UK opposition in crisis, deputy leader admits

[brooklynite]

Source: Politico

The deputy leader of Britain's main opposition party has admitted the party is in crisis, and called on party leader Jeremy Corbyn personally to tackle anti-Semitism in the party.

Tom Watson, speaking to the BBC's Andrew Marr, said that he had fielded 50 complaints about alleged anti-Semitism within the party, and issued a challenge for Corbyn to make a "personal intervention" to address all 50 of them.

"There's almost a sort of crisis for the soul of the Labour party now," Watson said, looking back on a week in which nine Labour MPs quit the party, including eight of them joining The Independent Group.

Issuing a direct challenge to Corbyn, Watson said: "Jeremy needs to understand that if we’re going to be in No. 10 [Downing Street] that he needs to change the Labour Party."

Read more: https://www.politico.eu/article/tom-watson-uk-opposition-in-crisis-deputy-leader-admits-jeremy-corbyn-anti-semitism/

---

Someone yesterday posted a poll that Labour could beat the Conservatives -IF- Corbyn wasn't the Leader.

[Beakybird]

1. Asking Corbyn to change is perhaps like asking a leopard to change its spots.

[sandensea]

2. Is there really an 'anti-Semitism problem' in Labour?

Or are they simply anti-ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Netanyahoo, and are consequently being pigeonholed as such.

[brooklynite]

3. Keep in mind they're being "pigeonholed" by their own members...

[sandensea]

4. People can be pressured - and often are.

Especially by genocidal, election-meddling thugs like Bibi.

[brooklynite]

5. Please provide evidence

Just insinuating that seven Labour MPs left because of "pressure" is a lazy conspiracy theory.

[sandensea]

6. Is it a conspiracy theory to point out Bibi actively meddled for Cheeto in 2016? Not anymore.

That, my good man, is pressure.

And besides: It's one thing to be anti-Semitic - but it's quite another to condemn ethnic cleansing against Palestinians or anyone else.

[Denzil_DC]

16. You want evidence of Israeli Government meddling in UK politics? Here's some.

One of the new Independent Group is Joan Ryan. She is/was Chair of Labour Friends of Israel (six of the original group of Labour MPs who joined the Independent Group are/were also members, as is Tom Watson).

Here she is in discussion in January 2018 with disgraced and eventually expelled Israeli diplomat Shai Masot, discussing £1 million in funding he was offering her:

Link to tweet

The defense some have offered was that this funding was simply to finance Labour MPs visiting Israel. That doesn't explain why Ryan's subsequently denied this meeting ever took place, despite the existence of this footage.

Masot was a busy bee:

Israeli diplomat caught on camera plotting to 'take down' UK MPs

An Israeli embassy official has been caught on camera in an undercover sting plotting to “take down” MPs regarded as hostile, including foreign office minister Sir Alan Duncan, an outspoken supporter of a Palestinian state.

In an extraordinary breach of diplomatic protocol, Shai Masot, who describes himself as an officer in the Israel Defence Forces and is serving as a senior political officer at the London embassy, was recorded by an ­undercover reporter from al-Jazeera’s investigative unit speaking about a number of British MPs.

The Israeli ambassador, Mark Regev, apologised to Duncan on Friday. An Israeli spokesman said Regev made clear that “the embassy considered the remarks completely ­unacceptable”.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jan/07/israeli-diplomat-shai-masot-caught-on-camera-plotting-to-take-down-uk-mps

Israeli diplomat who plotted against MPs also set up political groups

An Israeli embassy official who plotted to “take down” MPs regarded as hostile has also set up a number of political organisations in the UK that operated as though entirely independent.

Shai Masot was filmed covertly as he boasted about establishing several groups, at least one of which was intended to influence Labour party policy, while appearing to obscure their links to Israel.

The disclosure comes as Labour demanded the government launch an immediate inquiry into “improper interference in our democratic politics”. A former Tory government minister also called for an inquiry into the Israeli embassy’s links with two organisations, Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) and Labour Friends of Israel (LFI).

Meanwhile, Masot is being sent back to Israel in disgrace, and a civil servant and Conservative official who was also filmed discussing ways to discredit MPs has resigned from her post.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/08/israeli-diplomat-shai-masot-plotted-against-mps-set-up-political-groups-labour

There's antisemitism in the Labour Party, just as there is in the Tory Party and wider UK society. For some reason, only Labour is currently being singled out for condemnation.

The conflation of criticism of the Netanyahu regime and antisemitism is poisonous, and a cheap tactic that's obviously gained traction in the media and even on DU.

[karynnj]

7. The article does not list any of the 50 instances

That list would answer the question and not even summarizing the list is extremely poor journalism. I assume the intent is that we are supposed to take the description at face value.

