Denis Healey coined the classic ‘First Law of Politics’: “When you’re in a hole, stop digging.” As a guide to dealing with a crisis, it’s almost always the best advice. Almost.
Because sometimes it’s simply irrelevant. Sometimes it’s not you doing the digging. Sometimes the hole is so great that there can be no end to the digging.
Which brings us to Jeremy Corbyn and antisemitism. Barely a day goes by without new evidence emerging of the Labour leader’s support for or appearance with an antisemite.
I’m writing this in early September. So far, the most damning single video has been his reference to British Zionists not understanding English irony – a classic of that oh-so-refined English antisemitism that holds that the Jew is, for all his or her qualities, somehow ‘the other’ and alien.
But the hole is so vast – so full of unexcavated evidence just waiting to be brought up – that this will clearly not be the last to emerge.
It can’t be, because this is the milieu in which the Labour leader spent decades of his political life until his elevation in 2015. He spent that time actively courting and being courted by the likes of Hamas, Hezbollah and assorted other antisemites. There is decades-worth of this stuff to bring to light.
But obvious as it has been since Mr Corbyn took office that this crisis could never go away – it can’t because it centres on Mr Corbyn’s core beliefs – this summer has been spectacularly bad.
Labour has, consciously and deliberately, gone out of its way to troll the Jewish community – for example, telling 68 rabbis from across the religious spectrum that their view that the party should adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism counted for nothing and only Labour was qualified to define it.
Then, almost beyond parody, the Corbynites were sent out to attack Lord Sacks – Lord Sacks! – as a “far right extremist.”
My newspaper, The Jewish Chronicle, posed seven questions for Mr Corbyn to answer concerning his relationship with and support for a variety of antisemites. He gave no serious answer then, and he hasn’t done so since. At no point has the Labour leader said or done anything other than mouth the words that he is against antisemitism – and, as he usually adds, all other forms of racism.
But as the evidence that contradicts that drips out picture by picture, word by word, video by video, not once has he offered a moment’s self-reflection to address why it is that, as Dave Rich has put it, he seems to be the world’s unluckiest anti-racist, constantly offering support to antisemites.
The truth is that he cannot, because this is his political DNA. In the hard-left mindset, antisemitism is not real racism. Real racism is discrimination against black people and ‘oppressed’ minorities.
Far from being ‘oppressed’, Jews are part of the powerful elite. That’s the view of Ken Livingstone, for example, who said in 2012 that Jews wouldn’t vote for him because they are too rich.
There are some ‘Good Jews’ – the Jews who oppose imperialism (in other words, Israel) but the rest are, by definition, ‘Bad Jews’.
Opinions like these are why antisemitism is a unique form of racism. Most racists regard the object of their hatred with contempt as lesser human beings – such as the Ku Klux Klan in the US or the National Party in apartheid South Africa.
But antisemites see Jews as clever, sly and wily. They think Jews secretly run the world. Hence the constant references to the supposed Rothschild control of the world’s banks, Jewish control of the media and wars fought to further Jewish interests. The hard-left regards the world as being run by a Western elite and powerful interest groups, which need to be broken up by revolution.
It also explains part of the visceral hatred of Israel – and why, for example, enemies of Israel are the people Jeremy Corbyn turns to as friends. As a Westernised capitalist democracy they regard Israel as another arm of oppression to be smashed. This is the milieu in which Jeremy Corbyn has existed for decades.
This is a crisis that cannot end, because Mr Corbyn is in some ways simply a stooge. He has his personal issues with Jews, but the real issue is the hard-left cadre he represents which now controls the Labour Party.
Mr Corbyn may stay, he may go. He may say something, he may not. It’s all irrelevant. The real point is that Labour is now run by politicians who divide Jews into ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’, who see them as the class enemy and who choose to ally with organisations which exist to wipe Jews from the face of the earth.
Stephen Pollard is the editor of the Jewish Chronicle. This article first appeared in our Centre Write magazine Staying Faithful?. The views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue.
