In the latest of a series of damaging embarrassments, Britain’s Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has suspended two Labour MPs for anti-Semitic comments. Naz Shah and Ken Livingstone were suspended for suggesting Israel should be relocated to the United States, and suggesting that Hitler was a Zionist.
Labour, Corbyn, Shah and Livingstone each have a history of anti-Semitic incidents. In February, Legal Insurrection reported on the Oxford University’s Labor Club (OULC)’s anti-Semitism scandal, including the resignation of its President and a slew of complaints by other OULC members. While the Conservative government ordered an investigation, we wrote in February:
The devil’s in the details, though. Even the good news that the government will investigate apparently rampant anti-Semitism on UK campuses has strings attached. Former OULC member and leader of the national Labor Party Ed Miliband called for current Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn to “personally look into” issues at OULC.Corbyn, in turn, is very much part of the problem. He calls Hamas “friends” and has met with leaders from both Hamas and Hezbollah. In September he spoke to the Labor Friends of Israel and refused to actually say the word “Israel.” Corbyn’s website still peddles the malicious lie that “Israel must lift the ongoing siege of Gaza.” The idea of Corbyn investigating anti-Semitism by a Labor-ite is insulting.
Things have only grown worse.
Naz Shah defeated George Galloway to win the seat in Parliament from West Bradford last year, and it was was seen by many as a victory, since Galloway is an inveterate anti-Semite. In the event, Shah has proven no better. Shah went on Twitter during the 2014 Gaza war:
It was only revealed now that, as the New York Times reports:
In 2014, before being elected, Ms. Shah endorsed a Facebook post displaying a graphic that showed Israel’s outline superimposed on a map of the United States. The map was under the headline, “Solution for Israel-Palestine conflict — relocate Israel into United States,” with the comment, “Problem solved.”The post suggested the United States had “plenty of land” to accommodate Israel as a 51st state, allowing Palestinians to “get their life and their land back.” It said Israelis would be welcome and safe in America, while the “transportation cost” would be less than three years’ worth of Washington’s support for Israeli defense spending.Ms. Shah added a note suggesting the plan might “save them some pocket money.”
The times also noted:
. . . another Labour legislator, Lisa Nandy, called on the party to suspend Ms. Shah pending an investigation. “There is a real problem for the Labour Party if we don’t look like we are taking these things seriously,” she told the BBC. “But this is not just about the impact on the Labour Party, there is also the question here about what is the right thing to do.”In Parliament later in the day, Prime Minister David Cameron said it was “extraordinary” that Ms. Shah was still a full member of Labour’s parliamentary party and also urged suspension. “Anti-Semitism is effectively racism and we should call it out and fight it whenever we see it,” he said.
After initially resisting, Corbyn relented and suspended Shah yesterday.
Today, Corbyn suspended Ken Livingstone, another Labour MP and the former Mayor of London. The immediate impetus was Livingstone’s attempt to defend Shah in an interview:
You heard that right: Livingstone defended Shah’s relocation plan by saying “When Hitler won his election in 1932 his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.” Livingstone went on to accuse Israel of war crimes, blamed the Israel lobby, and suggested Israel should be treated like Iran or Iraq.
But Livingstone also has a history of anti-Semitism:
He was suspended from office as London mayor for four weeks in 2006 for comparing a Jewish journalist to a concentration camp guard – a comment he continues to be unrepentant about, saying it was a “fuss about nothing”. The suspension was overturned in court.
In March, the Daily Mail reported:
A group of very senior members of the Jewish community in London met Mr Livingstone earlier this month to discuss his support for and links with a radical Islamist cleric and the television station that makes propaganda in Britain for Iran.In a leaked letter to the Jewish Chronicle – more of a communique really – they said Labour’s London mayoral candidate used the words Zionist, Jewish and Israeli as if they meant the same thing and that his language was close to ‘classic anti-semitism’.They added: ‘Ken, towards the end of the meeting, stated that he did not expect the Jewish community to vote Labour as votes for the left are inversely proportional to wealth levels, and suggested that as the Jewish community is rich, we simply wouldn’t vote for him.’
At some point, you can no longer point to this MP and that MP, or this group of Labour supporters and that one. Anti-Semitism, masquerading as anti-Zionism, has infected the left and its Labour Party.
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