By Barry Shaw
NETANYA, Israel — There can be no doubt that Jeremy Corbyn is a shrewd and canny politician. It takes a special talent to emerge from the radical left of his political party to become the potential next Prime Minister of Great Britain.
He has cannily persuaded disillusioned Britons into believing that he can cure their ills. His rise is a phenomenon that goes against the trend in mainland Europe where, increasingly, populations are ditching failed Socialist governments, particularly over the issue of unbridled mass immigration which is leading to a breakdown of the social and cultural order in many European nations.
Britons, it seems, are prepared to put their concerns about this issue to one side and give Corbyn a chance to sort out the morass that has left a post-Brexit Britain in a quandary.
But how will the sharp rise in anti-Semitism within Corbyn’s Labour Party affect the outcome of a future General Election in Britain?
The greater part of their voters will put this to one side as they are not personally invested in this issue. There is a growing Labour constituency that will, surreptitiously, be attracted to the party because of this issue. Without naming who they are, they share a deeply felt antipathy to Jews. It’s part of their culture. There is, of course, a healthy section of the traditional Labour Party that abhor recent revelations of Jew-hatred within their party. Some have even admitted that Corbyn is central part of the problem, not the solution. They feel utterly uncomfortable within their party as more revelations come to the fore.
It is apparent that anti-Semitism was lying dormant within the party, and it became emboldened with the rise of Corbyn, a man who displayed tendencies and statements that position him as a latent anti-Semite with associations with individuals, groups, and even international terrorist organisations that exclusively target Israel, the Jewish state, for annihilation, while he and his supporters claim him to be anti-racist.
Successful political leaders have scheming minds. They know how to win friends and influence people. The really successful ones also know how to split the opposition and cause confusion and chaos among their ranks to reduce their effectiveness. This is an art that the cunning Corbyn has performed on British Jews over accusations of his anti-Semitism.
Following the uproar and the public demonstration of 1500 Jews in Parliament Square in highlighting the endemic left-wing anti-Semitism, the shrewd Corbyn joined a late Passover Seder, organized by a radical Jewish far-left fringe group mockingly called ‘Jewda.’
His strategy had the desired effect.
Against the rising voice from the leaders of mainstream British Jewry, Corbyn can now claim that some of his friends and supporters are Jewish. Therefore, how could he possibly be called an anti-Semite.
To prove his point, he went further to say that he had “learned a lot from talking to the young Jewish people at the event.”
What he learned was that this group calls Israel “a steaming pile of sewage which needs to be properly disposed of.” In this, these Jewish anarchists share his anti-Israel views.
Corbyn has a convenient disconnect with facts and truth. Jeremy Corbyn not only called Hamas and Hezbollah, two Islamic terrorist organizations bent on the destruction of Israel, his friends. In 2014, he went to Tunis to support an event where laid wreaths at the grave of Atef Bseisso, the PLO head of intelligence operations who, among other murderous acts, was the planner of the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre that killed eleven Israeli athletes.
When this embarrassment was exposed, Corbyn wriggled to suggest that he “attended an event where wreaths were laid on the graves of those killed by Mossad agents in Paris in 1991.” He was right, but he hid the inconvenient truth that he went in support of a terrorist responsible for the murder of eleven Israelis.
But back in Britain, Corbyn can now sit back and watch British Jewry tear themselves apart as Jews from the far-left claim to be, as described by Charlotte Nichols who escorted Corbyn to the Jewda event, “a distinct part of mainstream Judaism.”
British Jewry now has a serious problem to deal with both with Corbyn who heads a political party that wreaks of anti-Semitism, but also needs to put its own house in order.
“Criticism of Israel” is a carefully choreographed version of anti-Semitism in the hands of the malevolent, and Corbyn is malevolent. They use it to disguise their Jew-hatred. This is apparent when one applies the 3D test – Demonization, Discrimination, and Double Standards.
When the Socialist hard left apply their scorn and action against Israel and not against the horrible regimes, including those totalitarian regimes they support or ignore, that is discrimination and double standards. When they use emotive language, one-sided judgments, false accusations, against the Jewish state and call for its elimination, that is demonization.
When one goes out of his way to honor or justify the murder of Israeli Jews, that is blatant anti-Semitism. When one employs a tactic or strategy to divide British Jewry, that is the unscrupulous behavior of an anti-Semitic politician.
Apply these standards to Jeremy Corbyn and you can only come to the conclusion that he is a devious anti-Semite who seriously believes that the Jewish state represents all the evils of the world.
I agree and disagree with Alan Sugar, the British business magnate, who wrote a poem of sorts in which he called Corbyn, “a dangerous fool.”
Jeremy Corbyn is not a fool, but he is dangerous. His brand of anti-Semitism is sinister and toxic.
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Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies. He is also the author of Fighting Hamas, BDS, and Anti-Semitism which covers the growing phenomenon of left-wing Jew hatred in support of a Palestinian cause.