by Ben Cohen, JNS and Israel Hayom Staff
Any political party, civic association or educational institution that confidently believes itself to be immune from outbursts of crude Jew-hatred should regard the British Labour party's wretched experience with anti-Semitism as a cautionary tale.
U.K. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn Photo: Reuters
There
is, in Britain, a long tradition of holding public inquiries to
establish the facts and learn the appropriate lessons from a host of
social and political challenges. The range of inquiry subjects have
included, among others, child abuse, the use of nuclear power and the
2003 Iraq war. Some of these inquiries have had such a powerful impact
that they continue to be talked about decades later (which,
incidentally, is why many Brits expecting the present Brexit debacle to
one day enthrall them with the inquiry of inquiries).
In 1999, distinguished judge Sir William
Macpherson chaired an inquiry into the U.K. authorities' handling of the
brutal murder of a black Londoner, Stephen Lawrence. In April 1993, the
19-year-old was racially abused and then fatally stabbed by a gang of
white racists at a bus stop. Six years later, the case against his
murderers collapsed largely because of – as Macpherson's report put it –
a "a combination of professional incompetence, institutional racism and
a failure of leadership."
That concept of "institutional racism"
became firmly planted in British public policy and has since emerged in
other contexts. The most unlikely of these, given its political
traditions and its historic links with the Jewish community, has been
the British Labour Party, which now stands accused of "institutional
racism" in its approach to the anti-Semitism within its ranks.
Perhaps the most thorough and damning
account of Labour's transformation under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn
into an enemy of Jewish concerns, sensitivities and aspirations was
published last week. The author of the piece, Professor Alan Johnson,
has been an important figure on the British Left for many years,
advocating for a radical socialism shorn of the uglier characteristics,
such as the equal embrace of anti-Semitic beliefs and authoritarian
regimes that have come to define much of the Left today.
Many of Corbyn's critics argue that
anti-Semitism has always been a vocal presence in the socialist
movement. The antecedents of those left-wing activists who today
campaign for the elimination of Israel as a sovereign state depicted
Jews as an exploiting merchant class, the authors of both poverty in the
cities and irreversible decline in the countryside. But while Johnson
is well-aware of these malign traditions, his affront at their
prominence under Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party is rooted in
his conviction that anti-Semitism is utterly inimical to socialism.
It is from that perspective that Johnson
offers the following observation. "Anti-Semitism isn't just a prejudice
against Jews," he writes. "It is also a fear of their supposedly
tremendous (but always hidden) power to shape the world. In that sense,
anti-Semitism sometimes functions in some different ways to other
prejudices, other racisms." There are very few people on the Left these
days who grasp this critical point; ironically, that perhaps explains
why progressives and socialists continue to be attracted by explanations
of global injustice and inequality that are grounded on precisely this
"fear" of Jewish power and influence.
In the pages that follow, Johnson lays out
in excruciating detail the story of how an ostensibly enlightened,
pro-European social democratic party became a home for activists
trafficking in three distinct types of anti-Semitism. First is the
"socialism of fools" that equates Jews with exploitation. The statement
of one Labour activist cited by Johnson – to wit that the "Jewish
Zionist bourgeoisie, from Milton Friedman to Henry Kissinger" have
played a "vanguard role for the capitalist offensive against the
workers" – is a particularly pungent example of what this involves.
Secondly, there is the penetration of
"classic" or racial anti-Semitism. Again, Johnson provides numerous
examples of Labour supporters praising Hitler, invoking the figure of
Judas from the New Testament as an illustration of Jewish financial
machinations or defaming Jews in Nazi fashion as "parasites." And
thirdly, there is anti-Semitism presented as opposition to Zionism and
capitalism. "It's the super-rich families of the Zionist lobby that
control the world," one Labour activist tweeted. "Our world leaders sell
their souls for greed to do the bidding of Israel."
How does this garbage become
institutionalized? The Macpherson Report defined institutional racism as
the "collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate
and professional service to people because of their color, culture or
ethnic origin" – a failure manifested in the thoughtless, prejudiced and
hostile behavior that Stephen Lawrence's parents experienced from the
police officers investigating their son's murder, and perpetuated by the
refusal of individuals in key leadership positions to recognize the
problem of racism in the first place.
Johnson applies this same reasoning to the
dismissive, inherently suspicious response of Corbyn and his allies to
the numerous instances of anti-Semitism that have stretched from
Labour's rank and file all the way to certain members of parliament and,
many would argue, Corbyn himself. "To define the Labour Party as
institutionally anti-Semitic," Johnson writes, "is to say that it is not
currently offering 'an appropriate and professional service' to a
particular group, Jews; that this failure can be detected in the
'processes', 'attitudes' and 'behaviors' found in the party; that the
party has not 'openly and adequately addressed' anti-Semitism in the
party; and that these multiple failures are common enough to adversely
impact the experience of Jews, so that they are in various ways
disadvantaged (as those Jews currently leaving the party keep making
clear to the leader in their eloquent resignation letters)."
As grim as it is to say, we now at least
have an example against which other institutions where anti-Semitism is a
problem can be measured. Some American campus administrations might be
said to be denying a professional service to those Jewish students
assailed by anti-Zionism masquerading as anti-Semitism; the same could
certainly be said of the police and judiciary in France or Germany, both
of whom too often fail the victims of anti-Semitic hate crimes in those
countries. For those of us outside of the United Kingdom, if there is a
lesson to be gleaned from Johnson's analysis, it's that any political
party, civic association or educational institution that confidently
believes itself to be immune from outbursts of crude Jew-hatred should
regard Labour's wretched experience with anti-Semitism as a cautionary
tale.
Ben Cohen, JNS and Israel Hayom Staff
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/2019/03/31/institutionally-anti-semitic-the-british-labour-partys-cautionary-tale/
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