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Interesting reading the last few pages of comments on the Labour Party's problems with anti semitism.
I'm not interested in the whataboutary that is pretty prevalent not only on this thread but seemingly on the entire left as well. Everywhere I seem to hear the same kind of reactions (What about the Tories, what about other sections of society, its a distraction /smear/overreaction to distract from the local elections, its anti Zionism not antisemitism, someone even told me to focus on issues such as global warming instead as its more important etc etc etc).
All of the above are baffling and for me as a British Jew pretty damn worrying really. I would prefer to believe that people simply haven't really taken the time to understand our point of view and are taking a binary (you are either with us or against us) standpoint on it instead of simply looking at a minority who seem to think that an issue is so insidious and problematic that we go and protest in Parliament Sq.
Whether the Conservative Party is racist is irrelevant. We are talking about the Labour party, the question is, is there antisemitism in the labour party? Yes or no? If yes then deal with it, no ifs not buts , no half arsed suspensions while a committee takes 2 years to look into the issue, then you can point at the Tories. Get your own house in order first. An old friend of mine who is Labour councillor (he also helped organise the recent protest in Parliament Sq - as an elected Labour member, what would his incentive be to see Labour do badly at the polls?) from Kilburn on Labour and it's institutionalised anti semitism problem, well worth a read:
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-institutional-racism-in-my-local-labour-party/
Here are a few other issues that show the uninformed that this is not just about a facebook comment on a mural: the constant and vile antisemitism from party members against Luciana Berger (google it), the antisemitism from party members against Lord Levy, leading to him threatening to leave the party very recently (google it), the issues that councillors in Haringey have come up against where they feel discriminated against by Momentum members BECAUSE OF THEIR RACE, not their political views (google it). For me, the only times i have ever faced antisemitism personally has singularly been from left wingers and left winger 'radicals'.
Surely if there is an issue (readily admitted by Corbyn , McDonald and a host of very worthy MPs such as David Lammy and Chukka Ummuna who have experienced the scourge of institutionalised racism first hand) then the Labour Party need to deal with it as a priority. Deflecting and explaining away our protests comes across to us Jews as a subtle form of antisemistism that we are complaining about. Do people really think that we would go and protest specifically to damage the party's electoral chances or because we just don't like Corbyn? It sounds like accusations of yet another Jewish conspiracy.
This is a good take: On a personal level, what I have found most depressing about antisemitism in Labour is the ready assumption that Jews would so readily sell short millennia of persecution for an easy political hit. Our history is not a bargaining chip. It is a threat we have faced from generation to generation in some form or other. In the last century, most calamitously.
tl:dr Jews are saying theres a problem with antisemitism, take them seriously, don't deflect to the Tories because its irrelevant and read up about the background before brushing the complaints off