Tag: United Kingdom

ALLEGATIONS of anti-Semitism have been prominent in international news lately, with Jeremy Corbyn’s British Labour Party in crisis, accused even by some of his own MPs of tolerating or even practising anti-Semitism.

Why has Corbyn, leader of the Israel-hate movement, been so intransigent on the issue? Because, quite simply, he knew that by embracing the definition in full he would be labelling himself as an antisemite.

What I was hearing from them was that, behind closed doors, attitudes which were more identified with far-right racists were not uncommon and that these were to a degree validated by obsessive anti-Israel monomania – and by others quite happy to treat Jews as political footballs.

Israelis do not hanker for a return to the days of the British Mandate. Nor do they hide secret reservoirs of nostalgia for the sometimes-brutal British colonial police who once strutted about their streets. But they did react with undisguised pleasure to the decision by the UK Foreign Office last month that the future king, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, would this year make the first official visit to Israel by a senior member of the British royal family...

Sir Gerald Kaufman was more than just another veteran Labour politician. Having entered the House of Commons in 1970, he was the longest-serving parliamentarian of any political hue... And, as an Orthodox Jew, he should have been revered by the Jewish community. Instead, when he died last month aged 86, not a tear of sadness touched the cheek of British Jewry.

The British decision to uncouple from the EU, expected to take effect by 2019, was not unqualified good news for Israel: Britain, along with Germany, has been among Israel's most stalwart diplomatic allies in the EU and its voice within the decision-making forums of the EU will be missed, particularly on the vexatious question of the "Middle East Peace Process"...

If it was true that you can judge a man by the company he keeps, Jeremy Corbyn would be an Israel-hating, antisemitic, Holocaust-denier. The newly elected leader of Britain's Labour Party would vehemently deny he is any of the above, but some of his best friends are one or more of these things.