Anti semitism clearly exists and needs to be called out when it happens, but there are many cases where criticism of Israel or Netanyahu is immediately challenged as anti semitic. Reading the English language Haaretz, a left leaning Israeli newspaper, I have read some comments from Likud that explain where they are coming from. They point out that Israel is "singled out" for criticism when the questioned things they do are similar to things done in the Arab countries, which they claim no one bothers to criticize. (Think their comments on most UN resolutions on Israel)

It may be because Israel defines itself as a moral democracy. However, as Thomas Friedman and many others have observed for decades, Israel has faced a dilemma since 1967. They can only have 2 out 3 of the following - being a Jewish state, being a liberal democracy, and controlling all the land including the occupied West Bank. (Note that comment - long repeated in the US by American Jews, politicians etc often in explaining why the 2 state solution is essential even as "facts on the ground" make it less likely - would itself be controversial because of the words "occupied territories".

Any comment that questions zionism, Israel, laws like the nation/state law, or Netanyahu unless very carefully stated are often flagged as using anti semitic memes. As historically there are so many negative Jewish memes, many comments could be seen as invoking one of them. The ironic thing in the US is that while there is antisemitism, no foreign country or its leader are more routinely defended on a non partisan basis.

[sandensea]

8. Well said. Thank you.

Respect is a two-way street.

Something the Cheetos and Bibis of the world have trouble accepting.

[nycbos]

11. No they are anti-Semitic

Corbyn wrote letter defending Stephen Sizer, the vicar disciplined by the Church of England for linking to an article on social media entitled 9/11: Israel Did It;

He resented a call-in program on Press TV, a propaganda channel of the Iranian government which was banned by Ofcom and which regularly hosts Holocaust deniers;

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/13/jeremy-corbyn-labour-leadership-foreign-policy-antisemitism

He has called Hamas and Hezbollah agents of “long-term peace and social justice and political justice in the whole region,” and once invited to Parliament a Palestinian Islamist, Raed Salah, who has suggested Jews were absent from the World Trade Center on 9/11. Corbyn called him an “honored citizen.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/08/opinion/an-anti-semitism-of-the-left.html?_r=0

He also attended a ceremony honoring the terrorists who killed the Israeli athletes in Munich.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-munich-attack-wreaths-palestinian-terrorists-antisemitism-a8489731.html

http://time.com/5365475/jeremy-corbyn-munich-massacre/

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. Examples of what Luciana Berger received before she left, and others

The threat made to Ms Berger, which accused her of being a “Zionist extremist who hates civilised people, about to get a good kicking”, is understood to be one of the cases the police are looking at. Other threats contained in the dossier were against Yvette Cooper, chairwoman of the home affairs select committee. A party member from Yorkshire suggested that Ms Cooper should be invited to a charity abseil, adding: “Then we can throw her off the top — no ropes.”

Among the other allegations contained in the dossier was one by a member who wrote: “We shall rid the Jews who are a cancer on us all.”

Another related to a party member being accused of putting a child through “ten years of hell”, using racial slurs against him and referring to him as “Jew boy”. It was also alleged that the member had chased a girl, aged six or seven, around with air freshener, saying she smelt of curry and calling her “a chocolate monkey”.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/labour-concealed-antisemitic-threat-against-jewish-mp-luciana-berger-33pjcg8pf

Not just in the pub. The chair of the Wavertree constituency Labour party (CLP) is Alex Scott-Samuel, a former academic at Liverpool University, who has appeared on a show broadcast by conspiracy theorist David Icke, claiming that: “The Rothschild family are behind a lot of the neoliberal influence in the UK and the US.”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/feb/23/liverpool-wavertree-labour-constituency-antisemitism-luciana-berger-derek-hatton

A Labour member's claim that "the Jewish community plans to attack our party" was not deemed to amount to antisemitism by party officials, it has emerged.
...
He then continued to make his case, saying: "If you can't take what I'm saying you shouldn't be here...I'm sorry if the truth hurts."
...
"You were inaccurate in that, and my response actually would be that I don't believe you're antisemtic, I believe you are ill-informed and I would want to have a discussion with you to put you right."

In response, Sir Duncan said "you won't put me right", prompting Mr Secker to say: "If you are insistent that all Jews in the country are responsible for attacking Jeremy Corbyn, then I would say yes, you are antisemitic."

https://news.sky.com/story/sir-duncan-michael-labour-members-jewish-slur-not-deemed-antisemitic-by-party-11638591

[Gumboot]

9. Tom Watson is the one in crisis...

... together with all the other Blairites, Bilderbergers and wannabe SDP revivalists, who are gonna find themselves looking for work after the next election.

Jeremy Corbyn is doing just fine, regardless of the desperate smearing and flailing by the billionaire tax-dodgers who own the British press.

Britain's establishment is terrified of a principled, life-long anti-war, anti-racist and anit-austerity campaigner getting elected.

[OnDoutside]

10. Lol.....

[GulfCoast66]

13. Bilderbergers! WTF!

You are really are dragging out this anti-Semitic meme on DU?

Sickening.

[Adrahil]

14. Corbyn is a Brexiteer idiot.

Total disaster for Labour.

[Recursion]

15. Jeremy Corbyn is losing Labour votes at a time when literally any leader would be polling ahead

He is an absolute disaster for the party and they should seriously just bring back Milliband at this point.

Also... Bilderbergers? Really?

[Blue_Tires]

17. Hell, the original Brexit vote would have failed if Corbyn wasn't running the show