitism is the very thing that is motivating the predicted trolls.
�You know what? I will get trolled incessantly after this exchange. I don�t care��
He still let Livingstone get away with his appalling lies, if indeed he recognised them as lies.
The speech, for which the Chairman admonished him - �This is not an opportunity to make statements� - began:
�I just say this to Mr Livingstone. You were born in my constituency and you went to school in it. I and many other Labour colleagues of all backgrounds and faiths campaigned not just once but twice for you to be Mayor, and I think you campaigned for me. You did help reduce poverty, you did help reduce inequality and you did improve the housing situation in our capital city.�
It�s all very well to set out a couple of carefully selected examples of Mayor Livingstone implementing Labour values, thereby excusing his party�s support for Livingstone�s mayoralty. An aspiring Labour rising star could do no other. But it does look hypocritical to have overlooked, as Umunna seems to have done, Livingstone�s record of ( amongst other things) courting such disreputable people as Qaradawi and the disgraced Lee Jasper.
�But you are not a historian. You are a politician. And by needlessly and repeatedly offending Jewish people in this way you have not only betrayed our Labour values but betrayed your legacy as Mayor because all you are now going to be remembered for is becoming a pin-up for the kind of prejudice that our party was built to fight against. That is a huge shame and it is an embarrassment. �
That is if one overlooks the other (aforementioned) memorable contributions to the legacy of this particular pin-up boy.
Ken Livingstone is not alone in his attitude to Israel, Jews and his malignant version of history. Why do they so readily believe (and I�ve heard it from others) that (in 1948) 700,000 Palestinians were driven out of their homes at gunpoint?
Chuka Umunna could offer no substantive challenge to this falsehood, thus considerably weakening the whole enquiry.
Ken Livingstone: No, no. It is a catastrophe in the sense that the deal done was for two states and a division. The tragedy is�and it is the legacy that still leads to violence today�that 700,000 Palestinians were driven out of their homes illegally at gun point. The Prime Minister of Israel said, �The old will d
Mr Umunna: Sorry, we only get a small amount of time to ask you questions. Either you thought it was wrong, and it was a great catastrophe, or not. Yes or no?
Ken Livingstone: It was right to say that we will create a haven for those Jews who wish to go there. It was not right for the Israeli Government to expel�Mr Umunna: Ken, was it a catastrophe and was it wrong or not?
Ken Livingstone: It was not wrong to create it. It was a catastrophe to expel at gun point 700,000 Palestinians from their homes.
Mr Umunna: Sorry�that was not the question I asked.
Over the page: Transcript. Umunna and Livingstone.
Mr Umunna:
Our party�s constitution says that the Labour party is a democratic, socialist party and that we seek to create, among other things, a community where we �live together freely in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect�. Those are among the values to which I subscribe. Would you subscribe to them, too?
Ken Livingstone: Absolutely.
Mr Umunna: It also says in our constitution that, in order to achieve those values, we seek to create a society that �delivers people from the tyranny of�prejudice�. Would you agree with that?
Ken Livingstone: Absolutely.
Mr Umunna: As has already been said, well over 6 million Jewish people were killed during the Holocaust at the behest of Hitler. Do you believe that conflating Zionism with Hitler�s views, which you did in the Vanessa Feltz interview, causing obvious and foreseeable offence to Jewish people, runs counter to the spirit of solidarity and respect towards others that our party�s constitution demands of us?
Ken Livingstone: Telling the truth cannot do that. I have had Jewish people stop me on the street�a disproportionate amount; hundreds of people have stopped me on the street�to say, �We know what you said is true.� Disproportionately those people have been Jewish because they know their history.
Mr Umunna: The public will be the judge of that. I want to understand your motivations in making the comments that you have, and I am not totally clear what the answers were when the Chair asked you earlier about your attitude towards the Jewish state. For the sake of clarity, do you believe in the right of Jewish people to self-determination?
Ken Livingstone: Yes.
Mr Umunna: Do you believe in the right of the State of Israel to exist? Then why did you say in an interview with the Arabic TV station, Al Ghad Al Arabi, �The creation of the State of Israel was fundamentally wrong.�? In the same interview you said, �The creation of the State of Israel was a great catastrophe.� If you believe in the right of Jewish people to self-determination and the right of Israel to exist, how can you say those things?
