I am writing in response to the article from my Labour colleague in regard of the Left and its problems with anti-Jewish members and policies.
I happen to believe that there are big problems, I have noted that no Jewish groups dare to attend Tolpuddle any more, and local One World , anti-racist events with the Council fail to display an Israeli flag(for obvious reasons).
I have been vilified and hissed at when I bring up the issue at local politial meetings but will continue to do so. Keeping silent about it, only encourages the omerta and contrived silence about this big elephant in all our council meeting rooms, library and interfaith fora locally.
I think of it as anti-Jewish prejudice, anti-Semite to me includes an anti-Arab context that I have yet to see. My view is that Israel was only pleasing or tolerated by the left when it had avowedly socialist kibbutzim, and vehemently removed any Jewish faith content. When the social context changed, the left failed to support the kibbutzim when the likes of Begin, Sharon etc-and now Netenyahu-took political control and the Gulf War of 1991 polarised the region.
Since then, it has been seen as an American stooge, a capitalist rat run by the lazy left. That such a small country was able to excite such bile and hatred as a proxy to curry favour with Islam and anti-capitalist forces tells me that all this is disporportionate. Israel was mandated by the UN in 1947, becoming a small and independent nation on May 14th 1948. Pakistan is very much a parallel young country created by mandate and has no issues re legitimacy. Why is Israel so demonised? The UN agreed it, it is small and a democracy-and continues to outperform nearly all the rest of the world in regard of health care, technology, research, arts and culture and science, Yet it is singularly picked on and held to ludicrous standards that no other nation on earth is expected to be judged by. It is NOT Saudi, China, North Korea or Pakistan. Yet we give them a free pass by comparison.
Anti-Semitism(or Jew baiting pretexts like much of what we see from the left) exists when it is mocked, falsely compared with apartheid, when it is judged uniquely by contrived impossible standards and is singled out for abuse and boycotts, unlike far nastier regimes. Jews are a race, a nation and a religion. Islam is a faith. Yet Islam is left alone by the Left out of cowardice and a hope that Iran was unusual in how the pliant left would end up. Jews are no longer safe to go to all our universities, and I have never seen more jews willing to make a stand at what is happening to them all around Western Europe. And now sadly in Britain. The Left has made this respectable and culturally safe. Hitler was a national SOCIALIST-and as long as Jews feel that the left that they created(Marx, Trotsky, even Milibands)-you will have to live with that, unless you reimagine Israel as a nation state mandated by UN law, just after 6million Jews had been exterminated all over so-called progressive continental states. If you allow Pakistan its self-determination but reject Israels, if you allow murals like that one in Tower Hamlets(with Lutfur Rahman removed-and he`s no friend of Israel), then your inconsistencies and double minded hypocrisies and partialities will render you unfit to govern this country. Last chance saloon now.
Alicia Sinclair
