Corbyn at a pro-Palestine demonstration last month (BENJAMIN CREMEL/AFP via Getty Images)
A sentence I never imagined I’d write: I now think Jeremy Corbyn did Jews in Britain a favour. His time as Labour leader, between 2015 and 2020, was an extremely weird one for British Jews, but eye-opening all the same: I now think it prepared many of us for the Left’s reaction to October 7, whereas American Jews seemed far more surprised. The gaslighting (the attack didn’t happen), the defences (if it did, Jews deserved it), the hectoring moral superiority (how can you care about that when this is so much more important?): all that we saw after October 7, we had seen under Corbyn.
Now is not the place to rehash the many examples of Corbyn’s jaw-dropping attitudes towards Jews, never mind Israel, ideas some of us naively thought had died out with Stalin. Those are specific to Corbyn, whose political relevance is now, thankfully, in the past. But two general truths emerged from that era that would prove extremely relevant after October 7.
The first was how little people across the Left cared when Jews pointed out the obvious antisemitism they saw in the Labour Party. In 2018, 86% of British Jews said they believed Corbyn was antisemitic; and still the Left supported him, and still The Guardian backed him in the 2019 general election. Would they — good Lefties one and all — have done this if the vast majority of another minority said they believed Corbyn was bigoted against them? Would the Left have supported an Islamophobic leader in 2018? A homophobic one? A racist one? It’s hard to imagine. “What are Jews so scared of? It’s not like Corbyn’s going to bring back pogroms,” a prominent figure on the Left asked me. I briefly amused myself by imagining a response: “Why are black people so against the Tories? It’s not like they’ll bring back lynching.” But I stayed schtum. The Left doesn’t care about antisemitism if they deem it inconvenient to their cause. They just call it “anti-Zionism” and carry on, and that was — it turned out — a good lesson to learn.
There was another lesson, too. When Corbyn was pushed out of Labour in 2020, I dismissed him as a useful idiot, which was right. I also dismissed him as a blip, an aberration, one I needn’t think about again, which was wrong. Because then October 7 happened. I realised that the Corbyn era had opened a Pandora’s box and some ghosts cannot be controlled.
Antisemitism found a new point of entry through identity politics, which argues that in order to see the world clearly, we need to divide it up into particular group identities, specifically racial and sexual identities, and quantify the degrees of their oppression. As Yascha Mounk writes in The Identity Trap, adherents of identity politics believe that, in the name of fairness, liberal democracies need to jettison universal values such as free speech and respect for diverse opinions — values long championed by the Jewish Diaspora. Instead, we should now see everyone through the prisms of race and sexual orientation and treat them differently, depending on their identity group and how much oppression they have historically suffered.
To make this simplistic ideology even more simple, identity politics divides the world into two racial categories: “white” (defined as colonising oppressors) and “people of colour” (the oppressed). This is how the Left pivoted from talking about class to talking about race. It is also why antisemitism is thriving again on university campuses, as supporters of identity politics combine with activists for black and Muslim causes, who see Jews as ultra-white and therefore oppressive. And to be clear, those activists aren’t necessarily Black or Muslim themselves; in fact, as multiple students have told me, they are often white, but see supporting these causes — and trashing Israel and Jews — as a means of proving their allyship and exonerating themselves from white guilt.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeThe left prides itself on being caring and compassionate. They yell it from the rooftops, they write self-congratulatory articles in the Guardian. Yet all they really care about is admiring their self-proclaimed virtue. They don’t really care about anyone other than themselves.
It’s the old, old story. Judge people by what they do, not what they say.
Not sure if admiring themselves is as satisfying as seeing retribution done. Just as all things in a causal world have their origins, in a moral world someone is to blame. And someone must pay! Unfortunately, there need be no winners in this scenario. On the contrary, the more the disseminators of justice suffer themselves, in going out of their way to ensure justice is done, the more that justice is… justified!
Owen “Don’t look away” Jones is a moral cretin.
Can someone kindly provide me with a statement from Corbyn that is anti-semitic, or some evidence of some kind. The author failed to do so.
“jaw dropping attitudes towards Jews” – like what?
“86% of british Jews believe he is anti-semitic” – based on what?
Am genuinely interested and open-minded.
I think that’s what is called gaslighting.
Then you misunderstand my motive, perhaps I could have phrased more sensitively.
When Roald Dahl was more recently accused of anti-semitism, it was based on clear statements that he had made that no-one could reasonably deny were anti-semitic.
When I searched for evidence of Corbyn’s anti-semitism online a few years ago I kind of drew a blank and found the evidence rather woolly. Hence my genuine question.
His own party suspended him over his handling of cases of antisemitism! https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN27E22J/
The Labour Party has a long history of antisemitic actions and behaviour going back to the Second Boer War in 1899.
As for Corbyn, he was associated with a number of social media accounts that posted very vile rubbish about Jews amongst other things. The search engine of your choice will provide more information.
Those statements about his suspension are untrue.
I read the article associated with the above link, and found it not at all elucidating regarding what antisemitic behavior Corbyn might committed, or tolerated – it mentioned no specific acts, described nothing, only claims that he was guilty of such acts.
you can start by reading the Labour’s own report on the subject, where it highlights how numerous complaints were ‘shut down’ by high-level political interference.
https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/investigation-into-antisemitism-in-the-labour-party.pdf
thanks.
If you do read the EHRC report linked you will note that Corbyn’s interference was not to shut down the complaints, it was to speed them up. They were being hampered by the anti-Corbyn party management. Labours own ‘Forde Report’ goes into this in more detail, but you’ll note your request for quotes from Corbyn has not received any specific examples yet.
Plenty of examples were provided, you disingenuous alternative reality peddler.
He’s definitely anti-Israel but I have never had much sympathy with the view that he is anti-Jewish. Any perceived antisemitism on his part is less malice and more stupidity. I say this as someone who despises the man.
Jeremy Corbyn didn’t hate the Jews that held the same political opinions as him (i.e were opposed to the existence of Israel or were extremely anti-zionists). As such, his antisemitism was’t racial or religious, but rather cultural and political (yes, you can hate Jews as a ‘culture’ or as a ‘political group’). Suffice to look at how he referred to “Zionists” as an evil contingent to understand the irrationality and deep nature of his prejudice.
The accusation, found proven by the EHRC investigation, was that Corbyn ignored anti-semitism in the Labour Party, rather than being actively anti-semitic himself. Why did Jewish Labour MPs like Luciana Berger and Louise Ellman leave the Party while Corbyn was leader? Because Corbyn did nothing about multiple complaints of anti-semitism against themselves and others.
The Guardian made this fashion writer a political commentator as part of its campaign to take down the man who had called its bluff on higher taxes for public services and who had scared it out of its wits by taking 40 per cent of the vote on that platform. Taxes have gone up far more than he ever suggested, so ha ha ha to that. But I do not know what UnHerd‘s excuse is. Freeman is the herd.
The most basic of checks would have confirmed that the mural, and the wreath, and the “not understanding English irony”, and the “friends from Hamas and Hezbollah”, and all the rest of those, were complete dross, as everyone who did bother to check did find out. The Equality and Human Rights Commission found precisely two cases in its entire report, neither of them involved Jeremy Corbyn or indeed anyone who was still a member of the Labour Party, and even in relation to those, it was found in court that it was, “arguable that the Defendant [the EHRC] made an error of law in relation to Article 10 ECHR.”
Rather than defend that at judicial review, the EHRC settled with Ken Livingstone, whom it had continued to pursue despite knowing that he had Alzheimer’s disease, and with Pam Bromley. As a matter of record, “Labour anti-Semitism” never existed. But it does now. Labour has expelled more Jews under Keir Starmer than under all its previous Leaders put together, most or all of them for what has been found to be the protected characteristic of anti-Zionism; there would not be enough time left in this Parliament to change the law on that. It is no wonder that Andrew Feinstein is standing against the Leader who has turned Labour into an anti-Semitic party.
Every week, listen to Starmer and Rishi Sunak “clashing” under parliamentary privilege over whether or not Starmer had tried to put an anti-Semite into Downing Street, and whether or not he had changed the Labour Party from one in which anti-Semitism had been “rife”. Pure fiction, but what else would they have to “clash” over? If they have any point of political disagreement, then it is that Sunak has not handed over the health portfolio to someone who was still a paid lobbyist for the privatisation of the NHS, but had appointed a Foreign Secretary who was at least occasionally willing to criticise Israel.
