Pages

Thursday, 29 March 2018

Enough is enough

Howard Jacobson is a great writer and his piece in today's JC is typically well crafted. 


'But this latest affair of the mural is another ball game. Here, without the distractions of Zionism, is the old, naked Jew-hating thing. The mural which Corbyn went out of his way to champion in 2012 — visiting the artist's Facebook page and offering his support against the local council's decision to remove it — shows a conspiracy of financiers, most of them undisguisedly Jewish in the mode once favoured by the Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher, playing a pitiless game of Monopoly on a board supported by the naked backs of the world's oppressed. On a second look, years later, Corbyn accepts its antisemitic intent. But he still reverts to his trusted "inadvertence defence". He hadn't "looked closely" at the image. 

 An ill-judged gambit at any time — for what is a professional politician doing lending his name to a cause he doesn't bother to investigate? — inadvertence beggars credibility in this instance, so unmistakable is the artist's meaning. Never mind looking closely: to throw the most perfunctory glance at this mural is to be struck by the familiarity of its caricature of Jews conspiring to defraud and exploit. 

Corbyn's insistence that he didn't see any of this incriminates him all ways. And in the end there is only one conclusion we can reach: if he saw nothing exceptionally offensive in this mural it can only be because it mirrored an image of the Jew as bloodsucker he was already carrying in his head. '

Jeremy Corbyn's alleged 'niceness' and 'sense of decency' were pushed down our throats by the BBC and others. I always knew that was untrue, just look at the genocidal, anti Semitic, homophobic groups that he called 'friends'. Look at his willingness to accept money to appear on the state TV station of a country where human rights are rare and for whom the destruction of the State of Israel is policy. Look at the people that he associated with, appeared on platforms with,  and supported the aims of. Jeremy Corbyn was clearly a 'wrong un', now hopefully more and more people are realising this to be the case.

Unfortunately there is a school of thought that says that Jeremy Corbyn's apparent acceptance of anti-Semitic tropes might actually help his vote as anti-Semitism is pretty endemic in so much of the British Muslim community. Remember This article by Mehdi Hasan from 2013  https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2013/03/sorry-truth-virus-anti-semitism-has-infected-british-muslim-community

'It pains me to have to admit this but anti-Semitism isn't just tolerated in some sections of the British Muslim community; it's routine and commonplace. Any Muslims reading this article – if they are honest with themselves – will know instantly what I am referring to. It's our dirty little secret. You could call it the banality of Muslim anti-Semitism.

I can't keep count of the number of Muslims I have come across – from close friends and relatives to perfect strangers – for whom weird and wacky anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are the default explanation for a range of national and international events. Who killed Diana and Dodi? The Mossad, say many Muslims. They didn't want the British heir to the throne having an Arab stepfather. What about 9/11? Definitely those damn Yehudis. I mean, why else were 4,000 Jews in New York told to stay home from work on the morning of 11 September 2001? How about the financial crisis? Er, Jewish bankers. Obviously. Oh, and the Holocaust? Don't be silly. Never happened.

Growing up, I always assumed that this obsession with "the Jews" was a hallmark of the "first-generation" immigrants from the subcontinent. In recent years, I've been depressed to discover that there are plenty of "second-generation" Muslim youths, born and bred in multiracial Britain, who have drunk the anti-Semitic Kool-Aid. I'm often attacked by them for working in the "Jewish owned media".

The truth is that the virus of anti-Semitism has infected members of the British Muslim community, both young and old. No, the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict hasn't helped matters. But this goes beyond the Middle East. How else to explain why British Pakistanis are so often the most ardent advocates of anti-Semitic conspiracies, even though there are so few Jews living in Pakistan?'

Whatever happens in this case, whether Jeremy Corbyn loses his party leadership or becomes Prime Minister, Jews should now be under no illusion that the UK is no longer a safe place to live. Time to leave I'm afraid. 

No comments:

Post a Comment

By clicking "Publish your comment" you indemnify NotaSheepMaybeAGoat and accept full legal responsibility for your comments