By HARRY PHIBBS Labour Party member Elaina Cohen, seeking to be selected as a Council candidate in Birmingham, claims she was told by a sitting Labour councillor that she was 'too white and Jewish.' She has made an official complaint and says that the Labour councillor Mahmood Hussain told her he would not support her application for an inner-city ward because 'my Muslim members don't want you because you are Jewish.' Anti Semitism on the Left in not new and is certainly not confined to Britain. Under the old Soviet Union it was rife. Stalin, having earlier agreed to the Nazi/Soviet Pact, then denounced the Jews as 'rootless cosmopolitans.' Anti-semitic: Graves have been desecrated by vandals targeting the Jewish community in Germany and British Jews are reporting a rise in hate crime Karl Marx was the most vile anti Semite, among his comments being: 'What is the worldly raison d'etre of Jewry? The practical necessity of Jewry is self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jews? It is the petty haggling of the hawker. What is his worldly God? It is money.' These days left wing anti Semitism is usually a spill-over from anti Zionism. The cover is to say that it is not anti Semitic to criticise the policies of the Israeli Government. his is true so far as it goes, but such is the vehemence and so crude the double standards that naturally the Jewish community feels uneasy. They also notice when inflammatory denunciations on Israel coincide with an upsurge of anti Semitic incidents in Britain. The Left, including the National Union of Journalists, backs a boycott of Israeli goods - the only country in the world to be singled out in this way. Student Unions ban Jewish societies on college campuses (on the grounds that they are 'Zionist') while academics ban involvement with Israeli academic institutions. The Left attacks the 'Jewish lobby' for seeking to sustain a 'Zionist conspiracy.' Many British Jews might well have plenty of criticisms of the Israeli Government but for most of them Zionism is simply the belief that there should be a Jewish state - a necessary demand after centuries of persecution. Ken Livingstone was investigated after he made anti Semitic remarks to a Jewish journalist The former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone is fond of making casual references to the holocaust. He told a Jewish reporter he was 'like a concentration camp guard.' Livingstone also told Sheikh Yusuf al Qaradawi at a London Conference: 'I welcome you as an honored guest.' Qaradawi went on to defend suicide bombings. Qaradawi has a long record of calling for violence against Jews, having said: 'I will shoot Allah's enemies, the Jews, and they will throw a bomb at me, and thus I will seal my life with martyrdom' and calling on God to 'kill them, down to the very last one.' Livingstone has also said of property developers Simon and David Reuben, who are actually of Iraqi Jewish origin: 'They should go back to Iran and try their luck with the ayatollahs, if they don’t like the planning regime or my approach.' Speaking of Iran, the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has described the holocaust as a 'myth.' The United Nations respond by inviting him to address an Anti Racism Conference last week. They stress how he agreed to tone down holocaust denial references to evidence of the holocaust being 'ambiguous and dubious.' The United States boycotted the event although the British Government attended. In his book, Waiting for the Etonians, Nick Cohen includes a powerful chapter concerning the decision of CND to invite the Iranian Ambassador to their conference despite CND's supposed opposition to nuclear proliferation. Cohen says: 'CND's Kate Hudson told me she opposed the Iranian nuclear programme. She was not shouting "rah-rah Iran," and had invited the ambassador, she told me, merely to hear what he had to say. In her small way, I'm sure she's sincere. But if CND doesn't invite speakers from the Ministry of Defence or American embassy - and it doesn't - and never issues a press release condemning Iran - ditto - people are entitled to look at the burden of the evidence Hudson is presenting and consider her opposition to Iran to be little more than throat-clearing.' It will be interesting to see the outcome of Elaina Cohen's complaint to the Labour Party. Anti Semitism is a spreading poison in the British Left and it is right that it is challenged.
HARRY PHIBBS: Anti Semitism is a spreading poison in the British Left
Last updated at 5:05 PM on 28th April 2009
Friday, 1 May 2009
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