Returning from a week at Labor’s annual party conference, David Collier reports on the pervasiveness of the “Palestine solidarity” movement, which entails at best a sheer hatred of Israel and at worst undisguised anti-Semitism. Especially illustrative is Collier’s characterization of a booth run by the far-left Stop the War Coalition: “‘No to Islamophobia’ reads a sign behind the table; ‘Yes to Anti-Semitism,’ reads the leaflet on the table.” He continues:
In the Labor mainstream, “Palestine solidarity” is being confused with a movement of peace. This is a dangerously false appraisal that has allowed for [acceptance of] maximalist Arab political demands to become the basis for acceptance into the Labor fold.
Thugs . . . are acting as enforcers, where anybody who is not toeing this maximalist line is placed on a list in order to be threatened with expulsion [from the party]. At the conference, both the Jewish Labor Movement and Labor Friends of Israel were met with calls for expulsion. At the Labor Friends of Israel event, there were anti-Israel activists actually taking photos of the members of parliament who were present. . . .
The second event I went to was a launch event for a new “Jewish” group called Jewish Voice for Labor (JVL). . . . Having run through a list of those who say they attended, I would guess that perhaps only 10 to 15 percent were Jewish.
I don’t know for sure, because I didn’t get inside. I became a Jewish Labor member who was denied entry by Tony Greenstein [a leader of the British BDS movement] and Jacqueline Walker [a prominent figure in the Labor party who was briefly expelled last year for her anti-Semitic remarks]. I thus experienced the chilling situation of being turned away from a meeting of Jewish Labor members by someone who had claimed that Jews were chief financiers of the slave trade. . . .
The problem here is that the group JVL becomes a useful tool for racist bigotry, . . . because anti-Semites can hide behind them. They become legitimizers of the virulent [and] widespread anti-Semitism inherent in . . . Palestinianism. “If Jews compare Jews to Nazis, why can’t we?”
Read more on Beyond the Great Divide: http://david-collier.com/antisemitism-labour-party/