Left antisemitism

Dale Street reviews Antisemitism and the Left: On the Return of the Jewish Question by Robert Fine and Philip Spencer. Central to Antisemitism and the Left is the concept of universalism as “an equivocal principle” which “shows two faces to the world”. There is the “emancipatory face”, which looks to embrace all humankind in a shared civil, political and social inclusiveness. And there is the “repressive face”, which marks out and excludes “the other” who is deemed not to meet the criteria for membership of humanity. The Jewish experience of universalism has been as equivocal as the principle...

Workers' Liberty member Daniel Randall spoke on a panel at Limmud , a Jewish cultural and educational conference, on a panel entitled “why Jews should join Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party”. The other speakers were Jon Lansman (Momentum), Anna Lawton (Labour Party member and Limmud 2017 chair), and Barnaby Raine (RS21). The session was chaired by Andrew Gilbert (London Jewish Forum and Labour Party member). This is a slightly-edited version of Daniel's speech at the session. I'm Daniel Randall; I work on the underground in London, where I'm a rep for the RMT union. I'm also a member of the...

Was Rezso Kasztner, leader of the Budapest-based Jewish Relief and Rescue Committee during the Nazi occupation of Hungary, a hero who saved the lives of tens or even hundreds of thousands of Jews from the Holocaust? Or was he a collaborator who knowingly played an indispensable role in assisting the Nazis in the deportation and murder of nearly 500,000 Hungarian Jews in a matter of weeks? To answer that question Paul Bogdanor has examined previously unused documentation, including Kasztner’s private papers, and evidence provided by Kasztner himself in two libel trials held in Israel in the...

One small incident at the Labour Party Socialists conference last weekend said a lot about current attitudes on the left about anti­semitism, Jews, and Zionism. Speaking in a workshop on Europe, Ros Young pointed to the new rise of anti-semitism. It must be fought, she said; and especially so because it will give grist to the mill of Zionism and lead to more Jews going to Palestine where they will oppress our ''black comrades'', the Palestinian Arabs. The next speaker asked that the discussion be brought back to what the workshop was sup­ posed to be about - attitudes to European integration...

The most informative thing about the recent controversy in Momentum — around comments made by Vice-Chair Jackie Walker at an antisemitism training event — has been less the words Jackie Walker herself said, and more the comments made by some of those who have rallied to her defence. Walker claimed to have asked a neutral and innocent question about, and sought a clarification on, the issues of Holocaust Memorial Day and security for Jewish school students. It soon became abundantly clear that Walker's defenders recognised (or chose to recognise) a subtext behind the comments. Though Walker's...

The Communist Party of Britain newspaper Morning Star used the controversy in Momentum about Jackie Walker to launch an attack against the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty. The CP implausibly called the decision to remove Jackie Walker as Vice Chair of Momentum a witch-hunt — she remains on the National Momentum Steering Committee which originally appointed her as its Vice Chair — while simultaneously trying to boost the actual witch-hunt by the Labour Party bureaucracy against us: “The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, which has renounced its status as a political party in order to facilitate its...

On 3 October, the Steering Committee of the Labour left group Momentum voted by a majority (which included Solidarity supporter Jill Mountford) to remove Jackie Walker as the group’s vice-chair. The grounds were her “ill-informed, ill-judged, and offensive” statements at a Jewish Labour Movement fringe event at Labour conference, and her “irresponsible” behaviour in continuing to promote herself and the content of those statements to the media. Walker said Holocaust Memorial Day, 27 January, which principally commemorates the Nazis’ planned, industrialised mass murder of Europe’s Jews, should...

Dave Rich’s The Left’s Jewish Problem – Jeremy Corbyn, Israel and Anti-semitism is not quite what its subtitle suggests it is. But that does not make the book, published a fortnight ago, any the less worth reading. The focus of the book is not Corbyn. At its core is an attempt to provide an explanation of “how and why antisemitism appears on the left, and an appeal to the left to understand, identify and expel antisemitism from its politics.” The antisemitism in question is not the ‘traditional’ racist version. It is an antisemitism which is rooted in “ways of thinking about Jews, Zionism and...

During a recent televised debate Owen Smith linked the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty to left antisemitism. This claim has gained some currency, despite Workers’ Liberty’s thirty-year record of fighting left (and other forms of) antisemitism. For instance, when Nottingham Labour activist Pete Radcliff was recently expelled, because Labour’s bureaucracy wanted to make something of Pete’s association with Workers’ Liberty, the local paper covered the expulsion by linking it to the claim of antisemitism. Below Nottingham leftist Ross Bradshaw defends Pete, and three other non-Workers’ Liberty...

On 15 September, I debated anti-Zionist activist Tony Greenstein in Brighton, on the topic of antisemitism on the left. The audience was comprised mainly of local Labour Party and Momentum activists. The debate was conducted in largely civil tones - perhaps, given the depth of our differences with Tony Greenstein, both in terms of policy and approaches to political activity, too civil. The debate was recorded, and the recording and/or transcripts will be uploaded soon. Listening back to the debate, it occurs to me to set on record a response to some comments of Tony's that I neglected to make...