Jeremy Corbyn is the
greatest threat to Israel since the days of Ernest Bevan who, as Foreign
Minister in the late 40s, opposed the establishment of the State of Israel.
Jeremy Corbyn will be Britain’s
next Prime Minister. Corbyn’s foreign policy will be centered upon opposing
Israel in all international forums. A Corbyn Cabinet will impose international
sanctions against Israel.
Jeremy Corbyn will cause
great damage to the intelligence sharing that goes on between Israel and
Britain that will be more damaging to Britain than it will be to Israel. Jeremy
Corbyn will also damage the trade arrangements between Britain and Israel to
the detriment of both countries.
This is the assessment of
Israeli security and intelligence think tank experts, an assessment that is
making its way into the National Security Council and Cabinet in Jerusalem.
The assessment takes into
consideration Corbyn’s political profile, the forensic evidence of his rise to
power, his wide and powerful base that will ride him into leadership come the
next election, and the political implications of a Corbyn government for
Israel.
How do we know he will be
the next British Prime Minister? He has
the revived strength of the traditional Labour Party and trade union machine.
Even those within the Party will still vote for him. That includes the Jewish
Labour Members of Parliament who think they can contain him from within once he
is elected. They are wrong. Corbyn does not depend only on old school
Laborites. For over thirty years he has built around him a wide radical base of
support, and it is this base that will be the heart and soul of the future
Labour movement. This power base is constituted by his Stop the War Coalition,
the Socialist Workers Party, and the Palestine Solidarity Movement. They are
well organized, well-funded, hyper active at grassroots level. They have
established a hardcore constituency in certain key areas of Britain and they
are ready to employ thousands of volunteers to get out the vote of millions of
new voters. Opposed to them is a divided Conservative Party with a weak leader
in disarray. Corbyn will be the next PM. And it’s a very bad choice not only
for Israel, but for Britain.
Corbyn leads a political
ideology that sees evil in the world. It is not the evil of communism that has
slaughtered and repressed hundreds of millions of their own people in places
like the Russia and China.
It is not the evil of hard
left socialism that has ruined countries and impoverished people with failed economic
policies in countries such as Cuba and Venezuela, despite Corbyn’s idolization
of Castro, Che Gevara, and Chavez.
It is not the evil
perpetrated by 3rd World and Arab liberation movements that have
left a trail of bodies and millions of refugees in their wake, but that Corbyn
supports ideologically.
Corbyn’s perceived evil is
western imperialism, European colonialism, things of the past but to which
Corbyn still clings today, and capitalism, another evil in the eyes of Corbyn.
They like to call his
movement the new socialist left, but it’s not new, and it is certainly not
democratic socialism. It is more a
hardened radical socialism supporting the antithesis of a normal democratic
world such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
The glue that links the
triple towers of American imperialism, European colonialism, and capitalism is
Israel via the Zionist cause. And, according to Corbyn, at the heart of this
malevolent movement are the Jews with their money, their powerful influence,
and Israel with, according to Corbyn, its evil and racist tendencies to trample
on the human rights of downtrodden Palestinians whose land has been stolen from
them by the Zionist colonialists aided and abetted by Britain and America – a
wrong that can only be corrected with the establishment of Palestine,
preferably in place of the illegal state of Israel.
According to the Corbyn
credo, Zionism is racism and the Jews of Britain are an enemy, guilty by
association, by their love and support for Israel, a support that goes back a
century. Zionism is racism, and if you are Jewish and love Israel you are a
racist, and, according to the Corbyn doctrine, that doesn’t make Corbyn or his
cohorts anti-Semites. So goes the mantra according to Corbyn. Israel is a
mistake and a crime that must be rectified in the name of social justice and
human rights.
We get a hint of this in a
2012 wall mural daubed with stereotyped figures depicting Jewish bankers
playing a game of monopoly (money) with their table top resting on the backs of
half-naked workers.
Corbyn originally
supported the artist’s work. It reflected his worldview. But, after a media
outcry, the Labour Party, and then a Corbyn spokesperson, fumbled a lame excuse
that Corbyn had supported the artist in the name of freedom of speech, and not
the content of his artwork to which he hadn’t really paid attention.
This is the lazy
anti-Semitism of Corbyn.
It is no coincidence that
two of his sons inherited a detestation of Jews and Israel.
In March, 2018, Britain’s
Daily Mail revealed that son, Tommy, posted a Nazi-style cartoon on his
Facebook page showing an arm with a Star of David crushing people. It came with
the Tommy Corbyn message, “why is it that I can critique my own, or any other
government, but criticism of the Israeli state is branded anti-Semitic?”
Well, maybe son, that’s
because you emblazon your page with stereotype cartoons that demonizes Jews.
He was followed into the
Facebook pit he had dug for himself by someone who posted “Hitler was a
Zionist.” You see where it leads.
