1/ I don't want to be talking about being a Jew during this election campaign. I'm more interested in discussing the @UKLabour manifesto, with its transformative vision for the the UK. I'm happy to argue on its policies, some great, some not so great (like Trident) but...
2/ The Chief Rabbi of the Orthodox Synagogue, who represents a minority of the diverse Jewish Community, has chosen to make this a political issue. From what I have read of his Times article, his view is based on a picture of the Labour Party that I don't recognise...
3/ He describes a Party poisoned by antisemitism, with that evil sanctioned from the top. I've been to hundreds of Labour Party meetings, met thousands of activists. In truth, I've never heard an antisemitic statement in any meeting I've attended...
4/ That is not to say that such statements have not been made, or that where they have been made they should be ignored. But if it were true that such sentiments were really *endemic* in Labour, I would surely have come across them by now...
5/ I should add that I certainly *have* come across antisemitic attitudes and ideas from people claiming to be supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, not in meetings, but in the relative anonymity of the internet. But on the internet there is every sort of craziness, and clearly...
6/ some of these posts come from people on the far right, or even people who are attracted to Corbyn in the *mistaken* belief that he is antisemitic (a belief reinforced by interventions such as that from Rabbi Mirvis). These people should not be Labour members. If they are...
7/ they should be expelled. I am confident, from my experience, that the vast majority are *not* Labour members.
One of the pieces of evidence Rabbi Mirvis adduces comes from the Jewish Labour Movement, who say that 130 cases of antisemitism are being investigated...
One of the pieces of evidence Rabbi Mirvis adduces comes from the Jewish Labour Movement, who say that 130 cases of antisemitism are being investigated...
8/ This represents something like 1 in 5,000 of Labour Party members. If I attended a meeting of 5,000 people, and discovered that one of them was being investigated for antisemitism, I would be hard put to say that the whole meeting must be antisemitic...
9/ Saying that it has taken time to deal with these cases, and this means that the leadership is complicit in this racism, is rather like saying that the state is complicit in criminality, since there are many unresolved cases, some of them going back years, before the courts...
10/ What is more, some of the cases before the courts will eventually be found not guilty, but this, in itself, does not mean that the criminal justice system is not working (there are many other criticisms of it)...
11/ I deeply regret that the Rabbi's intervention will cause more fear and distress among ordinary Jewish people, who do not have first hand experience of the solidarity, friendliness and support that I have received from Labour Party members...
12/ I cannot determine Rabbi Mirvis's motivation for his intervention, and would like to think that he is sincere but ignorant. I do think, though, that if he wished to be seen as an objective commentator, ...
13/ ...it would have been better not to have issued his effusive congratulations to Boris Johnson on becoming leader of the Conservative Party.
