A leaked report submitted to the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) by the Jewish Labour Movement reveals the stunning breadth and depth of the anti-Semitism accusations lodged at the UK Labour Party.
The EHRC, the United Kingdom’s official regulatory body devoted to promoting equality and human rights, announced that it would be launching an investigation into the Labour Party following a series of formal complaints alleging anti-Semitism.
The leaked report assigns hefty blame on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn for “making the party a welcoming refuge for anti-Semites” since he became leader in 2016. The opening statement of the document declares, “The Labour Party is no longer a safe space for Jewish people or for those who stand up against anti-Semitism.” The report comes just one week before UK voters head to the polls.
Containing 70 testimonies from current or former members of the party, the report goes into damning detail about the level of alleged depravity plaguing Corbyn’s party, showing the dark underbelly of a problem Corbyn and other Labour members have repeatedly minimized or dismissed.
One respondent alleged over twenty incidents of anti-Semitic abuse at local party meetings, including being called, “a Tory Jew,” “child killer,” and “Zio scum” and being told that he’s “good with money,” “to shut the f*ck up, Jew,” and that “Hitler was right.” He also stated he had been threatened with physical violence.
Another party member discussed having breakfast with delegates who were unknown to the member. “They quickly agreed that Jews were ‘subhuman’, ‘didn’t deserve to be allowed to define what anti-Semitism is, and should ‘be grateful we don’t make them eat bacon for breakfast every day’.” A parliamentary candidate stated that he had seen a party member demand a Jewish councilor “going home to count his money.”
Another respondent described how Labour’s South Tottenham constituency “objected to 25 applications for membership from the ultra-orthodox Jewish community, and required home visits to these prospective members’ houses.” The report notes, “This was not a requirement for other prospective members.”
The student Labour movement seems to have adopted the tactics of its parent organization. According to the report, Jewish members of the Oxford University Labour Club reported various forms of intimidation, “such as mocking of the Jewish victims of a terrorist attack in a Paris kosher supermarket, calling Auschwitz a ‘cash cow,’ and repeatedly calling Jewish students ‘Zio.’” The report noted that this behavior was not isolated to Oxford Labour students.
However, perhaps the most damning aspect of the report is the allegation that much of this behavior is a result of Jeremy Corbyn himself. The report alleges, “The Party’s attitude to anti-semitism is inevitably influenced by signals from its leader.” The report then goes on to detail instances in which, “Mr. Corbyn himself has repeatedly associated with, sympathized with, and engaged in antisemitism,” and then describes the way the processes in place have failed to shield Jewish members from anti-semitic behavior.
Corbyn’s own behavior includes penning the forward to a book “which argued that banks and the press were controlled by Jews.” Corbyn details the book’s “brilliant” analysis of “the pressures that were hard at work pushing for a vast national effort in grabbing new outposts of empire on distant islands and shores.”
Corbyn also has a penchant for fraternizing with and propping up a famed Holocaust denier. He has “supported Paul Eisen, a self-professed Holocaust denier,” and attended various events hosted by the organization that Eisen leads. The report also notes Corbyn’s reverence for the terrorists who murdered Israeli Olympic athletes in 1972—in 2014, Corbyn was pictured laying a wreath next to the grave of one of the terrorists.
But as the respondents detail, the Party has been abysmal at processing complaints related to anti-Semitism. “The party has singularly failed to implement appropriate complaints and disciplinary systems to protect Jewish members from antisemitism.” The report lists the very points of failure on the part of the party, including “inadequate definitions of antisemitism,” “action only being taken in response to public pressure,” “excessively lenient sanctions” and “the appointment of plainly inappropriate personnel within the system.”
In addition to failing to address complaints of antisemitism adequately, the report also describes the manner in which Labour’s public response has been categorically awful. In reaction to accusations of anti-Semitism, Labour has engaged in a mix of “denial,” “discrediting of victims,” “defense of perpetrators,” “cover ups,” and “active victimization of those calling out antisemitism,” all of which are complementary activities to the party’s “hostile institutional response” described above.
The report enumerates that much of Labour’s atrocious response mechanism can be traced to Corbyn himself. In 2016, Corbyn denied that anti-Semitism had risen within the party under his leadership, and there are no shortage of instances in which Corbyn himself has defended or coddled those accused of anti-Semitism, even discrediting those who make the accusations. In one of his more infamous instances of defending Jew hatred, Corbyn himself “asserted that allegations of antisemitism against Ken Livingstone were ‘coming from those who are nervous of the strength of the Labour Party.’”
As previously reported here, Livingstone was infamous for alleging that Adolf Hitler supported Zionism. When his remarks resulted in suspension, he later appeared on Iranian national television on Holocaust Memorial Day to discuss how the Holocaust had been manipulated to oppress non-Jews. It is worth noting that Livingstone was not expelled from the party for his behavior, but instead resigned.