Tommy Corbyn belonged to several Facebook pages that regularly posted
anti-Semitic screeds that included claims that members of the royal family were
Jewish and they controlled the world with the Rothschild banking dynasty. Or
one depicting the earth with a Star of David and the anti-Semitic message, “the
new world of Zionism is almost here! One government. One currency. One religion.
Act now!”
Sickeningly, it
goes on, and on.
And the other one, Ben, is
much the same. Keen to see a Palestine in place of Israel. Cries for dead Palestinians. Not a tear
for dead Israelis.
The apples don’t fall far
from the rotten tree. But the Corbyns’
Israel hatred goes well beyond family. It is far more broad-based and ominous
than that.
On March 3, 2009, Jeremy
Corbyn sent out a statement.
“Tomorrow evening
it will be my pleasure and my honour to host an event in parliament where our
friends from Hezbollah will be speaking. I’ve also invited friends from Hamas
to come and speak as well…the idea that an organization that is dedicated
towards the good of the Palestinian people and bringing about a long-term peace
and social justice and political justice in the whole region should be labelled
as a terrorist organisation by the British government is really a big, big
historical mistake.”
The following year,
thirteen Palestinian terror groups headed by the Islamist Hamas launched a
military campaign of terror against Israel in an attempt to derail peace talks
between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
During the fighting,
Corbyn stood in Trafalgar Square and told a crowd of thousands gathered in
support of a Hamas war against Israel at a rally organized by Corbyn’s
triumvirate organisations, “in our thousands, in our million, we are all
Palestinians.”
Corbyn’s spin-master,
Labour’s Executive Director of Strategy and Communications, Seumas Milne,
explained that Palestine had become “the greatest international cause of our
time.”
It can’t be because of the
Palestinians killed by Israel in response to the wholesale Hamas-motivated
violence, although this was their excuse, because, right next door to Israel,
the number of people killed in the Syrian civil war enormously outnumbered
those in the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Included in the dead in
Syria were almost 200,000 Palestinians among the estimated 700,000 dead yet, as
Dave Rich wrote in his book, The Left’s Jewish Problem, we have never
heard Corbyn chant “in our thousands, in our million, we are all Syrians.”
Why is this not “the
greatest international cause of our time”? Could it be he doesn’t really
care about the Syrian dead, or dead Palestinians in Syria aren’t deserving of
his attention?
The reason he is not a
Syrian is because Syria is backed by Russia and Iran. Had Assad been backed by
America, or perversely, Israel, Corbyn would have screamed about being a Syrian
– but he didn’t, and that is telling.
Could it be that he
supports Palestinians because his target for abuse is exclusively Israel, and
he can’t pin the massive Syrian death toll on the Jewish state?
Actually, this is a
perfectly reasonable assumption.
Israel is, for Corbyn, the
epitome of his perfect enemy.
The Jewish state is, for Corbyn,
the donkey he can beat and kick to his heart’s content. It fits all the evils
of his malevolent mind. He can trot out all the hard left epithets and craft
them to match his fevered image of Israel.
As Milne told an
anti-Israel rally in London in 2014, “Israel has no right to defend itself
from territory it illegally occupies. The terrorism is the killing of civilians
by Israel on an industrial scale.” Later he wrote in The Guardian
newspaper, “The idea that Israel is defending itself against unprovoked
attacks from outside its borders is an absurdity.”
Corbyn and Milne construct
Israel to be a white European colonial power, no matter that the majority of
Israelis are Mizrahi Jewish refugees kicked out of Arab and Muslim lands for
the crime of being Jewish. Or that a
colonist is someone enlisted by a major power to colonize a conquered
territory, a description palpably out of whack with how and why a Jewish
majority exists in Israel.
Corbyn can posit Israel as
stealing someone else’s land when, in fact, the international community granted
a specified mandate to re-establish the national homeland of the Jewish people
on the barren land of a dead and defeated Ottoman empire.
This bequeath was an
acknowledgement of a history in which the Jews were the original indigenous
people in the ancient land of Israel.
But you will never find this in Corbyn’s vocabulary.
To Corbyn, Israel is
scarred with the twin sins of deserting socialism for capitalism, made more
bitter by the modern success of Israel’s free economy, and of Israel being a
close ally of America.
To Corbyn, these are
unforgiveable sins and must be opposed by all means possible, even disreputable
ones. Hence the adoption of the Hamas doctrine.
Corbyn frequently calls on
the British government to stop supplying Israel with military supplies and
armaments. But Corbyn has no objection to Britain supplying infinitely larger
supplies of military hardware to Turkey, a country that has been occupying the
small European island of Cyprus for about as long as Israel has been in the
West Bank, a Turkey that is killing Kurds with gay abandon, without
restriction, and without a peep from Corbyn.
No “We are all Cypriots” from Corbyn’s mouth.
In Corbyn’s fevered mind,
Israel is the most racist, violent, oppressive state on the planet.
We have to ask ourselves
why he thinks this way.
What can it be if not the
famous Natan Sharansky definition of anti-Semitism when applied to Israel.