Ken Livingstone: What I am pointing out is that a majority of survivors of the Holocaust did not want to go to Israel. They wanted to be absorbed primarily into America or Britain. I think it was a mistake not to give them that choice. The simple fact is, you will recall, that when the State of Israel was created the first Prime Minister urged all America�s 5.5 million Jews to leave America and come and live in Israel. One fifth of one per cent. did in 15 years. That is the tragedy.
Mr Umunna: So, do you stand by the statement that the creation of the State of Israel was fundamentally wrong and a great catastrophe? Do you stand by what you said, yes or no?
Ken Livingstone: It is a catastrophe in the sense that�
Mr Umunna: So you do.
Ken Livingstone: No, no. It is a catastrophe in the sense that the deal done was for two states and a division. The tragedy is�and it is the legacy that still leads to violence today�that 700,000 Palestinians were driven out of their homes illegally at gun point. The Prime Minister of Israel said, �The old will die and the young will forget.� They have not. There are still 3 million in refugee camps.
Mr Umunna: Sorry, we only get a small amount of time to ask you questions. Either you thought it was wrong, and it was a great catastrophe, or not. Yes or no?
Ken Livingstone: It was right to say that we will create a haven for those Jews who wish to go there. It was not right for the Israeli Government to expel�
Mr Umunna: Ken, was it a catastrophe and was it wrong or not?
Ken Livingstone: It was not wrong to create it. It was a catastrophe to expel at gun point 700,000 Palestinians from their homes.
Mr Umunna: Sorry�that was not the question I asked.
Ken Livingstone: But that is the answer I am giving. That is why we have not got peace in the middle east now.
Mr Umunna: Can I ask you another question?
Chair: Order. Mr Livingstone, would you wait for Mr Umunna?
Mr Umunna: Could I just move on a little bit from this and ask you whether you disagree that those who do not recognise the State of Israel or its right to exist are antisemitic?
Ken Livingstone: You cannot simply say because somebody is opposed to the creation of the State of Israel they are antisemitic.
Mr Umunna: Hang on. If a person thinks that the State of Israel does not have the right to exist, you do not regard that as antisemitic.
Ken Livingstone: Many of them will be antisemitic, some will not. Let�s not forget we promised the Arabs an Arab Government at the same time we promised the Israelis. We lied.
Mr Umunna: I don�t need a history lesson; I just need a straight answer.
Chair: Order. Let Mr Livingstone finish his comments.
Ken Livingstone: The British Government lied. It told the Arabs that if you fight on our side in world war one, you will be given a Hashemite kingdom. Instead, we split it all up between France and ourselves. We created a legacy of conflict that is still there today.
Mr Umunna: James Berry just talked about some of this: the various different things that you have said completely separate to what the State of Israel is accused of doing, or may or may not have done. Look at the catalogue: in 1982, the cartoon depicting the Israeli Prime Minister as a Nazi officer; in 2005, calling a Jewish reporter a Nazi concentration camp guard; in 2014, a �Newsnight� interview where you suggest that Jewish people are unlikely to vote for the Labour party as they get more wealthy; and all your various utterances recently. Would you make the same kinds of comments about black people�yes or no? Please just answer the question.
Ken Livingstone: You can�t have a yes or no answer on this. Look at the result of the election last year�
Mr Umunna: I am not asking you what the result of the election was. I am just asking you whether you would make the same comments in respect of black people.
Ken Livingstone: You asked me for my views about why Jewish people vote as they do. Last year
Mr Umunna: That�
Chair: Order. Mr Umunna, you must let the witness answer.
Mr Umunna: But he is not answering my question.
Ken Livingstone: You don�t like the answer�that is different.
Mr Umunna: You haven�t answered the question.
Chair: Order. I am chairing this meeting. Mr Livingstone will answer and then Mr Umunna will ask again. It is for the witness to decide what they want to say.
Ken Livingstone: We went into the election led by a Jewish leader. Over 60% of British Jews voted for the Conservatives and 22% voted Labour. We can argue about why they did and did not then. I think 50 years ago that would have been a very different figure. Look at the facts�
Mr Umunna: Aren�t you just stereotyping a whole group of people?
