JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: A BRITISH PAPER ACTUALLY RUNS A COLUMN DEFENDING JEREMY CORBYN (I CAN’T IMAGINE WHAT CAME OVER THEM) FROM THE CALUMNIES OF A SPECIAL INTEREST LOBBY – THE IMMENSELY IMPORTANT DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CRITICISM OF ISRAEL AND ANTI-SEMITISM – OUR WESTERN VALUES

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY ASH SARKAR IN THE INDEPENDENT

 

“Israel-Palestine is not an equal conflict – for that reason we can’t let people like Corbyn be tarnished as terrorist sympathisers”  

 “A clash between a nation-state with a defence budget of $18.6 billion and a politically, geographically and militarily fragmented people who’ve been under occupation for the past 70 years is in no way a battle between equivalent powers.”

 

Well said indeed.

And embedded in that thought is the indisputable reason why it is an absurdity to conflate criticism of Israel with “anti-Semitism,” even though Israel and Israel lobby groups in a number of countries constantly push for laws doing just that.

Israel is a state (and moreover, a highly militaristic state out of all proportion to its size) and it is right to criticize states when they abuse their power.

Israel has often abused its power and behaved in lawless fashion. Saying that has absolutely nothing to do with prejudice against the Jewish religion or Jewish people.

Indeed, the vast majority of Jews do not even live in Israel.

Where do we put ourselves in the West, with our traditions of human and democratic rights, if we are not allowed – whether by social pressure or unfair laws – to criticize abuse and lawlessness by a heavily-armed state?

In an absurd and dangerous position.

I think Israel only pushes for such things because its own situation is so confused and contradictory. It claims to be a democracy but only one kind of people can become citizens. It claims to want peace but it has attacked every neighbor that it has, some several times. It claims to embrace Western traditions of human rights but it holds something like five million people in subjugation with no rights and no hopes.

Anyone who is not willfully blind can see that the men running Israel are driven by the desire for aggressive expansion. And how do we speak of that kind of activity in our history texts when discussing the many empires and aggressors and conquerors and dictators of the past?

And of course, the same logic holds for displaying sympathy or understanding for the Palestinians, as Jeremy Corbyn has done. It has nothing to do with disliking Jewish people. It has everything to do with someone’s having a sense of social justice, or a conscience if you will, and being confronted by abuse and brutality. And in the case of Gaza especially, the abuse has been on a monumental scale, as bad or worse than that of the Rohingya people by Myanmar, behavior which is universally condemned.

And there are many more reasons for not allowing people to tarnish Corbyn.

One important one is not permitting foreign states to interfere in your country’s politics. Russia is accused of doing this regularly now, and without evidence. Lack of evidence doesn’t stop our newspapers from prattling on about it almost daily.

But Israel does do exactly that, interfere in your country’s politics, and on an ongoing basis, and you need no proof beyond events reported in the newspapers and on your television. But you won’t find a word of prattle about it.

Good God, Israel’s Prime Minister, without even understanding what he was talking about, publicly condemned a British national leader over a misrepresented picture. In the courts, that’s called slander, and it has no place in the relationships between countries.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: DECENT JEREMY CORBYN JUST CANNOT WIN – SMALL UNFAIR MINORITY KEEPS UP THE NAME-CALLING AND MAKING DEMANDS AS IT GETS REGULAR SUPPORT FROM MAINLINE PRESS – NOW CORBYN IS SAID TO “ACKNOWLEDGE” LABOUR PARTY HAS A “REAL PROBLEM” WITH ANTI-SEMITISM – IF TRUE, WHERE WAS IT ALL IN TONY BLAIR’S DAY? – DID IT JUST SUDDENLY SPRING TO LIFE?

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

 

“Jeremy Corbyn has acknowledged Labour has a “real problem” with antisemitism as he attempted to defuse the row engulfing his party.”

 

Well, yes, “real problems,” but not what you might think from a quick glance at the headline.

The real problem is people using the accusation as a cheap attack, a way to libel a decent man and influence a party, and doing so regularly over a considerable period of time.

Where was all this “anti-Semitism” hiding in Tony Blair’s day?

Or even after?

It just suddenly exploded into existence under Corbyn? Like a parody of Athena suddenly erupting from the head of Zeus?

