#OnThisDay 1947: the kind of newspaper editorial that stoked the fires of the antisemitic rioting that swept across British cities in the first week of August 1947…

Letter published in the Gloucestershire Echo the same day. “For every Englishman killed, hang ten Jews… I’m a peace loving man”

Seems topical this week to issue a reminder that Jewish concerns about Corbyn’s tenure as MP for Islington North were expressed years before he became party leader. #OnThisDay 2012. This is not an article that reflects well on Ed Miliband’s leadership, btw. In fact, Jewish Labour Party members' concerns about Corbyn actually pre-dated his election as MP for Islington North. Extract from Philip Kleinman's article in the Evening Standard, 9 June 1983...

I’m not sure the BBC has quite grasped the issues at the heart of this case. bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan… From the letter, which I was very happy to associate myself with:

“We believe that Prof. Miller’s depiction of Jewish students…breaks all academic norms regarding the acceptable treatment of students.”

Good call by Labour HQ, this Because it ain’t just about who his friends are…

Pretty jaw-dropping question by the Daily Express in an interview with George Bernard Shaw, March 1938. Shaw’s response wasn’t too bad... Though it’s fair to say that Shaw’s comments went downhill fast from that point

#OnThisDay 1947: fourth day of antisemitic rioting across British cities. Poignant sign displayed by a Jewish shopkeeper in the smashed window of his wrecked store in Liverpool: “Is this the reward for my son who was killed fighting for his country?” Also on 6 August 1947, one of the most notorious attacks on British Jews was published in the Morecambe and Heysham Visitor by the newspaper’s editor, James Caunt

Been working on a chapter looking at the anti-Zionism of the British far-right. Intrigued by these reports, from 1943, that British fascists were joining the Palestine Police to escape military service in WW2. Tempted to see a connection with the British perpetrators of the Ben Yehuda Street bombing in February 1948 which killed more than 50 Jews.

Lots of comments already on the BLM UK thread on Palestine and Zionism so I’ll confine myself to an observation on one aspect of it. Predictably, it presents a history of 1917-48 which allows no significant distinction between Zionism and British imperialism.

I’ve been getting increasingly fascinated by the 1922 General Election, mainly because it’s a rare case of the Palestine question becoming a significant UK campaign issue. And it was the anti-Zionist Tory right that turned it into one.
Short thread (indulge me)... Driving force behind the campaign was Beaverbrook and the @Daily_Express. It was not pleasant and it was founded on the idea that British taxpayers were being swindled by Jews. That was, for obvious reasons, controversial, and Beaverbrook felt the need to justify himself.

The only real surprise in all this is how long it’s taken Corbynism’s most reprehensible elements to get their “blame the Zionists” myth up and running. The consequences of their doing so, however, will be long-term and very, very dangerous. I’m going to inflict a thread on you. Twitter-friendly version of a university research seminar paper I gave back in February. On the historical tradition of Labour antisemitism and the dangers of antisemitism denial on the Corbynite left.

#OnThisDay 1930: British Colonial Office on the tendency of Britain's inter-war pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist activists to be inspired by "general anti-Semite sentiments"

[A short thread on British fascism and Palestine/ 1] This comment was inspired by an intelligence report from the Metropolitan Police, reporting that the Palestine Arab delegation in London (including Haj Amin al-Husseini) had been associating with people like Captain R. Gordon-Canning
[2]

Corbyn, Hobson and the Jews. A short thread. How could he have known? He was only writing an introduction for a book about the evils of capitalism and empire. What's not to like?

OK. I've sat back on this for a couple of days but I'm going to consider Mr Jeremy Corbyn's talents as a historian of 'Labour and the Middle East'. A shortish thread... This stems from a tweet by @magnitsky a couple of days ago, linking to a 2011 report on Palestian refugees in Lebanon to which Corbyn contributed a section that contained the following *absolute howler*

Corbyn’s PR team have released an additional section of *that* speech which was edited out of the previously available video version. Like so much of what they do, it makes things worse rather than better. The reason being it provides a second example (the other that we know of was a hustings event during the 2015 leadership contest) of Corbyn referring to Jewish “members” (plural) of Lloyd George’s wartime coalition government at the time of the Balfour Declaration.

Going through some old CST reports. This one on antisemitic discourse in Britain in 2010. Oh. Look who's putting in an appearance... No further details in the report but I’m assuming it’s a reference to this.

A short thread on the “dual loyalties” aspect of Labour’s rejection of the full IHRA antisemitism definition. Of all the political parties to come lumbering in on this issue, you’d think Labour might know better. They have history. /1 Here, shortly after the 1967 Six Day War, is Christopher Mayhew, founder of the Labour Middle East Council, explaining why he understands British Jews and their loyalties better than the Chief Rabbi, Immanuel Jakobovits. /2

Former Defence and Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington has died. bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politi… I suspect most of the news coverage will focus on his Falklands resignation. But he also played an interesting (and not always very admirable) role in British policy towardsa the Middle East and in UK- Israeli relations.

Brief thread based on some actual historical evidence about who was preventing Jews escaping from Europe at the start of the Second World War. (Spoiler - it's not the Zionist movement) /1

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September 1939: Chaim Weizmann wrote to the British Foreign Office informing them that the Polish Consul had approached the Palestine Administration with a proposal to rescue 20,000 Jewish children from what had just become Nazi-occupied Poland. /2