Left antisemitism

Reposted, with thanks, from JewThink. Parts of the article are adapted from the posts by the author on Twitter/X . “My grandpa didn’t survive Auschwitz to bomb Gaza”, reads a placard held by a Jewish woman at a protest in Mexico against a previous Israel assault on Gaza . A photo of the placard went viral on social media in 2021. More recently, the American group Jewish Voice for Peace has shared a photo of a protestor at a demonstration against the current war with a banner reading “My grandparents didn’t survive the Holocaust for Israel to commit genocide in Gaza.” In both current and prior...

This report was written by Viktor Medem, an unaffiliated socialist activist, writing in a personal capacity. We are publishing the report as a contribution to debate and discussion around left perspectives on the issues. For Workers' Liberty's own response, click here . In the United States, the response of left-wing Palestine activists to Hamas’s 7 October massacre of 1,400 Israelis has created fault lines whose full implications are only beginning to become clear. What is clear, however, is how news of the massacre was greeted. When it broke, the response of almost all the major Palestine...

1. The belief that Israel has no right to exist. That is the core of Left antisemitism, though it comes in more than one version and from more than one root, ranging from the skewed anti-imperialism of the Orthodox Trotskyists through Arab nationalism to Islamic chauvinism. Advocacy of the destruction of Israel, which is what separates left-wing and Islamist antisemites from honest critics of Israeli policy, should not be tolerated in the labour movement and in the serious left. 2. The belief that Israeli Jewish nationalism, Zionism, is necessarily a form of racism. That this racism can only...

Picture shows a protest organised by Standing Together, many of whose leaders have signed the statement. In the photo, Uri Weltmann, one of Standing Together's Jewish leaders, holds the megaphone for Ghadir Hani, one of Standing Together's Palestinian leaders. Both have signed the statement. This statement was co-signed by dozens of Israeli peace activists, mostly Israeli Jews but including some Palestinian citizens of Israel. It is reposted from the website of Yachad, here . We, Israel-based academics, thought leaders and progressive activists committed to peace, equality, justice, and human...

A screenshot of a video critiqued in this article The expression "red line" was used twice by the left-wing journalist Dominique Vidal 1 , in a program on "Le Média" (a TV channel linked to the "La France Insoumise", a left-wing national-populist movement) entitled "ISRAEL-PALESTINE: HOW DID WE GET THERE? 2 " and in a program on "Regards" (a YouTube channel and publication linked to the French CP) entitled "Israel-Palestine: "Inhumanity and war crimes are red lines 3 ". Journalists and commentators obviously have to take into account the difficulty of knowing, today 10 October, the exact scale...

Only a political framework that guarantees equal rights to Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs can ensure peace and security.

You can’t win against conspiracy theorists: evidence that refutes their arguments just proves how deep the conspiracy goes; any attempt to stop them spreading their nonsense must be the work of the conspirators themselves. So it is with the film Oh, Jeremy Corbyn: the Big Lie . The makers and promoters of the film claim that it was “banned” from the Glastonbury Festival. The Morning Star cites the Glastonbury “ban” as an example of “increased political censorship”. The film’s producer, Norman Thomas says: “Journalists … have to stand up and call this out for what it is: rank censorship. The...

Loyalty to old friends is an admirable thing, but it can be taken too far — especially in politics. The Morning Star is nothing if not loyal towards Jeremy Corbyn, who wrote a weekly column for the paper between 2005 and 2015. In its 10-11 June edition, the paper devoted eight pages to a “celebration” of Corbyn’s 40 years as an MP. There’s a chummy interview with editor Ben Chacko, Lindsey German praises Corbyn for “calling for peace in Ukraine” (i.e. for Ukraine to capitulate), Islington Friends of Jeremy Corbyn hail him as “a man of the people” and one Chelley Ryan describes how she and her...

In Outcast: How Jews were Banished from the Anti-Racist Imagination , Camila Bassi seeks to reintegrate a critique of antisemitism into a critique of racism. Moreover, she makes a case for a more universalist, humanist anti-racism — a confrontation with racism that is also a critique of race. She does this through a confrontation with left-academic discourse around Jews, antisemitism, and Israel/Palestine. (A disclaimer at the outset: Bassi wrote a foreword for my own book on left antisemitism, and I provided a cover quote for hers. Both our books were published by the same imprint, No Pasaran...

People who want to see Putin prevail in Ukraine were overjoyed by the recent UCU congress vote against Ukraine having the arms it needs to defend itself. Andrew Murray wrote in the Morning Star that “The University and College Union (UCU) vote to oppose the continuing war in Ukraine, including arms sales, and to support the campaigning of the Stop the War Coalition against British government policy over the war is a beacon to the rest of the movement”. Just days earlier, the PCS conference had passed a resolution supporting Ukrainians’ right to defend themselves and liberate their country. The...