This JC opinion piece https://www.thejc.com/comment/comment/labour-s-new-guidelines-show-it-is-institutionally-antisemitic-1.466685 is hard to argue with, but don't expect Stephen Pollard to be asked about it on the Labour Party's propaganda arm, the BBC.
Here's some extracts:
'This week, the Labour Party adopted its own definition of antisemitism. That's right. The party that has spent the past two years mired in allegations that it refuses to take antisemitism seriously has drawn up its own 16-point code of conduct on antisemitism, a definition that is unique to the Labour Party.
Not one other organisation on the planet operates the same criteria that Jeremy Corbyn's Labour has just adopted. And yet somehow the same Labour Party expects the Jewish community – and everyone else – to take this as serious evidence of its commitment to tackling antisemitism.
To say they are taking us for fools doesn't even come close. Because this is hard left politics at its most cynical and shameful.
Labour has taken some of the language used in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which is now widely accepted as the most useful definition and has been adopted by the government, the Crown Prosecution Service, many local councils and many other countries.
But instead of adopting the definition as agreed by all these bodies, Labour has excised the parts which relate to Israel and how criticism of Israel can be antisemitic.
...
The guidelines, for example, suggest at one point that Israel's "description of itself as a 'Jewish state' can cause particular difficulty in the context of deciding whether language or behaviour is anti-Semitic."
The guidelines go on to say that the use of "Zionist" and "Zionism" in a positive way by pro-Israel supporters is problematic.
This is the nub of it. The guidelines demand that "antisemitic intent" is necessary if any criticism of Israel is to be held as wrong: "It is not antisemitism to refer to 'Zionism' and 'Zionists' as part of a considered discussion about the Israeli state." So you can feel free to go right ahead and scream "Zio" at any random Jew you encounter, and remain a Labour member. Labour has no issue with this, so long as you mean well.
Or go further, if you like. Scream "Zio-Nazi", because so long as your heart is in the right place, that's just fine. As the guidelines put it: "Discourse about international politics often employs metaphors from examples of historic misconduct.
"It is not antisemitism to criticise the conduct or policies of the Israeli state by reference to such examples unless there is evidence of antisemitic intent."
Every time the issue of Labour antisemitism raises its head, the same pattern repeats. The party – and its Dear Leader - says that they are deeply committed to the fight against antisemitism and it is outrageous to suggest otherwise. A smear, even.
And then that same party goes on to show why anyone who falls for that is, to put it at its most charitable, an idiot.
...
Meanwhile on planet real world, what this really means is that, because antisemitic intent is held to be necessary for any Israel-related language to be antisemitic, those who describe themselves as lifelong antiracists - who just happen to have a problem with what they call Zio-Nazis – can say that because antisemitism is indeed racism, and they are anti-racists, then by definition they have no antisemitic intent and thus cannot be antisemitic.
There are still those who think Labour can be dragged from this sewer. Many of them are admirable people.
But they are simply unwilling, or unable, to face what must surely now be clear to everyone else – that Labour is now in the grip of a hard left so malign that the party is no longer a mainstream vehicle for social change but a vehicle for race hate.
Labour is now institutionally antisemitic. '
Hard to disagree with any of that. By trying to minimise analysis of the Labour Party's ongoing problems with antisemitism the BBC are protecting antisemites, there's a word for people like that - scum.
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