Marvellous post David – the basis upon which the whole furore was built was tissue thin, but it never mattered. The teary-eyed likes of Hodge, Smeath, Berger, Evans et al were never once asked for instances of their ‘abuse’, but it’s all cast in stone now because a stand-up[ comedian wrote a book on it. it would be funny if the consquences weren’t so catastrophic.
Thank you. Freeman also expects us to defer to David Baddiel, who wrote last year that J. Robert Oppenheimer should have been played by a Jew. The derision was as predictable as it was correct. At the same time, David Harewood’s otherwise excellent documentary on blackface ended with the fading away, since it was never cancelled, of The Black and White Minstrel Show. But Little Britain started on television seven years after the end of Fantasy Football League. Baddiel had single-handedly brought back blackface, which had not been seen on British television in a good 10 years.
Until then, blackface had not been acceptable in the 1990s, even among the white people by whom I was almost entirely surrounded while growing up. Or if it was, then it must have been a class thing. Certainly, the reaction of Fantasy Football League‘s studio audience to Baddiel’s first impersonation of Jason Lee included an audible element of heavy shock. If blacking up was mainstream entertainment, then who else was doing it? Baddiel gave it an extra decade of life.
Baddiel has been in two comedy partnerships, and in both cases the other bloke has been the funny one. For many years, he hardly appeared except as a guest on one of Frank Skinner’s shows. In his late fifties, he wants to reinvent himself as a public intellectual by taking up a cause that placed him beyond criticism. He has therefore had to go through the motions of apologising in person to Lee. Even then, though, he still managed to present himself as somehow the victim.
But the world moves on, and even Baddiel’s old mates from football are having none of it. So now he accuses them of “trolling” him due to “white guilt”. He calls them, “That enemy. They’re white, heterosexual men, desperately trying to show solidarity, as they see it, with black people.” He knows that it is over. We are within sight of getting rid of this public nuisance once and for all.
Quite so, but as a matter of fact, Baddiel wasn’t just the least funny of his first partnership, he was the least funny of the 4 of the Mary Whitehouse Experience.
I can’t agree we won’t here from him again though. As long as there are Radio4 producers with a segment of balls to fill, he’ll be with us. Having said that I won’t be part of that ‘us’ as I don’t listen to R4 anymore.
Ah, so Berger didn’t really need police protection to attend the Labour Party Conference at all?
That’s right. She didn’t.
Sour grapes, David? The police offered Berger protection and you something rather different.
Another vanished comment. This site had such promise once.
Agreed.
Even though I am subscriber this is my first visit in weeks and the I see the Jeremy Corbyn is anti semitic narrative still being pushed.
Disagree with it then, and explain why that view is wrong, instead of whinging.
That was what delegitimised the use of the State to bring about greater economic equality, so it can never be let go.
Two vanished comments, one wondering where my first comment had gone. Gosh.
The Left consists of a schizophrenic coalition united by one thing: their opposition, often blind and mindless, to the status quo. The more comfortable their lives, the more that comfort chafes. The fact that they inherited their modern conveniences and the fruits of Western civilization rather than inventing them for themselves produces profound feelings of guilt; because the guilt can never be resolved, it transmutes itself into rage against the world, the system, that generates the guilt. Only by tearing it down and urinating on the ashes can the Leftist feel he has absolved himself of his guilt. So long as the Jews were useful to achieving that goal, they were welcome members of the coalition; the moment they were perceived as not only no longer fellow travelers but actively working to thwart that goal, they became the enemy, an enemy all the more reviled because they had been, until recently, allies.
At some deep, subconscious level I am sure that most Leftists are aware they are betraying the Jews; in order to justify that betrayal the Jews must be radically transformed into not merely opponents, but the vilest, most despicable creatures ever to walk the earth. Most of the Left’s behavior is only explicable when understood as reflexive and often heinous actions born out of an irresolvable guilt for having been born rich, and the tortuous excuses necessary to justify those actions.
This is pretty loony even by Unherd standards!
It’s quite inventive to be fair, and like the article has a grain of truth. There’s an insightful essay out there called ‘The Strange Persistence of Guilt’ which explains some of this pyschology is a more relateable way.
I don’t think violence, rape, kidnap etc are caused by guilt – lack of education, poor parenting and a generous dose of mental illness are more likely causes. Just so happens that lefties now have the lions share of these characteristics. In ante bellum times right wing Southern Democrats held the torch ( literally) for race based violence.
You omit cult like ideology and zealotry…the virus behind their derangement…it gives supposed logic to expressions of unbridled hatreds
Those standards are getting more looney by the day.
Not really. As long as you’re here with your demented rubbish, there will remain an extreme that nobody else can attain.
I’m with you on this. Most of the time I hear left-wing arguments these days, I’m reminded of a moron with a saw, sitting in a tree, sawing away at the branch he’s sitting on. So many people these days have literally no idea whatsoever how the world works, and how quickly it would stop working if their own mad, stupid ideas were implemented.
Spot on. “Just stop oil”, for instance. I think most people agree. We should reduce reliance on fossil fuels. But to just stop oil is a classic stupid strapline…..! I believe wind turbines need diesel engines to start them and oil to lubricate them lol
Robyn Skinner gives a good account of why the loony left are, well, loonies. By positing a notion of a perfect world and advocating violence to achieve it they fail to realise that when you get down to the details humanity is unlikely to agree on what constitutes perfection. This is because we are all individuals and at some point our ideas, choices, tastes etc will vary. So lefties are not able to unite, and will always fall to fighting amongst themselves. We must unite against the true enemy! The Romans?! – no – the Peoples Patriotic Front of Judea.
Splitters!
Guilt? Maybe boredom? In his (slightly weird, much quoted, less often read) book ‘The end of history’ Fukuyama posited that capitalist liberal democracy is the end point in that nothing better can be created with the crooked timber of human nature. This does not mean a gentle convergence towards liberal democracy by all countries since the denizens of a liberal democracy get bored of it and smash it up leading to the usual totalitarianism and a slow crawl back up to liberal democracy (hopefully). Those whose lives are least troubled by struggle (elite students from wealthy families) might be the most likely to get bored.
Another characterisation of the ‘left’ is that of religious intoxication (often called Gnosticism). In this idea the true believer thinks there is a higher state of society beyond capitalism, an endless utopia, and therefore it is worth any price to get there (100 million dead maybe?)
The true believers are probably the most dangerous but only when a revolutionary situation arises (“the bottoms don’t want and the tops cannot live in the old way” Lenin) in this case true believers can take over and commit the atrocities they deem necessary to create their utopia.
Most probably the typical radical is a mixture of these impulses, lets hope the revolutionary situation does not arise.
Masterful and perceptive. You are a lot closer to the truth than us children of relative privilege would like to admit. People won’t like that you have done the hard work of personally synthesising, in a pithy style, a huge range psychological insight. People prefer to be protected by obscure complexity rather than have it written out in plain English. Whatever you do, don’t stop.
The privileged middle-class on the Left, yes. But the African-American and Arab protestors on US campuses hate Jews. That is a deeper culture but a strong driver of the US Left. We just have a more conventional European problem with Islamism in the UK.
I don’t know that these people have the self-awareness to be capable of guilt. Seems to me that all their pompous self-flagellation is nothing but a cover for their ugly, increasingly barbaric rhetoric and actions. Not exactly a coincidence that they all come from privileged backgrounds, doubtless raised by modern, enlightened parents who have relentlessly indulged their every whim instead of doing rhe hard work of raising their offspring to be worthwhile human beings. The level of narcissism and rank stupidity shown by these turds is symptomatic of how Western culture has de-evolved overall. There’s no coherent endpoint to their odious worldview, it’s all just asinine, infantile tantrum throwing. Negotiating with these jackasses is an impossibility, shutting them down forcefully and decisively is the only option.
I think you have a point there. No self awareness. Maybe it’s not guilt, and it is just arrogance, narcissism and stupidity. The worst combination. And a good dose of cognitive dissonance. People don’t think for themselves anymore, just fed soundbites from their echo chamber…. black is white and white is black and all interchangeable if the echo chamber says so. Scary world.
Peter Brown, in his book Through The Eye of a Needle, describes a similar pattern in the Roman elite who found a psycho-social escape in the nascent Christian community from the status stresses of life in their wealthy circles. Modern leftism is after all a modern offshoot of Christianity.