And the rot spreads throughout Corbyn’s staff. One respondent noted how “senior members of Mr. Corbyn’s team expressed that calls for action in respect of Mr. Livingstone were part of a ‘Jewish conspiracy’ and a ‘political smear campaign.’”
The report makes it clear that the environment within the party has perpetuated the notion that claims of anti-semitism are simply nefarious political machinations of the right. Indeed, the Party has permitted “speeches on its conference floor to the effect that antisemitism claims are part of a conspiracy, and that JLM [Jewish Labour Movement] are colluding with the right wing media to manufacture and exaggerate such claims.”
The party has expressed no compunction about promoting members who engage in anti-semitic abuse to positions of authority. Consider the case of Alan Bull, who was selected as a candidate, despite having “posted content including Holocaust denial and online antisemitic abuse.” Another example is provided by the case of Apsana Begum, who shared posts involving “Zionist masters” and articles by infamous anti-Semite Ken O’Keefe. Just seven months after complaints were made against in her in February of 2019, she was selected as a Prospective Party Candidate for Parliament.
If the allegations are true, the report, in all its staggeringly disturbing detail, provides a window in the level of depravity that has seized the UK Labour Party. For several years, the UK public has been subjected to claims that such incidents are invented or worse still, a machination of the British right, designed to take down the Corbynistas. As the report staunchly indicates, the smear is coming from Labour itself against those who dare to call out its moral bankruptcy.
Media Keeps Mum When It’s Jew-Hate From Progressives
What is particularly distressing about the story of UK Labour is that you will not see Western media outlets, particularly in the United States, cover these episodes with any repeated substance. Given the UK is one of our closest allies and the alleged social justice bend dominating our media, this propensity is nothing short of bewildering.
There is likely a reason for this behavior. Unless the American media can pin anti-semitic events on the right, they have little interest in covering them, as noted by Bari Weiss of the New York Times earlier this week. Take for instance, a piece published by the Washington Post in 2017 arguing “Jeremy Corbyn’s success is a model for progressives.” Or CNN’s political “analysis” of Corbyn published less than two weeks ago, which includes an article titled, “Jeremy Corbyn was once a radical outsider. Now he has the chance to transform the UK.” Yes, perhaps. According to the report, 47% of British Jews are “seriously” considering leaving the UK, should Corbyn be elected prime minister. Transformative, indeed.
Worse still, a strange catharsis has seized the American Left generally when it comes to discussing Jeremy Corbyn, in part because several prominent members of the Democratic Party have fawned over the aspiring prime minister (such as prominent “squad” member Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and 2020 Democratic contender Bernie Sanders) . The same people who have screamed incessantly for three years that Trump is a “Nazi” are virtually mum on the issue of anti-Semitism when it comes to UK Labour.
As noted by Weiss, “These now-regular occurrences [of anti-Semitism in UK Labour] come as there’s a decent chance that the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will become the next prime minister — giving anti-semites the imprimatur of a major Western government.”
And it’s possible this gross phenomenon will progress at the continued behest of the American Left. Indeed, we have our own phenomenon of anti-Semitism proliferating within the ranks of the American Left and to little outrage from progressives, our self-appointed moral arbiters. Just yesterday, Adam Kredo of Washington Free Beacon reported that Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-MI, was the keynote speaker for an event “hosted by a Muslim organization that traffics in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and that counts among its supporters many who seek Israel’s destruction.”
An additional disturbing data point remains in the fact that a majority of House Democratic leadership have a history of meeting with rabid anti-Semitic hate preacher Louis Farrakhan, and some members of the House even openly applauding him.
In 2015, Rep. Danny Davis of Illinois spoke to a crowd at the 20th anniversary of the Million Man March, an activist gathering Farrakhan organized. “I want to commend and congratulate minister Louis Farrakhan for his visionary leadership,” Davis said. It should be a national tragedy when an elected member of Congress commends the moral equivalent of David Duke. But as our own David Marcus of The Federalist has noted in the past, “Hatred of the Jews is nuanced.” Apparently, so.
Indeed, there are no shortages of instances in which Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, has responded to accusations of anti-Semitism against Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) with nothing more than a mere slap on the wrist.
The rise of Jew hatred on the left is not a product of immoral spontaneity, but the result of years of playing footsie with far-left Marxist causes that bear an inordinate amount of bigoted baggage. The Women’s March is a prime example of such a festering movement. Democrats devoted themselves to the nominally “feminist” movement, despite indisputable warnings of rabid anti-Semitism within the upper echelons of the organization. Like the accusations lodged against UK Labour, the accusations were hand-waved away until the proof became a PR crisis for the DNC.
Unless American Democrats are able to blame anti-Semitism on members of the right, they display a staggering level of clumsy apathy that would make a disinterested moron blush. But as the flailing descent of UK Labour shows us, it may behoove American Democrats to pay heed before it is too late. Not only is it flagrantly incorrect, it’s cheap and easy to call Trump a Nazi. As we see with both UK Labour and the American Left, it’s far harder to call out Jew-hatred when the true knock is coming from within.