Ken Livingstone: I am not stereotyping; I am looking at the data published by the pollsters. Look at the facts of my record as Mayor. In seven of the eight years I was Mayor, antisemitic incidents were reduced. The only year they were not reduced was 2006, when in the aftermath of the invasion of Lebanon the figures did not move down�they did not go up. In the rest of Britain and across Europe, according to the Community Security Trust, they doubled. Whatever you may say, my period as Mayor saw a reduction in antisemitic incidents. In Boris Johnson�s first year, I think they went up 50%. So you might not agree with what I say, but the legacy of what I have done should bear some study.
Chair: Mr Umunna, a final question.
Mr Umunna: I just say this to Mr Livingstone. You were born in my constituency and you went to school in it. I and many other Labour colleagues of all backgrounds and faiths campaigned not just once but twice for you to be Mayor, and I think you campaigned for me. You did help reduce poverty, you did help reduce inequality and you did improve the housing situation in our capital city. But you are not a historian. You are a politician. And by needlessly and repeatedly offending Jewish people in this way you have not only betrayed our Labour values but betrayed your legacy as Mayor because all you are now going to be remembered for is becoming a pin-up for the kind of prejudice that our party was built to fight against. That is a huge shame and it is an embarrassment. You know what? I will get trolled incessantly after this exchange. I don�t care�
Chair: Mr Umunna, please put your question if you are putting one. This is not an opportunity to make statements. What is your question? Is there a question for Mr Livingstone?
Mr Umunna: I am just making a comment since he will not answer any of my questions.
Chair: Mr Livingstone, would you like to reply?
Ken Livingstone: All I would say is, if you look back, many of the things I have said have been controversial. When I defended lesbian and gay rights in 1981, we were denounced. When we said we needed to negotiate with the IRA, we were denounced. The simple fact is, show me what I got wrong in those times. I was just prepared to challenge the bigotry of the day and I am prepared to challenge bigotry today.
Mr Umunna: I will challenge your bigotry, too.
Chair: Order. I am sure Mr Umunna will put those views down and write to you and you can reply to him, but it is not�
Ken Livingstone: I will take him out for a meal�that will be easier.
Craig�s tour de force below is a hard act to follow, but since he�s currently off the radar he might have missed the Vice News documentary that I hear has gawn viral on t�interweb.
He�s probably the only one on the planet who hasn�t seen it, so on the off-chance that he logs in to see if there�s life in the old blog yet, I�m posting it once again.
Actually, that might not be the only reason I�m posting it. A certain amount of malice may be involved.
Anyway if that doesn�t dislodge the last remnants of Labour loyalists who were stubbornly clinging to the sinking ship, nothing will.
Who, in particular, has disaffiliated? David Aaronovitch has, voluntarily, Rod Liddle has, compulsorily, and perhaps even the BBC has, ideologically.
Corbyn said (of the BBC)
�There is not one story on any election anywhere in the UK that the BBC will not spin into a problem for me. It�s obsessive beyond belief - they are obsessed with trying to damage the leadership of the Labour Party and unfortunately there are people int the Labour Party that play into that.
Jeremy Corbyn's communications chief claims the Labour leader's preparations for Prime Minister's Questions are being leaked by his own staff.
In a fly-on-the-wall documentary, Seumas Milne said the "annoying" leaks from his top team were handing an advantage to the Conservatives.
Mr Corbyn also criticises the media coverage of his party.
Mr Corbyn also hit out at the BBC over the local elections, claiming "the whole narrative" had been that "Corbyn's going to lose" and saying an unnamed group of political commentators were "shallow, facile and ill-informed".In other footage, the leader's aides discuss their attempts to ensure he dresses smartly and watch him pose for a succession of photographs with supporters.Mr Corbyn is also shown reacting to the suspension of Ken Livingstone from the party after the former London mayor invoked Hitler in a defence of an MP's comments about Israel.
Any responsible voter should find a way of keeping Jeremy Corbyn�s obnoxious views well away from Downing Street
On the night of the local elections the leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, went to make a speech in a pub that appeared to have a Cuban communist theme. He was filmed there, beneath the pictures of Che and Fidel, holding forth to the kind of people who still go to Cuban-themed pubs.
The next day the film-makers interviewed him. �I am not a traditional party leader,� he told them. �I do things in a rather different way.� And then added: �Some people are slower at learning things than others.�
Are they not? I cannot find a phrase for the telling of an inadvertent truth that everyone else but the teller can see while trying to say the opposite, but perhaps a �Jeremyad� will cover it. Indeed, the half-hour film on Corbyn, released yesterday, begins with a Jeremyad. In a car on the phone to his communications chief, Seumas Milne, Corbyn discusses a Guardian article worrying about Labour�s antisemitism problem. �Utterly disgusting subliminal nastiness� are the words Corbyn uses. About the article, not about the problem.
