[Peace-discuss] News of the War Against Jeremy Corbyn

[David Green]

*PAJU (Palestinian and Jewish Unity) # 919 September 21st, 2018*

News of the War Against Jeremy Corbyn

by Thierry Labica

In recent months, the intense war waged against the left-wing leadership of
the British Labour Party over the last three years, has been on the
anti-Semitism front, which Jeremy Corbyn is now supposed to have unleashed
upon British society as a whole.



The three British Jewish newspapers, the *Jewish Chronicle*, the *Jewish
News* and the *Jewish Telegraph*, published a joint editorial announcing
that a government led by Jeremy Corbyn would represent nothing less than an
existential threat to the Jews of Britain, meaning for all intent and
purpose, that condemnation of the policy of the State of Israel invariably
means hostility to Jews.



The folly of this kind of imputation is not new, and it raises the
considerable risk of treating the horror of Nazi persecution and
extermination with opportunism and levity. It is further aggravated by the
chronic amalgam that would make all Jews, wherever they are, de facto
accountable for an Israeli annexationist policy under Trumpist protection.



The recent sequence, launched in March 2018, led to the focus on the
adoption, in the British Labour Party's rules of procedure, of the
definition of anti-Semitism formulated in a working paper of the
International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). The right-wing of the
Labour Party demanded the adoption in its entirety and, therefore, the
inclusion of examples of manifestations of anti-Semitism that would
effectively constitute criticism of Israeli policy and of the Zionist
project, despite the controversial adoption of Israel’s Nation-State of the
Jewish People Law, the annexations and massacres against the population of
Gaza, among others.



After weeks of pressure and blackmail of an exceptional virulence, relying
on ever more feverish speculations over such and such a phrase, tweet or
photo, the corpus is decidedly meager; the National Executive Committee of
the Labor Party, the majority of whom nevertheless Jeremy Corbyn, finally
adopted the IHRA definition in its entirety on September 4, 2018.

The bottom line is simple, the possibility, now very real, that one of the
major powers in the world may witness a supporter of the campaign for
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) brought to power, is a nightmare
for Israel’s leadership and its various supporters and allies. Contrary to
what some of the French press have reported in recent days, it is not a
controversy over support for anti-Semitism that has wracked the Labour
Party. Quite the opposite. A small, unconditionally pro-Zionist faction of
the Labour Party's parliamentary group has been in a panic since the July
2018 polls gave Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party a four to five point lead over
the Conservatives. Their deep anxiety is no longer about losing the
elections, but rather, winning them.

The smear campaign of an industrial proportion against the Labour Left,
with the very active collaboration of the British Broadcasting Corporation
(BBC) and the Guardian, is itself a symptom of a reactionary and xenophobic
norm taking form across Europe, of which the pro-Israel far-right today
offers the ground for a consensual convergence, for a communal and
generalized  Islamophobia and against all that could thwart this perfect
unity, starting with all those Jews who refuse the injunction to support
Israeli policies.



On a more positive note, the virulence of the assault on Jeremy Corbyn also
represents an admission of helplessness before the mass audience of the
Left in Britain. We can and must have a long debate about what Jeremy
Corbyn ultimately embodies. However, as far as his opponents are concerned,
things have been clear from the beginning. Jeremy Corbyn is he who is a
serious threat to be urgently drowned in a din of fabricated fear and
indignation.

*Adapted from:*
http://www.fischer02003.over-blog.com/2018/09/corbyn-contre-lobby-sioniste.html

*DISTRIBUTED BY PAJU (PALESTINIAN AND JEWISH UNITY)*

*WWW.PAJUMONTREAL.ORG <http://WWW.PAJUMONTREAL.ORG>*
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