Words of the Week

“We can only judge Jeremy Corbyn by his words and his actions. He has given support to racists, terrorists and dealers of hate who want to kill Jews and remove from Israel from the map. When he implies that, however long they have lived here, Jews are not fully British, he is using the language of classic pre-war European anti-Semitism. When challenged with such facts, the evidence for which is before our eyes, first he denies, then he equivocates, then he obfuscates. This is low, dishonest and dangerous. He has legitimised the public expression of hate, and where he leads, others will follow.”

Source: Britain’s former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, quoted by The New Statesman.

Words of the Week

“It has become a cliche to call antisemitism the canary in the coalmine, an indicator of deeper problems and divisions in society. It is not a particularly welcome metaphor: it places Jews in the role of the canary, whose sole purpose is to die so that other, more valuable, lives might be saved. But it does speak to a deeper truth, which is that the antisemitism that has become embedded in the Labour party is not only a problem for Jewish people, and it should not only be Jews who stand against it. This is a problem for everyone.”

Source: Dave Rich, “Labour’s Antisemitism Code Exposes a Sickness in Jeremy Corbyn’s Party” (The Guardian)

Words of the Week

“There is no other ethno-cultural minority in America targeted with such ferocity from the left and the right. No other group is simultaneously branded as complicit in white supremacy and as false assimilators who threaten white ascendancy. And there is little that is new here; one need only look at late nineteenth-century political discourse to see how Europe’s Jews were simultaneously attacked by the communists as exploiters of the proletariat and by the proto-fascists who warned of the coming racial war between Aryan and Jew. The Zionists who emerged in this context believed that Jewish statehood would end anti-Semitism; that the Jews would henceforth be a ‘normal people’ with a homeland, a flag, a language, and a destiny. They were wrong. If anything, the Jewish state has compounded the ways in which anti-Semitism is articulated today. The Alt-Right’s ‘Jews will not replace us’ and Steven Salaita’s ‘there’s not enough space in the world for both Zionism and Palestinians’ could have been articulated a century ago with little revision.”

Source: Jarrod Tanny, “The Loneliness of the Liberal Zionist” (Forward)