I agree, I think it’s white guilt and wanting to feel part of a solution to something. It’s mass hysteria on social media. The mindless blob, like a swarm of wasps, miving from target to target…. spouting the same brainwashed headlines…..if you are successful, people seem to hate you. Jews are successful. The white British we’ve always been despised. It doesn’t matter. How much good you do. You are always bad. Wokness is weakness!
Hadley Freeman continues her descent into the clutches of the far right paranoids. Such a shame
Play the article, not the author. Ad hominem comments are generally the resort of somebody who can’t refute his opponent’s arguments.
I recall many occasions where I directly told you on Unherd comments that Critical Race Theory was a fasc*st ideology masquerading as a civil rights movement and each time you called me a liar. Yet here we are: the so-called anti-racists allying themselves with the killers of Jews. Will you be honest enough to admit I was right all along?
Is that a serious question?
‘Never mind that around half of Israelis are Mizrahi, meaning they have roots in North Africa and all over the Middle East, …’
Surely all Jews have their roots in the Middle East, apart from a few converts.
I imagine the vast majority of Israeli Mizrahis are descended from post WW2 immigrants and refugees from North African and ME countries.
A large percentage of Jews have European heritage…. unless you go back till the first Israelis. Seems like the Jews were very clever travellers.
You seem to have dropped your copy of the Elders of Zion. Go ahead, proudly place it back in its prominent position on your bookshelf.
Given the anti-semitism that emerges from time to time, it’s hardly surprising that Jews have a well developed canary in the mineshaft capacity.
In fact, as I understand it, an entire kingdom of pagan “Scythians” (around modern Georgia and Armenia) converted when their king did, circa 800/900 AD. No blood relation to the original Twelve Tribes. There is a theory that they were the origins of the Ashkenazi Jews of northern Europe. (My Ashkenazi friends do not like this theory!)
Glad the Author began to better refer to a Far Left rather than all the Left (whatever that is) towards the end of the Article. Entirely concur that elements of the Far Left and Far Right have been deservedly morally bankrupted by Oct 7th, and to similar degree Iran’s 300 drone strike. Not that one can defend everything the IDF or some radical Israeli settler groups have done either.
Middle of Article focuses on the errors of identity politics. Largely agree. Yet UnHerd has more Articles about Identity politics in one form or other than anything else. The the whole strategy of the Right is to focus on this because they’ve made such a mess of virtually everything else. The Right needs Identity politics like it needs a constant immigration crisis and thus stokes both.
‘Yet UnHerd has more Articles about Identity politics in one form or other than anything else.’
Quite right, and thoroughly boring it has become. But in the other hand, I’ve noticed that the comments on these articles seemingly go on for ever, so UH probably count that as customer demand demonstrating that that is what we all want. Sigh.
Do you think nonsense like Critical Theory (in all its forms) shouldn’t be challenged?
There is an immigration crisis JW or hadn’t you noticed.
Yes and v much needed and used by the Right.
If there’s an issue (and there is), you would highlight it surely.
The left.
What is to be done?
As long as it pursues identity politics it will continue to be a ball of contractions.
Once we have a Labour government, we will all get to watch a governing party tear itself apart over the war in Gaza and identify politics.
An absolute sh*tshow is coming our way very soon.
The ball of contradictions you refer to is why we have dissonance. LGBTQABCDEFG+-..x rights people (I am up to date or jumping the gun?) supporting a homicidal death cult who would happily torture those same protestors to death is an example.
The left is utterly consumed with hatred. Jews, whites Tories etc are the ones they purport to loathe but the reality is self loathing. Jeremy Corbyn, a white public schools boy who grew up in wealth and privilege is a good example.
I have no real argument with any of Hadley Freeman’s points. But I think there is another part of this story which also needs telling.
The divisiveness, raging misogyny and anti-semitism of identity politics was entirely predictable. This was always where they were going to end up and you can’t say you weren’t warned.
Someone from the bit of the left which now finds itself appalled by how its going needs to honestly reflect on one question:
Why didn’t we listen?
Predictable and, I suspect, intentional.
Although I agree with some of the key tennets of the article like the modern left having shifted from an approach to class and economic inequality to identity politics, I take serious issue with the writer’s attempt to paint with this simple brush all those objecting and protesting against Israel’s actions (and more specifically this ultra hard-right government’s actions) against the Palestinian people.
I happen to be very much supporting Israel’s right to exist and defend itself. I was abhorred by the 7 October slaughter and rape (not “attacks” as some on left call them) and I very much supported Israel’s right to ensure the perpetrators would be punished.
I even supported Israel’s incursions in Gaza and understood that in such dense urban environment Hamas took advantage of (and Israel and especially Netanyahu turned a blind eye to all these years) there would be civillian casualties.
However, I have realized that the Israeli intention (at least of this government) is to effectively punish and kill civillians primarily, probably as a tactic of scaring (and scarring) Palestinians in Gaza for a generation, creating such a level of destruction and death that Palestinians will take time to repair and recover and not bother with Israel.
What Israel is doing is deliberate targeting and killing hundreds / thousands of civilians in the hope that perhaps on the pile of bodies there may (will) be 1-2-3-10-more Hamas terrorists.
That is what I am protesting against….
How many Hamas terrorist have been killed with these tactics?
Ι honestly do not know. The Israelis, I believe, give a number of 14000 but there is so much propaganda coming from their side that I do not know. And even if that number checks out, it is still the tactics they employ of deliberately targeting and killing civillians (as I mentioned) that I protest against.
Without any humanitarian relief at all and by also deliberately starving the Palestinians
‘Without any humanitarian relief at all….’
No comment is needed.
If they were deliberately targeting and killing civilians, they would have killed a lot more than 30,000.
The :eft failed on October 8th, not the 7th. Failed big time.
The Arab world, by and large, didn’t. They had very little sympathy for Hamas.
Hamas called for a day of rage, and that never happened.
Ramadan in Jerusalem was very peaceful on the Arab side.
Just as the Left betrayed Rushdie over the Iranian fatwa. I couldn’t believe what I was reading and hearing at the time. To me, that was the first indication of a societal fracture which has metastasised into the glob of hysterics exhibited by so many.
Imagine, a man who asserts that a man who says he is a woman… is a woman, may shortly be the UK prime minister. At the time of the fatwa, was there a single person in the UK who would not have fallen off their chair laughing at such a prospect?
If the Leftist thinking can support Hamas jihadis and men having the right to occupy female spaces, what will that sort of thinking produce when applied to managing an economy and a welfare program?
Cognitive dissonance: saying one thing and doing another, wanting to believe something you know is not true, wanting something you cant have…….we know men cant really be female (woman is just a suffix now), but most play along……we know that Jews are not bad people, but vilify them to justify the support for hamas and Palestine etc etc….
Scare tactics are used to force people what to think and say. It’s about control and power to bring in leftist dogma. Socialism and communism have failed.This is their road in, groupthink!
Just got the below from Wikipedia on groupthink;
“the desire for cohesiveness, in a group may produce a tendency among its members to agree at all costs. This causes the group to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation”
Spot on, I think….
Anti semitism is the one hatred allowed on the left and that’s why they jump in so enthusiastically.
If you look at their great inspiration, Karl Marx, it shouldn’t be a surprise. Marx disliked Jews very much, and said so quite clearly in his essay “On the Jewish Question”.
A Jewish anti-semite. And Nietzche thought the Christians had the market cornered on self-hatred.
That’s an absurd claim.
They also allow themselves to hate white, working class people.
Not entirely true. They despise the white working class even more.
Historically true but no longer the case. Hatred of white people, Tories, women (real ones) etc are pretty well entrenched too.
Hadley at her best is just awesome!
Not everyone in Labour is an antisemite, but all the antisemites are in Labour.
You’re out-of-date. Many Jews have rejoined Labour since Starmer kicked out the Marxist entryists. 1000s have either left voluntarily or been kicked out. Labour is no longer a welcome place for antisemites and supporters of terrorist trash to hide. Corbyn remains suspended from Labour due to his refusal to apologise for the antisemitism that flourished under his leadership.
I fear you’re being wilfully blind, Eleanor. Of course, with a Jewish family of his own, Starmer is not turning a blind eye to anti-semitism in the way Corbyn did. However, his expulsion of vocal anti-semites is just part of his taming of the far-Left wing of the Party (all the anti-semites being, of course, on the far-Left).
Starmer is pretty hard Left himself but keeps it hidden for electoral reasons. His acts against far-Left Labour MPs, councillors and members is partly performative and partly to ensure he has no serious opponents on the Left when he becomes PM.