�That stuff about calling Hamas and Hezbollah �friends� was not some cheap shot or shallow debating point. It is Corbyn�s �just talking� rebuttal that was unconvincing.
�Before his election as UK Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn pressed for a boycott of Israel and called on the British foreign secretary at the time to ban Israeli politicians from entering the country, newly released letters from 2010-2015 show.The letters, sent to then-foreign secretary William Hague, were published following a Freedom of Information request to the government.
Writing to Hague in February 2012 about East Jerusalem, in particular house demolitions in the Silwan neighborhood, Corbyn, who was a backbench MP for Islington North at the time, urged trade sanctions against Israel.
�Israel�s current actions and victimisation of the people of East Jerusalem is an abomination that is totally illegal,� he wrote. �Surely the only logical way forward here is to take concrete action to penalise Israel via the most obvious method.�
�There is clearly no time to lose to take actions via the EU-Israel Association Trade Agreement. Let the suffering of the Palestinian people no longer be so familiar to us that all we do is �make representations� when there are tools at our disposal that our government and other governments are choosing to ignore,� he wrote.
In another missive to Hague from February 2013, Corbyn wrote that he had just returned from a visit to the Gaza Strip, during which he was asked if Britain �would stop allowing Israel�s criminal politicians to come to our country,� ensure that the BBC �portray Palestine fairly,� and work �to end the siege of Gaza.�
�Had I not been working on three of these goals I�d have hung my head in shame,� Corbyn wrote. �There was no possible explanation I could give as to why our governments had made no progress in support of such crucial aims.�
Just talking to Hamas and Hezbollah and inviting them to the HoC for tea whilst aggressively lobbying for �Israel�s criminal politicians� to be banned from visiting the UK. Actively working for peace? I think not.
But of course the most revealing aspect of this internet hit is that it allows the sheer incompetence of the Corbyn regime to speak for itself.
Corbyn�s charmless personality, his reptilian countenance, his slow-wittedness, the amateurishness of his entourage and most of all his mean-spirited response to an innocuous article in the Guardian by Jonathan Freedland about antisemitism in the Labour Party.
�Utterly disgusting subliminal nastiness, you know. He�s not a good guy at all. He seems kind of obsessed with me, you know?�
We saw a shambolic committee of incompetent sycophants struggling to orchestrate a strategy for PMQs. We saw Corbyn ineptly failing to score despite the open goal he�d been handed. On a plate with a cherry on top.
As someone already said somewhere, this was The Thick of It, minus the laughs. Not just a car crash, but a full blown pile-up.
No blogging time for me for a few days, but I recommend Sarah AB�s article on Harry�s Place about John Humphrys�s bungled interview with Jackie Walker. I wholeheartedly agree with Sarah AB:
�He did not do a very good job. She was introduced as having been suspended for comments she made about Israel. Although a discussion of Israel prompted her remarks, this isn�t an accurate summary of the reasons for her suspension. He also failed to pick up on the significance of the term �chief financiers� or take issue with the dubious nature of some �historical� accounts of the relationship between Jews and the transatlantic slave trade.
Frustratingly, Humphrys� line of questioning, even though it failed to probe the real problems with what she said, was open to a charge of unfairness. He claimed she�d said in effect, �let�s get over the Holocaust� (not really) and then said that there was no need for her to �invoke the Holocaust� (when she wasn�t the first to mention it in the original Facebook conversation), and then claimed she implied �the Jews had it coming, almost�.�
The BBC is very slow to pick up on this kind of thing. By the time they�ve decided it�s �newsworthy� people like Walker have had plenty of time to conjure up a defence and even convince themselves of its righteousness.
The problem is that John Humphrys and co. are jacks of all trades and masters of none. He obviously hadn�t been properly briefed. Most of your all-purpose anchors and presenters are out of their depth when dealing with any serious subtlety and complexity. Time constraints as well.
Listeners who hadn�t already read about this incident must have wondered what all the fuss was about. �Reinstate the poor woman,� they�d be shouting at the radio ... �leave her alone�.
Humph has probably done Corby�s Antisemite Party a great service; hope they�re grateful. Probably recruited a few extra BDSers as well.