Watch out for the three d’s – demonization, delegitimization, and double
standards. Check this out, Corbyn is guilty of all three.
Corbyn hosted Hamas in the
British parliament. Can anyone tell me if Corbyn ever hosted an Israeli
diplomat or minister to hear their views, for balance if little else, to
question the Israeli perspective in healthy debate, rather than propagandize an
anti-Israel message? It never happened. Israel
is guilty. Nothing to discuss.
Did Corbyn ever applaud
Israel’s efforts to bring about the long-term peace agreements with Jordan and
Egypt that are still holding? Does he have anything positive to say about
prolonged Israeli efforts to reach agreements with the Palestinians? There have
been three substantial concessions offered to the Palestinians by Israeli
leaders. The Palestinians rejected all of them, rejected the notion of living
alongside the Jewish side, rejected any negotiations with Israel.
Did Corbyn ever criticize
the Palestinians for their decades of violence and terror and their rejection
of Israel’s right to exist?
Strange behavior for
someone who claims to be a man of peace.
Corbyn spoke about a “long
term peace” for “the good of the Palestinian people.” What is he
talking about? Did his friends, Hamas or Hezbollah, ever do anything to bring
about long-term peace in the region, let alone a peace with Israel?
Did he do anything
constructive to engage in a peace process?
What is Corbyn’s
definition of a terrorist organisation if Hamas and Hezbollah are not
included. On second thought, I am not
interested in hearing his definition. His definition will be Israel and America.
He and Milne have said so.
At the end of last August,
when Israel, with the help of Egypt and Qatar, achieved a break in Hamas’s
hostilities against the Jewish state an angry Mahmoud Abbas said that “Hamas
is a gang and its leaders are thugs and thieves.”
Apparently, it takes a
Palestinian to recognize a Palestinian.
He went on, “We will
not allow anyone to turn Hamas into a legitimate government in the Gaza Strip,
even if that means a direct confrontation with Egypt and Qatar.”
So much for long term
peace between the Palestinians, Mr. Corbyn, let alone with Israel.
Truth be told, there is
something disturbingly totalitarian about Corbyn’s unreasoned dogma that is
dangerous.
Corbyn and his ‘Stop the War Coalition’ have
always been on the wrong side of history. He and they have stopped no wars. On
the contrary, they have been disrupters to peace processes.
He sided with the IRA against Britain. His
heroes have been Castro and Chavez. Can you pick any greater socialist
disasters than these regimes, a disaster he is keen to impose on Britain?
There is nothing meek, weak, peace-loving, or positive about Hamas,
Palestinian Islamic jihad, or Hezbollah. They are the opposite of peace-makers.
They are peace-destroyers. They are recognized internationally as terror
organizations and the cause of instability in the Middle East. They threaten
and oppress not only eight million Israeli citizens, but their own people.
In Hezbollah’s case, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen
have been negatively impacted by Hezbollah’s violent interference. Thousands
have been killed and injured by this proxy of the not-so-peaceful Islamic Republic
of Iran.
Lebanese Hezbollah chief, Nasrallah, is not
subservient to the Lebanese government, but take his orders from the Iranian
Khamenei, both being Muslim Shia. Less
to do with loyal nationhood. More to do with a religious affiliation with a
foreign power. Is this Corbyn’s sense of democratic values?
Corbyn cannot be further from the truth in his definition of Israel. He
is incapable of dispassionately seeing the world in general and the Middle East
in particular as it really is. He is too
invested in his personal biases and his political ambitions to be swayed by
facts.
The
Palestinians have been let down, depressed, oppressed, had their hopes for a
better future dashed, by their own failed leadership, and by the outside
influence of troublemakers.
At the end of the day,
Corbyn has done absolutely nothing positive for peace or for the Palestinians
in decades.
Even with his intimate
contacts with the most brutal elements of the Palestinian leadership he has
been unable or unwilling to heal the rift of the Palestinian political divide
between Fatah and Hamas, a chasm that erupted in a Palestinian civil war and
the ensuing murder of over six hundred Palestinians by Palestinians.
When they are not killing
each other, they are killing Israeli Jews.
What sort of Palestine is
Corbyn working for? Is it a two-state solution? Or is it one without Jews and
without a Jewish state? For one thing is predicted with an awful certainty. If
there is to be a Palestine, by the ballot or by the bullet, Hamas will usurp power.
Which raises the question, do we really want to see another Hamastan in the
West Bank, overlooking the narrow coastal plain of Israel, threatening
Jerusalem?
In short, Jeremy Corbyn
and his ilk must recognize the fundamental national rights of the Jewish people
in their ancestral homeland, to accept the rights of Israelis to live without
fear and without threats to our survival, and acknowledge that Israeli society
share the same creative, constructive, peace-loving values cherished by good
people everywhere.
Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate for
Public Diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.
Author of 'Fighting Hamas, BDS, and Anti-Semitism.'
