Thread by @Steve_Cooke

The 2012 tweet that got Derek Hatton suspended two days after being allowed to rejoin Labour was, in my opinion, antisemitic. He wrote: "Jewish people with any sense of humanity need to start speaking out publicly against the ruthless murdering being carried out by Israel!" /1

The tweet:
A) implied that Jewish people might not have "any sense of humanity";
B) held all Jews responsible for the actions of a government in another country;
C) suggested that Jews have a particular responsibility to condemn the Israeli government's actions. /2

Let's see how Degsy's words would look with a few edits:
"Black people with any sense of humanity need to start speaking out publicly against the ruthless murdering being carried out by Eritrea!" /3

Would we expect British people of African heritage to condemn the government of Eritrea in order to prove they had a sense of humanity? If we expressed that view, it would be racist. And if we say Jews have a similar responsibility in relation to Israel, that's just as racist. /4

Hatton's tweet was similar in spirit to the notorious one posted by Matthew Doyle following Islamic State's 2016 terrorist attack in Brussels. Except that Doyle had confronted a Muslim woman face-to-face, which must have been intimidating. /5

Doyle's comment was widely condemned as Islamophobic, especially by the left. For the most part, left activists get that we shouldn't say such things about Muslims but, for some reason, many of us don't seem to understand that it's equally wrong to say such things about Jews. /6

That's my take on Hatton's tweet, not on the issue of whether a seven-year-old social media post or alleged misdemeanours from 34 years ago should be relevant to his membership status in the Labour Party now. /7

Oh, and I'm not saying that Islamic State and the Israeli government are in any way similar. The point is that we cannot hold entire ethnic groups responsible for actions that have nothing to do with them. /End

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