No reasonable person can believe that. It’s a bizarre notion.

No, what has changed since Blair’s day is simply this.

A leader who helped kill about a million people and destroy a society, lying continuously about what he was doing, and received the Israel Peace Prize plus many handsome sinecures for his efforts, stopped being leader.

Another man, a decent man who is fair-minded about the Middle East, as he is about many other matters, became leader.

So, all stops were pulled by interested parties in doing something about it.

He’s been attacked from the beginning. He had to win his leadership vote twice. The attacks, here or there, seem to fade a bit, then, wham!, they’re back, this recent round perhaps the worst ever.

Well, you can have whatever kind of country you like, but this way of doing things is shabby and dishonest and can produce nothing good.

Much as some of Theresa May’s incompetent efforts and unwarranted attacks, all damaging and utterly without evidence.

As a young man, I always thought of Britain as more honorable political society than the United States with its folks like Senator Joseph McCarthy or FBI Director J Edgar Hoover or blood-drenched liar, Lyndon Johnson.

But either I was naive or Britain has changed, and changed greatly for the worse

_________________________

Response to a comment, “But Jeremy Corbyn has said that Jews, uniquely, can’t be trusted to define anti-Semitism and that he knows best”:

 

That’s just plain dishonest.

He said no such thing.

But your using that claim as an argument is symbolic of this whole shabby business.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: CORBYN-HATERS TURN FROM ACCUSATIONS OF ANTI-SEMITISM TO CRITICIZING HIM FOR ATTENDING A PASSOVER SEDER – IT JUST DOESN’T GET MORE TWISTED

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

 

“Jeremy Corbyn faces fresh criticism after attending left-wing Jewish meeting

“Jewdas recently described the antisemitism row as a ‘malicious ploy to remove the leader of the opposition and put a stop to the possibility of a socialist government’”

 

Only a truly bizarre person would criticize Corbyn for spending four hours at a Passover Seder.

It is appalling that this is criticized.

You could think of these new charges from the “get Corbyn” crowd as a twisted form of genuine anti-Semitism – hating people who are Jewish because of their political orientation and hating people who associate with them.

This all reinforces the truth of something we already understood: the people after Corbyn are not honest about charges of anti-Semitism. Not at all.

They simply use whatever low tactic they think will work.

And what they want is Corbyn to be gone as leader or at least hobbled. They completely ignore his winning the leadership twice, and convincingly, despite their attacks.

They have no respect for democracy and no respect for public civility. They use abuse and libel to get what they want.

They want what Tony Blair wants. They want what a demonstrated liar and mass killer wants because he really is their boy, the darling boy who helped destroy Iraq and received an Israeli Peace Prize for doing so.

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THOUSANDS OF JEREMY CORBYN SUPPORTERS SIGN LETTER SAYING RECENT PHONY ANTI-SEMITISM PROTEST WAS THE WORK OF A POWERFUL SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

 

Thousands of Jeremy Corbyn supporters endorse letter saying Jewish-organised antisemitism protest was the work of ‘very powerful special interest group’

 

Absolutely, it hardly needs saying.

A demonstration over a nonevent?

Constant repetition of the same slanderous charges?

And there very much is an agenda in this.

Corbyn is thought too fair-minded about Israel and Palestine to be allowed into power.

That is how he is regarded by the relatively small group running these demonstrations and publicity efforts.

Their Labour Party hero was Tony “the killer” Blair, someone pretty well totally discredited now and with little hold upon the general public.

They tried pushing Owen Smith in, but he is an arrogant and ineffective politician.

But his sacking (essentially for trying to tell the leader what to do) was an unacceptable signal and ignited this new wave of hysterical nonsense, pure Joseph McCarthy-style hate and libel.

The underlying belief in all such efforts is that if you keep throwing enough crap on the walls, some of it will stick. It was actually a technique brought to near-perfection by Dr. Joseph Goebbels

So, the drive is on to discredit and or greatly pressure the man who is almost certainly one of Europe’s most decent and fair-minded politicians.

This is a man who could no more possibly be anti-Semitic than he could abuse children or kick dogs. It is absurd to say otherwise.

You see, you are not allowed to be fair-minded about anything having to do with Israel. Being fair-minded gets you labeled as anti-Semitic.