A party that includes Dawn Butler, Rosena Allin-Khan, Apsana Begum, Rupa Huq, Ian Lavery, Clive Lewis, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, Lloyd Russell-Moyle, Zarah Sultana, Nadia Whittome, et al looks like the nasty party to me.
Well this is a bit of an omnibus.
A quick reminder: whatever the views of large numbers of British Jews, Jeremy Corbyn has never been found guilty of antisemitism – despite multiple investigations. His suspension from the Labour Party was in response to this statement. The Equalities Commission had not found evidence of antiSemitism on the part of the former party leader. (None of which is to deny the existence of a strain of anti-semitism in the party – a fact which was stressed in Corbyn’s statement)
“Would the Left have supported an Islamophobic leader in 2018? A homophobic one? A racist one? It’s hard to imagine.”
Not in 2018 perhaps. But it’s worth noting that the Party’s own Forde Report documented a “heirachy of racism” inside the party and some utterly foul language directed against (surprise!) Diane Abbott in particular. No action taken and the Forde Report was given so little oxygen that Forde himself has repreatedly taken to independent media to complain about the Party’s dismissal of his findings. And then, of course, there’s the current leader going on the Radio to say that Israel does have the right to use siege, famine and the withdrawal of water “in their self defense”. Would he have said this about an occupied population that wasn’t majority muslim? Who can say? It might not be racism but it’s definitiely got a racial/islamophobic aspect to it, hasn’t it?
As to the irony and projection involved in South Africa being the nation that brought Israel before the ICJ. Well, sure, if that’s how you want to describe it. But perhaps another part of the answer is that, as Andrew Feinstein has pointed out, Israel and Apartheid era South Africa were allies and collaborated on (among other projects) their attempts to build illegal nuclear weapons. This created an allyship between the ANC and the PLO so that Mandela himself stated that “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians”. (Again, that doesn’t excuse Cyril Ramaphosa but it’s not just “displacement”.) And, anyway, surely their motives matter less than the findings (plausible case for genocide).
As to the rape stuff. Well, sure, I wasn’t there any more than Freeman was. So many awful things happened on on 7th October that I’m certainly not going to deny that rape was among them. But the Screams without Words article she cites had been the subject of vigorous pushback – most notably here.
https://theintercept.com/2024/02/28/new-york-times-anat-schwartz-october-7/
I’m not even going to summarise their critique but it is surely disingenuous for Freeman not to mention the extent of the journalistic challenge to the article.
One facet of which is that, like Owen Jones, the family of Gal Abdush – the woman photographed burned and naked from the waist down – have disputed the fact that she was raped. I can of course think of a hundred reasons why they might not want to berlieve that, but it’s surely just respectful to them to note their views.
I recently asked ChatGPT why anti Zionism was so often linked and confused with anti semitism and received a long and very detailed and I must say thoughtful reply. While nowadays I struggle to speak to a human about my daily life business, insurance, banks etc, I realise that in this now conflicted and impassioned world the robots may soon be the place to seek balanced journalism.
Yes this week I received uniquely targeted, gracefully expressed and practical help for my specific needs from Megabus, Souther Rail and Premier Inn – prompt too, same day response. Can only be robots.
Jeremy Corbyn wrote a preface to a book written by a holocaust denying antisemite, referred to Hamas and Hezbollah as “our Brothers”, and was filmed saying in a derogatory (as opposed to amicable or collegiate) manner that despite living in the UK for generations “Zionists” still don’t seem to “understand British humour”. Now imagine a politician writing a preface to a book denying Black slavery, calling the KKK “our brothers” and saying that despite living in the UK for generations, “blacks still don’t understand British humour”… I don’t know if you are deliberately lying or just simply deluded about it, but Corbyn is as antisemitic as it gets, and suggesting the contrary is frankly, well, antisemitic.
In fairness to Corbyn his anti-semitism stems from his adherence to the religion of historical materialism which apportions causation to race, skin tone etc. I doubt he would take a moral stand that “Jews must die”. Its more the case that in such a world view Jews put themselves in the firing line as servants of capital. Corbyn and his ilk may well hold that the resistance in the Warsaw ghetto and the Jews in the Red Army were heroes but the Jews now fighting ISIS, Ham-ass etc are villains.
“Jeremy Corbyn wrote a preface to a book written by a holocaust denying antisemite,” I think the book you are referring to was J.A Hobson’s Imperialism: A Study. Since it was published in 1902, and Hobson died in 1940, I’m not sure where you’re getting holocaust-denying.
Does he say rude things about the Rothschilds? I admit, I haven’t read it, but it’s a book about the evils of finance capital written in the early 20th century so I’m guessing Europe’s leading financiers get a look in.
Seven Pillars of Wisdom also contains some eye-widening examples of antisemitism here and there towards the end of the book – would anyone who wrote a foreword to a new edition of Seven Pillars be an automatic antisemite?
As to the other two, one was at a meeting, in which Corbyn was attempting to mediate and in which a concilliatory tone was therefore understandable (if not wise), and the other was a response to repeated heckling at another meeting. Since he was acting as a representative of the Labour Party on both occasions, those actions would have fallen within the scope of the Equalities Commission report but they didn’t bite.
On the other hand… the current leader of the Labour Party considers the use of siege and famine legitimate acts of self-defence when used against Palestinians and he has abused paliamentary procedure in order to prevent a rebellion among his own party on the issue of a ceasefire in an on-going genocide.
Which leader is more consequentially racist?
And you’re welcome to say “both of them pass my zero tolerance threshold,” no problem – your decision to make. But don’t go around supporting the Tories after you’ve said it…
Corbyn wrote the foreword to 2011 re-print of Hobson’s 1902 Imperialism: A study. In the foreword Corbyn described it as “brilliant” and “prescient” and “a great tome.” In the book, Hobson, an economist who was a great influence on Lenin and other Marxists, claimed that finance was controlled “by men of a single and peculiar race” who “are in a unique position to control the policy of nations” and invoked the antisemitic Rothschild conspiracy theory, claiming that the banking family controlled all wars. More from Hobson: He blames “a small group of international financiers, chiefly German in origin and Jewish in race . . . The rich and powerful liquor trade . . . is entirely in the hands of Jews . . . the stock exchange is needless to say, mostly Jewish . . . the press of Johannesburg is chiefly their property.” Hobson’s antisemitism is widely recognized in academic circles and acknowledged by his biographer. Corbyn has no proplem calling his work brilliant and prescitn.
Separately, Jeremy Corbyn in 2013: “They [Zionists] clearly have two problems. One is that they don’t want to study history, and secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, don’t understand English irony.” What is someone who has lived in England all their lives other than English? Not to JC, if he’s a Zionist. Of course, what JC meant was Jews. This is made patent by the fact that Keir Starmer describes himself as a Zionist, so was JC saying that Starmer, who of course has lived in England all his life, is not English.
Whatever the merits of the rest of what you say (of which I certainly accept some but not all) let us agree on this.
Keir Starmer doesn’t understand irony of any sort.
Oooh I love that! We now have a new scale of racism invented by Corbyn supporters: How racist are you on the “Consequential” scale! Who is more racist and antisemitic? Let’s use the Consequential scale, rather than looking at what they ACTUALLY said….
I swear, you cannot make this shit up.
Instead of excusing and deflecting the accusations like you shamefully (and rather comically) do here, you should try listening to the people who suffered from it, and maybe apply the same standards of empathy and inclusivity that you apply to any other minority group who suffers discrimination.
You don’t think that it is important to consider the consequences of an action when seeking to determine how racist it is?
Where’s all the replies??? Nice to see that clear fact-based reason occasionally might get some traction.
Yep, very disingenuous not to mention the NYT fiasco about the sexual assault/rapes allegations.
And well done on the Corbyn issue. Surely we can admit that the current Israeli govt is the most rabid, openly apartheid and vicious to date. Corbyn was a supporter of progressive Israeli politicians. https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/corbyn-at-lfi-peres-was-enormous-giant-of-israeli-politics
If you want to avoid civilian deaths you send in ground troops. You don’t use 2000lb bombs; it’s cowardly. So far IDF deaths are about 250, about 50 of which from friendly fire or accidents. And there’s 15000 dead Palestinian children. So one soldier is worth 60 Palestinian children. That’s what offends people. A situation supported by the widespread equating of Palestinians with animals.
And to be clear, for the avoidance of any doubt, I am neither a supporter nor apologist for Hamas or what they did.
If you want to avoid the deaths of your own civilians you don’t hide your troops underneath them.
You have (intentionally?) mischaracterised the ICJ finding. It did not find there was a plausible case for genocide, it found that SA’s arguments would be plausible (not necessarily conclusive) if there was evidence. The evidence has not yet been submitted to the court and the court has not made any findings of fact.
The IDF being famously effective and well-armed, if the Israeli Government did actually have a policy of genocide there would be no Palestinians alive in Gaza today. Instead, the population of Gaza has greatly increased since Israel departed from the Strip in 2005.
No it found that there was sufficient evidence to conclude that a genocide may be in progress and that, as such, the case could continue – it did not throw SA’s claims out as baseless.
And the idea that if Israel wanted to genocide the Gazans, they’d be finished by now is a disgusting defense. Clearly, the Nazis could have obliterated the Jews more quickly than they did, had it not suited their purposes to extract what labour they could from them first.. This is part of what makes the Holocaust so indescribably vile.
The fact that they chose not to do so does not mean that the Holocaust was not a genocide – it was the achetype thereof.
Israel is not extracting forced labour from Gaza but it suits their purposes not to be perceived as committing a genocide. This may be what is staying their hand, or it may not.
I am not terribly interested in whether what Israel is doing is technically speaking the worst of all possible crimes, it is plenty bad enough that it is indefensible and the horror of that crime is compounded by its obvious inability to dleiver the intended objective – making Israeli civilians safe.
Phew, that makes it alright then.
No, does not make it alright, it makes it disingenuous (and disrespectful to Gal Abdush’s family) to report upon her rape as though it were undisputed fact.
In a close field this is the most offensively infuriating piece I’ve read on Unherd this year, although it’s just par for the course from Freeman.
What was ‘the obvious anti-Semitism’ in the Labour party? What were these incidents? Name them. This is a serious request.
If they were so obvious, you should be able to name them and do so in numbers that reflected a serious issue in a party that then boasted over half a million members.
If they were so serious, so obvious then why on Earth was so much time spent focussed on posters Corbyn liked, or cemeteries he visited years ago? Why was Ken Livingstone’s view of historic events so egregious with all this other ‘obvious antisemitism’ going on?
What the Labour Anti-Semitism scam really amounted to was a load of self-interested, Centrist, careerist, cry-bullies circulating around the media making all sorts of accusations and all sorts of claims of feeling unsafe. One thing they knew they were safe from though in our compliant media was ever being asked to substantiate their claims, or beyond that to link their alleged abuse to Labour members.
I’m sure someone might be able to point me to one or two horrible instances – but remember we’re talking of a party of over half a million members – there’s zero evidence that antisemites were over-represented in Labour.
As for Freeman’s claims of people on the Left claiming October 7th didn’t happen – that’s a preposterous strawman, but typical of her Corbyn Derangement Syndrome. War crimes were clearly commited, but these were almost certainly exacerbated by the IDF. There’s plenty of discussion in the in Israeli press of panicked responses, friendly-fire and the Hannibal Directive.
The rape claims too are most definitely disputed – they come from dubious witnesses with plenty of previous when it comes to lying (ZAKA and the IDF). The claims of visual evidence of sexual mutilation are actually debunked by the UN report on the subject who clearly state they saw no conclusive evidence of these.
And before anyone around here bleats about ‘believing all women’ as some kind of woke-gotcha then in general I concur. Women must be believed to the extent that all claims deserve a proper investigation, In this case though, it is the Israelis who are denying this with their refusal to provide witnesses and forensic evidence to the UN or indeed to many of their own citizens.
I posted this little list before, but it bares repeating here – these are the people you’re asking us to believe, these are the people curating the horrific videos Freeman finds so convincing.
2006 – Cluster munition slaughter in Lebanon – Israel lied.
2014 – The ‘boys on the beach’ – Israel lied.
2014 – Al Wafa Hospital bombing – Israel lied (they even produced doctored video evidence).
2018-19 – Sniper murders in the Grand March of Return – Israel lied.
2021 – Designation of 6 Palestinian human rights groups as terrorists – Israel lied (proved by CIA report).
2022 – Bombing of Jalaliya Refugee Camp (5 teenagers killed) – Israel lied.
2022 – Murder of US citizen Shireen Abu Akleh – Israel lied.
The murders of Muhammad al-Durrah (2000), Rachel Corrie (2003), James Miller (2003), Tom Hurndall (2004), Iain Hook – every time Israel lied.
Oh, and never forget the murder of 34 US sailors on the USS Liberty in 1967 – Israel lied, lied and lied again.
And here’s a link to a recent twitter thread listing just a few of their post October 7th lies.
https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/1782737187982721039
So to conclude: the Left didn’t get October 7th wrong and they sure as hell haven’t got it’s aftermath wrong. Freeman did, does and always will.
Thank you for this blissfully unaware antisemitic masterpiece of a comment! How easily you dismiss the lived experience and the perception of 80% of British Jewry as a ‘scam’, and double down insinuating that it is self-interested Jews who promoted it! I love how then you ask for examples anti-semitic incidents, as if you can’t just use Google to find the mountain of evidence that is out there, including the official inquiry on the topic that was unequivocal in its findings. And I LOVE how you beautifully weave that into this burning hatred of Israel, by accusing it of lying on numerous occasions, but without any evidence to that matter. Your lot are perfectly captured in Hadley’s comment from this very article where she writes that “the more identity politics took hold, the more I understood that a lot of people on the Left just want a very simple way of looking at the world, and they crave a group they can hate with impunity.”
‘The Lived Experience’ of 80% of British Jews’? Hmmm. When you’ve got a media giving massive prominence to the claims of a great threat from Labour then it’s unsurprising they’d be worried. What matters though are the facts regarding that threat and there’s plenty of evidence that perceptions of it were massively over-blown. When questioned in academic surveys by Greg Philo and Mike Berry the public were asked to give estimates of what percentage of Labur Members had had complaints of anti-semetism made against them – the average estimate was 34%. The true figure was 0.1%.
If by ‘the official enquiry’ you mean the EHRC report, they found…wait for it…just two cases – neither of whom were members of the Labour party when the report was written and both appeared to have been identified using legally dubious methods (the EHRC settled rather than go to court with the two people they’d accused).
Again I’ll ask for some examples – I’ve googled and come up with none – perhaps you could do better.
At Labour’s 2017 conference, a member said he shared a table with two delegates he did not know who agreed Jews were “subhuman”, “didn’t deserve to be allowed to define what constitutes antisemitism” and should be “grateful we don’t make them eat bacon
One person listed 22 examples of antisemitic abuse directed at him at local party meetings, including being called “a Tory Jew”, “a child killer”, “Zio scum”, being told “he’s good with money”, “to shut the f*** up, Jew” and “Hitler was right”
South Tottenham’s membership secretary objected to member applications from 25 ultra-orthodox Jews and required home visits to their houses – which is not a requirement
A party member said: “The only reason we have prostitutes in Seven Sisters is because of the Jews”
Margaret Hodge, after writing a Sunday Times article, received Facebook messages from Corbyn-supporting groups calling her a “Zionist b****”, “Zionist remedial cancer”, “damaging Labour in the interests of Israel” and “under the orders of her paymaster in Israel”
A Labour member said at a local meetings other members defended a person who repeated “the over-representation of Jews in the capitalist ruling class that gives the Israel-Zionist lobby its power”
A parliamentary candidate described witnessing a member tell a Jewish councillor to “go home and count their money” after they were deselected
At a conference fringe event a speaker said they had the right to discuss whether the Holocaust happened – nobody called out the behaviour and a member said US police who killed black teens were probably trained in Israel
A 2017 parliamentary candidate said he received a large amount of antisemitic commentary on social media, including: “You and your Zionist cult are NOT welcome. This is London. Not Tel Aviv.”
One member said he was leafleting for a rule change to prohibit all types of discrimination and was called racist and members said they would not support the change because JLM was “financed and controlled by the Israeli government”
One former staffer at the Leader’s Office said he was subjected to an “inquisition” about being Jewish, including his views on Israel
A sixth form student said he was forced to leave the Labour Party Forum’s Facebook group shortly after joining after members searched his account for links to Jewish organisations and accused him of being a Zionist operative.