Readers may enjoy this analysis:

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/03/27/john-chuckman-comment-dishonesty-and-prejudice-passing-as-a-demand-for-justice-yet-another-british-wave-of-get-corbyn-over-anti-semitism-from-the-lobby-which-just-hates-him/

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: DISHONESTY AND PREJUDICE PASSING AS A DEMAND FOR JUSTICE – YET ANOTHER BRITISH WAVE OF “GET CORBYN OVER ANTI-SEMITISM” FROM THE LOBBY WHICH JUST HATES HIM

John Chuckman

 

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

 

What is the row over Jeremy Corbyn and antisemitism about?

____________________________

Response to a comment, “Antisemitism has been weaponised by those in the right of the Labour party, Labour friends of Israel and the right wing media to bash Corbyn, following on from the previous Red Corbyn campaign”:

 

Absolutely.

It is nothing else.

Corbyn is not liked by the Israel Lobby, a very real force today in British affairs.

Their kind of man is Tony Blair or Owen Smith.

Blair’s ugly influence on the general public, despite many efforts by the corporate press to revive his rotting political carcass, has been destroyed. He’s widely regarded as the liar and mass killer that he is.

Owen Smith still tries, but he has always been an ineffectual and rather arrogant politician, and it was his demotion, after again trying to tell the Party leader what to do, that brought all this latest wave on.

The campaign against Corbyn has been almost continuous from his first election, just with little splutters of greater or lesser intensity.

Every Britain should ask, is it right that our democratic government and corporate press are so influenced by unproven claims from a relatively small group – a group, which never offers proof of anything and which, moreover, very much has an agenda of its own?

They also should ask, if it is true that there is so much anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, why didn’t the beloved Tony Blair root it out and create a benign environment long ago?

It couldn’t explode into being overnight, as it were, yet that is the nonsense idea contained in all of these vicious attacks on a decent man. It’s very much akin to believing in demon possession.

This is a fraud, a very unpleasant fraud, and it is using the ugly tactics supposedly discredited long ago after the fall of Senator Joseph McCarthy and his career-destroying “commie” witch hunt.

But the tactics, in fact, have not been discredited. They still work. Throw enough crap on the walls, and some of it sticks, always. That principle is as true today as ever, and it is employed just as frequently by special interest groups and governments as it was in Joseph Goebbels’ day.

That is precisely the approach of Theresa May and Boris Johnson with their accusations of poisoning, an event which for all the world seems never to have happened. If it indeed did, we have been given not a scrap of proof regarding any aspect of it. Yet the shouting and charges just keep being hurled.

Corbyn is under attack only for his fair-minded views on Israel-Palestine, but it would never do for his opponents to say that openly since its sounds ridiculous, so we have this ugly McCarthyite campaign either to intimidate him or to unseat him, something Owen Smith, of course, already has tried doing.

Of course, over the long-term, piling on unsupported charges of “anti-Semitism,” much like the crying of “Wolf!” by the unpleasant boy in the fairy tale, only serves to bring the day when most people will simply respond with, “So what?”

AFTERNOTE:

No one can doubt that Jeremy Corbyn is one of the most decent and thoroughly liberal-spirited politicians in the western world, and you might think he would be welcomed and greeted for that very quality, but you would be wrong. That quality is precisely why he is so hated by apologists and lobbyists for Israel.

People who do not keep up with public and international affairs may not be aware of what a term of contempt “liberal” has become in Israel. It is used almost like a four-letter word, sputtered out with contempt. Liberals are widely hated for the very qualities which define liberalism: belief in human rights and dignity and the rule of law. Clearly, the Israel we see at work could not function under such assumptions.

What you find in Israel very much parallels what you find from America’s Alt-right. On its Internet sites, the Alt-right almost cannot bring itself to use the word “liberal,” regularly substituting (pathetically childish) pejoratives like “libtards” and “snowflakes.” There obviously is no meaningful discussion possible with such people, and that is exactly the way they want things to be.

So, we have some very dark forces at work in our world, forces openly expressing contempt for fairness and decency and rule of law, forces pushing away debate or discussion, forces exhibiting extreme contempt for large groups of others, forces who want what they want regardless of how they obtain it. I do believe that gets pretty close to defining fascism.