But I guess that’s just evidence compiled by Jews while Corbyn was leading Labour, so not sure it counts…
Also, like I commented below, Jeremy Corbyn wrote a preface to a book written by a holocaust denying antisemite, referred to Hamas and Hezbollah as “our Brothers”, and was filmed saying in a derogatory (as opposed to amicable or collegiate) manner that despite living in the UK for generations “Zionists” still don’t seem to “understand British humour”. Now imagine a politician writing a preface to a book denying Black slavery, calling the KKK “our brothers” and saying that despite living in the UK for generations, “blacks still don’t understand British humour”… I don’t know if you are deliberately lying or just simply deluded about it, but Corbyn is as antisemitic as it gets, and suggesting the contrary is frankly, well, antisemitic.
🙂 And the answer from master Kent…crickets
You can find numerous debunkings and explanations of many of your claims on Simon Mangan’s youtube channel. Otherwise the ones that simply refer to Zionism and Israel you can shove where ever you like.
Yes yes, all debunked…
Let’s quickly summarise your points: There’s no antisemitism in Labour and there never was. The whole thing was made up by Jews for personal political gain, and exacerbated by the Zionist media. Can you really not see how antisemitic you are??
You do realise that all our comments up this thread are readable don’t you? Your summary is infantile. Of course there was antisemitism in Labour – it’s a party of more than 500K members. What there categorically was not was any evidence that the prevalence in Labour was higher than any other political party or the population as a whole.
But thanks for the laugh you gave me when you said Corbyn was as antisemitic as it gets – I’m wondering what trope it is that you’re infringing by suggesting that facebook likes or introductions at conferences are more despicable then holocausts and centuries of pogroms – I’m sure there is one – it’s so hard to keep up these days.
A second ago you commented that all the examples I gave were “debunked”, now you’re saying that Labour is just as antisemitic as everyone else is…The inquiries unequivocally proved that in fact it was much worse then “everywhere else” and was also systemically played down and silenced by senior leadership. And on your other point, you don’t actually have to participate in pogroms to be an antisemite – liking pogroms on Facebook or defending systemic antisemitism definitely qualify you as well, so congratulations!
‘Lived experience’ is a top identity politics concept! How about evidence rather than feelings?
“Corbyn Derangement Syndrome” is an excellent epithet for the anti Corbyn mindset which became common and still infects the MSM.
In fact Corbyn eviscerated May’s majority and rendered her government totally ineffective, a fact which is now conveniently excluded from “accepted political history”, so he certainly wasn’t as unelectable as the Westminster bubble would have us believe.
I shall be interested to read other responses to your comments.
This is not exactly the “logical, fact-filled response” you were selling, son.
Spoken like an antisemite
Since white people make up less than ten percent of the world’s population, it’s weird that we are somehow “oppressors” of the other 91%. If that were really true, then what does that say about them?
Also, when were Tories lynching black people? Very strange response. Glad she kept schtum.
The wonderful Tom Lehrer once sang – tongue firmly in cheek – that ‘Everybody hates the Jews!’ He was always on the pulse.
This is an excellent article, though it makes me furious to read it.
How much more collectively-moronic can the West get before collapsing under the weight of our stupidity? Note I’m describing collective stupidity, I’m not saying we’re individually stupider than we used to be. But I know from reading the comments of others in fora like this that I am not alone in thinking that we’ve been on a descent into madness in the past few years.
Can it be turned around?
Who was it that said (probably apocryphally) that intelligence has a limit but that stupidity does not?
Einstein?
No, Rome is burning and the politicians are all fiddling (more ways than one).
People are pacified with bread and circuses.
The Jones kid is a good candidate for the single most unpleasant person in Britain.
He’s a sort of Lord Haw Haw. Seems to love provoking hate so he can brand his accusers as haters. Like a much less intelligent or talented version of GG Allin or Sid Vicious.
That will be his moniker from now on.
If Owen Jones is Sid Vicious, who is Johnny Rotten?
There’s stiff competition.
Agreed. He is a detestable little twerp, even by Guardian standards.
“the IDF compiled and edited the footage they had from Hamas’s GoPro cameras, made it into a film, called Bearing Witness, and took it around the world to show small, carefully selected audiences”
While I am disgusted by the actions of Hamas, I am confused by the above aspect. Just release the damn footage, instead of to ‘selected audiences’.
It’s all out there on social media if you are really keen to watch it, but the IDF was trying to keep the dignity of the families and the dead and preventing the wide distribution of this for of ‘war porn’ that Hamas and Al Jazeera keep producing for western audiences to revel in.
I see their point at wanting to preserve the dignity of the families and the dead – but there comes a time when it’s necessary to fight fire with fire, and this conflict is one of those times. So far, Hamas has cornered the market in terms of propaganda, got it into the mainstream media with very little in the way of challenge to its veracity, and keeps repeating its simple messages via its army of useful idiots amongst the western left wing. Goebbels himself couldn’t have done a better job.
Hadley Freeman doesn’t mention that the war on Gaza has cost the lives of over 10000 Palestinian women so far. 37 children lose their mother every single day. How could a feminist not notice or apparently care? Does Freeman’s identity blind her to the loss of life?
The war in Gaza has a lower civilian to combatant casualty ratio than the war in Iraq or Afghanistan, and of course a much lower rate than the wars in Sudan, Yemen, Syria, or the Hamas attacks on Israel (which targeted civilans almost exclusively). Most civilians killed in this war are unfortunately victims of Hamas’ policy of using schools, mosques, hospitals, UN centers and regular civilian houses as military caches. I think that as a feminist you should care about the total disregard Hamas has for the lives of women, and as a humanist, for their disregard to human life in general.
Victim blaming at its very finest
Yes, Hamas are clearly the victims here, just a peace loving organization murderously pursued for no reason by evil Israel….Also, zero commentary on the other point that the civilians to combatant casualty ratio is lower than in any other relevant conflict, but of course, facts and evidence don’t matter anymore.
I’m waiting to see if she answers my question as put to her above, but not holding my breath for an answer. Pro Hamas supporters dodge the questions and discussion points they don’t want to answer – or more likely – know they can’t provide a credible response.
“Victim blaming”…is that the best response you can come up with?Try dealing with the issues.
I upticked yr comment but the system firstly increased the downvote and then registered my initial vote. Weird!
People get killed in war. And that unfortunately includes women and children.
Why don’t you ask Hamas why they don’t provide shelter for Gazan civilians? After all, they built all those tunnels, probably with aid monies donated by the UN. Plenty of room there for civilians to shelter.
I’ve asked this question numerous times whenever pro Palestinians complain about the loss of life, and every single one has dodged it. I’m expecting no different in your case.
Do you feel that ‘People get killed in wars and that includes women and children’ applies to the Hamas attack on 7th October and if not, why not? I can’t see how these callous justifications for killing apply one way round and not the other. Particularly since it is Israel that has blockaded and in effect occupied Gaza
The deaths would end tomorrow if Hamas released the hostages and surrendered. Are you calling for that to happen?
I’ve asked this too on numerous occasions and never received an answer.
Of course she isn’t! If the war stopped tomorrow, what would she have left to feel virtuous about?
Maybe fewer women and children would get hurt if Hamas didn’t hide behind them. Just a thought…
If you launch a barbaric assault on someone bigger and stronger than you, don’t come crying to me when they give you a pasting.
I can’t add much more than what others have already said except that are you sure about your numbers? Numbers that come from inflated Hamas figures are often published without question by many news outlets including the BBC. As others have noted, Hamas actually wants some of their citizens to die in the course of the war (or at least pretend some have died, we can only hope), as they provide useful PR for people like yourself and those weekly marchers in London.
Dead women and children reduced to bargaining chips – it’s disgusting and callous and yes I care deeply, which is why I want the IDR to finish destroying Hamas for good to put an end to this. Anything else continues a brutal dictatorship that sinks this low.
It is strange that ‘identity politics’ has grown when any thinking person can see it is insane, immoral and destructive of society.
The Jews are an insufficiently large group to oppose it on their own; but if we take women (half the population), and the large number of men who side with them, we may have sufficient to grind down the unspeakable. Journalists such as Hadley Freeman must keep at their work.
Hopefully by remembering the loss of the lives of 10000 Palestinian women in Gaza
Meanwhile, what to do about the women killed and raped in Israel. What is happening in Gaza is a tragedy. It is also a response to something many in Gaza cheered when it Jews being attacked.
Says Hamas.
When the clan that rules your country (Hamas) are murdering terrorists (men) who use women and children as human shields, the problem is in your ideology, not in the countries that fight back against you.
More than 100 journalists and media workers, the vast majority Palestinian, have been killed in the first seven months of war in Gaza, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ).
You still haven’t replied to the question about the raped & murdered Jewish women. You are literally proving Freeman’s point for her.
This was EXACTLY what Hamas had in mind, in fact. It’s a death cult.
“When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons.”
-Golda Meir
Hamas and their allies hate the Jews more than they love their own children.
Good article. Thanks. The insanity of the silence about Hamas’s brutality is sadly not surprising. However, one theme I have seen, which this article repeats, is to paint Jews as being not really “white” because they also have been oppressed. That validates the very identitarian nonsense the author decries. Better to call out the hypocrisy and bias of the Left without trying to rise a bit on their hierarchy of oppression.
Hadley Freeman reading this one-sided monologue I would surmise that along with 37% of Labour and8) % plus of conservative you were also a Friend of Israel receiving benefits. like Corbyn Galloway etc these people speak for the masses, especially with the GAZA Genocide which is taking place. Is Corbyn and Galloway Antisemites because they say, HEY Mr Netanyahu and your Nazis Zionist IDF and government it is not Antisemitism to question why you have killed over 34,000 civilians mostly women and children, is not Antisemitism to note you Fascists have obliterated 80% of Gaza infrastructure. It is not Antisemitism to note your fascist government has annihilated GAZA’s healthcare system and murdered hundreds of staff and doctors. It is not Antisemitism to question why your fascist government has destroyed ALL of Gaza’s 12 Universities and 56 of its schools, which as a matter of fact are financed by the UN,192 countries tax payers’ monies!! It is not Antisemitism to question why your fascist government has disregarded and ignored the UN and every Humanitarian Aid Organisations also in violation of USA Law you have blocked humanitarian Aid and are accountable under International Law for committing GENOCIDE. It is not Antisemitism to question why your fascist government has murdered more Journalist than any other country and in more than any world war, along with murder of 200 plus UN employees, employees that 192 countries contribute to their wages. WHAT you should be writing HADLEY first and only is to stop this GENOCIDE forget the politics, for politics to a child with no legs and no arms is not of interest to these poor children, unfortunately these poor children and women and innocent children are pawns in a political swamp of evil money obsessed parasites. We need a no-fly zone we need a combined UN army in place with the removal of IDF and the Palestinian Army Hamas not terrorist as the Western Hemisphere describe to also lay down their arms which I am sure they would do with a UN Army in place. The General in charge from a country picked not from the Middle East or any country aligned to NATO-EU or the Western Hemisphere. No other troops on the ground ALL 7 gates for AID to be open, ALL weapon exports to Israel stopped, and all war atrocities referred to the international courts just like Nuremberg I am sure the Zionist Apartheid Israel state will understand why that has to happen. We have start somewhere but if we don’t make Israel accountable for this GENOCIDE then it is a FREE FOR ALL in any other conflict!!
And yet it seems likely that it will be Hamas who (at the time of writing this comment) will reject the peace proposals brokered by the Qataris and Egyptians.
Yes, you got the talking point about “genocide.” Would you like a cookie for endlessly repeating it?
If you would like the fighting to stop, talk to Hamas. You remember them, the ones who started this episode.
Take a deep breath and ouuuuuuut.
I think we need to re-evaluate the notion of “left”. Pre the fall of the Berlin wall (to pick a convenient point) it broadly meant someone who thought it was worth losing some freedoms to get more equality and diversity, and a few of those people beleived that was something worth raping, killing or taking hostages to try to achieve. Now “left” just means a violent racist group like the KKK, ISIS or the Aryan Brotherhood. The more nuanced advocates of greater social democracy and justice are no longer “left” because they are normal and grown up. If anything they have become “centrists” which is helpful for their political theories, however misguided they may be. It is also helpful for those willing to defend civic society. As combatents the “left” (most of the UK labor party and a sizeable minority of Democrats in the US ) place themselves outside the realm of politics and firmly in the realm of political violence. Therefore the solution to the problem at hand is a military rather than a legal one. Once this nettle is grasped (probably once leftist violence increases to the point where it threatens civic order) we can have a re-set and those in favour of greater equality etc can pursue their ends by peaceful means. The same thing happened with leftist violence in the 1930s + after (Stalin, Mussolini, NSDAP) and right wing violence in 19th + 20th centuary USA (Confederate Democrats, Jim Crow Laws, KKK, racist cops etc etc). In each case a privelaged white class takes it upon themselves to define human character by skin color when the overwhelming evidence shows that character and skin colour are neither corrolated or causative.
Let’s be clear about this much: one could assemble a lineup with equal numbers of Jews and Muslims, all dressed alike, and not a single person in any of the baying campus mobs could tell which was which. The US Census defines both as white. That’s right; white. Along with Brits, Scandinavians, Greeks, and the Middle East.
The second point of illumination, and this group gets very little sympathy from me, is the number of progressive Jews who professed to be horrified when the monster they were part of turned on them. These people were on board with attacks on whites, on men, on Christians, and on people who understand basic biology, but they were suddenly aghast and agog when their ox was being gored.
The reality of identity politics is that it is a dehumanizing enterprise that reduces people to nothing more than their group identity. Group members then serve as the pets and mascots of the usually affluent, white, mostly female leftists, and the hustlers and grievance mongers inside those groups. There is no individual with individual traits, just a group identity wherein every person in the bunch is seen as interchangeable with every other member.
“…a lot of people on the Left just want a very simple way of looking at the world, and they crave a group they can hate with impunity.”
The best and simplest explanation I’ve read of this phenomenon.
Bravo Hadley. We live in such dark times. Politics community free speech and democracy have all been trashed by the cowardice and appeasement of our ammoral powerful self interested ruling Elite. They are clinging to a set of deranged ideologies and magical cult like thinking out of sheer fear of the assorted Mobs who are unafraid of violence in pursuit of their goals. Wherever you look, the Progressive State and its accomplices in law and media are twisting, warping the contours of our way of life and Truth itself Where today the Open Jews suffer, we surely will all follow.
How does showing footage of the body of a burnt woman with no underwear on preserve this poor soul’s dignity? If showing the evidence can go that far, it might as well have gone all the way.
Because her identity remains concealed from the general public.
> who see Jews as ultra-white and therefore oppressive.
Or perhaps their ongoing dispossession of the Palestinians, which is clearly oppressive, makes them white irrespective of their color. The fact of the matter is that whether what we have is antisemitism hiding in plain sight as wokeness ( ‘We aren’t antisemitic, we’re just anti-Zionist’, said the Nazi.) or conversely wokeness hiding in plain sight as antisemitism (‘From-the-ri-ver-to-the-sea Pal-e-stine will-be-free’ said the JAP college girl) — the whole party is only possible because Israel continues to dispossess the Palestinians and to violate international law. They like to think that the cry of ‘antisemitism’!! will immunize them from accountability and they are wrong.
Why do we keep calling it the “progressive” left? Retrogressive left would be more appropriate.
this business over the whiteness of Jews is tiresome. My mother wouldhave been horrified had she be told she’s not white. MY Mizrahi friends, Tunisia, Egypt were all white. The people of Lebanese or Syrian background were white. Even my brown skinned Egyptian neighbor laughed to me about after visiting Aushwitz ..he’s Muslim….he was approached by Poles to rap with him as ” black.” “So” I ask, “what are you.” “White” , “Well that’s what I thought” Maybe he’s changed his mind. At any rate this race obsession on the left with the obsessions of 19th century Europeans whites and their arranging of people on hair and skin tone and eyes and noses..the left has adopted all of this ….Eurocentric rating of races…except the left now puts blackness at the top and whiteness at the bottom.
Former guardianista finally realises that the left is evil.
I don’t think identity politics is a new invention of the left. Were not peasants in early Soviet Russia categorised as ‘kulaks’ and non-kulaks? In 1930s Ukraine the kulaks were left to die of hunger or else deported and worked to death. Pol Pot is another edifying example. I think teachers were the baddies in his scripture.
“No doubt many people pushing identity politics are motivated by good intentions”…… no they’re not.
“while stupidity plays a big part in why so many people in the West believe otherwise” and “such vanity,but also bankrupt intelligence” pretty much nails identity politics in all it’s forms,a horrible ideology.
“I understood that a lot of people on the Left just want a very simple way of looking at the world, and they crave a group they can hate with impunity.”
Unfortunately it’s not just people on the Left. It’s people.
The world of human societies has always been a complicated place, & it’s worse now than ever. It’s far too difficult – requires too much thought & effort – to look at people as individuals, so we lump them together & ascribe identical values & behaviour to all the members of the group we have arbitrarily selected.
It’s hard work, but treating people as individuals, with all their conflicting characteristics & traits, is our only hope of progress for humanity.
This is why it’s worth subscribing to Unherd. Hadley Freeman you are fantastic. The Guardian should be ashamed that they were not able to allow journalists of your quality to write like this. Meanwhile Owen Jones continues with his antisemitism and misogyny in The Guardian and elsewhere.
This is good and a necessary read even though I am opposed to Israel’s war in Gaza. In many ways that’s a separate issue. The adoption of a ‘prefabricated ideology’, progressive identity politics, often uncritically has taken away all nuance from the Israel/Palestine question. We are just Israel is evil, Hamas are the resistance.
The wilful ignorance here is too hideous here to dig into once again.
I can only reach the same conclusion that I’ve held since 2000: the Left has turned Fascist.
It took them a decade to get there but they did in the end, and they arrived at Fascism with gusto.
Because I always thought Corbyn was one of the good guys, I read Freeman’s article to gain insight into the allegations of antisemitism made against him and his party. However, there was little on that score in the article. Freeman talked about Corbyn’s “jaw-dropping attitudes towards Jews”, but no mention of exactly what they were. She says that “when Jews pointed out the obvious antisemitism they saw in the Labour Party,” the Left didn’t care at all. But what the antisemitism consisted of, she does not mention. Maybe the Labour Party didn’t think that what was being claimed as antisemitism really was. So, Freeman’s article should have provided some of those instances so that the readers could decide for themselves and not merely take her word, or those of “86% of Jews.”
I’m in the U.S. and I can guarantee you that the Hamas attack on Oct 7 was far from ignored. In fact, reportage and Biden’s people continue, to this day, almost 7 months later, to say, “Israel has a right to defend itself.” Well, of course, it does, I have heard no one contest that. But it became increasingly clear to many of us, that Israel’s defense turned very quickly to offense, with the nagging question of whether this was always the intent of the early Zionists – to claim all of Palestine, and now they had their reason. One could easily conclude that from the words uttered by Israeli officials over the past 7 months.
In my opinion, identity politics doesn’t add much to understanding what is happening in Israel. Israel is just like any other colonial power – they arrive, they take, they feel entitled, for whatever reason, usually because they feel themselves superior to the indigenous population. This is what the British did, it is what the Americans did, and I think it’s what the Israelis are doing. What makes the difference now is that we are seeing it as it happens.
” Israel is just like any other colonial power”.
for the love of God, what are you talking about?? You think most Jews came to Israel as powerful white colonisers? Have you ever read a single page of history from anytime between year – to year 1945?? Most Jews living in Israel came as *SURVIVORS* of genocide or ethnic cleansing – to claim they are anything akin to white colonisers is outrageously ignorant and cretinous.
Those of us with some knowledge of history really aren’t interested in your ‘opinion’. You clearly don’t have a clue who is the indigenous population in this instance. Please educate yourself: it’s embarrassing.
Revelation 13.3 One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was filled with wonder and followed the beast. The antisemitic beast is alive, and the Left is following after it. Jews need to study the Christian book of Revelation because they are about to be put in charge after the Christians are raptured to Heaven, God wants all of them to move to Israel and is allowing Antisemitism to rise as a means to scare them into moving.
The left hatred of whites only arose after the whites lost their power to oppress. They are now beating a dead horse. White rule ended after WWII when America forbade Europe to recover their colonial empires and America passed the Civil rights act in order to appeal virtuous to the new nonwhite nations. The ruling ethnicity is now Asian particularly Chinese. Around 1900 when whites ruled the left was very racist and opposed to any rights for blacks. Read the works of Jack London for an example of extreme white racism combined with Socialism as an Ideal. This was the left when whites ruled. Now they are attacking the deposed whites and ignoring the current ruling race.
There was no Corbyn pandora’s box. What happened was that as soon as the pro-Palestinian (and impeccably anti-fascist) Corbyn became leader of the Labour party, a hysterical witch-hunt campaign against him was mounted by pro-Israelis in Britain. Freeman talks about Corbyn’s “jaw dropping attitude” to Jews. Can she give is any examples? I think not.
When oh when are the Government going to wake up to what is happening on our Streets and in our Universities. A police force that goes softly softly on these left wing Activists but piles in heavy handed into right wingers. At least they let us know where their loyalties are
In America even Biden of all people can see where these leftist fruitcakes are going with the Palestinian issues and it needed plastic bullets and tear gas to bring them back to reality.
At some point because of Government and Police cowardice, they will have to face up to the fact that these activists now run our streets and perhaps should be looking at how other Democracies both in America and Europe deal with them with this growing problem. And I’m not thinking cups of Tea.
I wouldn’t call Owen Jones the highest-profile Guardian journalist. Apart from it being factually untrue Ms Freeman is bigging up a simple-minded creep.
Unfortunately, if you cross him he has a hissy fit, so they are all in thrall to him.
And it’s not difficult to offend him.
Beware the wrath of Talcum X.
The $64,000 question is when are the “non-identity politics” liberals, going to realize they have to abandon the left. If you’re for Western values, free speech, equality of opportunity, etc., etc. you can’t support the “Progressives”.
Hadley, as a third generation London born Jew and fervent zionist (supporter of Israel) I have been dismayed at the hate fest marches that have filled London’s streets in support of the Palestinians.
Most people don’t know the facts or history, but their antisemitism, ignorance, stupidity, fashion or any combination has shown their hate towards Israel and the Jewish people.
Every time people talk about Gaza ceasefire, they rarely start with RELEASE THE 100+ HOSTAGES.
France and Germany banned pro Palestine marches, whilst U.K. Police appease the terrorist symbols purely to maintain peace.
As for Owen Jones, words to describe him are unprintable.
Hadley, well written. Am Yisroel Chai.
Extremely inaccurate article – as if hes antisemitic…a man who has dedicated his life to the left and common folk. Spoofer.
Good article. Though one important stone it leaves unturned is the phenomenon of the progressive, liberal leftist Jew who support the Palestinian cause, justifies Hamas and opposes Israel and Zionism. Public intellectuals like Canadian Naomi Klein or Australians Antony Lowenstein and Louse Adler have been very vocal recently against Israel.
The voices of these people sound far louder in the anti-Zionist chorus because they are Jewish. Non-jews are heartened by their words – how can a Jew possibly be antisemitic? The ethical nationalism of Israel and Zionism makes these diaspora Jews deeply uncomfortable.
The theme of cheap absolution of guilt was explored in 2020 by Angelo Codevilla in his article, “Millenarian Mobs,” in Claremont Review of Books. It is not long, is easily available at the Claremont Review’s website, and well-worth checking out. He explored historical antecedents, esp. in late medieval times: what animated them, how they grew, and how they were finally brought down. Often quite bloodily.
He was not an optimist.
Just absolutely brilliant commentary. Thank you Hadley.
I think this genealogy is convenient for the author. My sense is that the Guardian, her former employer, herself and most other ‘left’ leaning journalists since the 90’s are squarely to blame for Gen Z kids protesting in such brainlessly fashion. The utter moral certainty of left leaning journalist like Hadley are more to blame than the ‘Corbyn era’. Cookie cutter two dimensional moral certainty breeds the kind of politics these kids are expressing. They are only taking to an extreme the very same kind of politics Hadley has been profiting from for years. They are not different in kind. The left ran out of ideas a long time ago. They settled instead for presumed moral superiority. But multiple things can be true at once, even those that seem contradictory. The Guardian represents the utter failure of imagination on the left and that is where the blame lies, much more so than with Corbyn.
Great article
It has to be a positive thing when people protest about the murder of over 30,000 people, half of them children. The mexican proverb on revenge comes to mind: ‘Build two graves.’
I can only assume that the author doesn’t understand the thinking of the British Left on this issue (I appreciate that she was born in the US). It goes like this – Q. Who do we hate? A. Capitalists! Q. Where do capitalists live? A. In “the West”! Armed with that logic, they will provide support to any country or organisation who opposes “the West”, no matter how repulsive it might otherwise be. Israel, despite being in the Middle East, is part of “the West”, and is supported by “the West’s” “Great Satan”, the US. Ergo, Israel is to be opposed, and anyone fighting against Israel is to be supported.