Last Tuesday, Israeli left Zionist Union lawmaker Ayelet Nahmias-Verbin was attending a UK Labour conference in Liverpool, where she was interviewed by a London broadcasting station, and it was all about Corbyn’s supposed ‘anti-Semitic problem’. After Nahmias-Verbin determined Corbyn to be an anti-Semite (“unfortunately and sadly”), she was asked whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is racist.
Iain Dale of LBC: A lot of the people at your Labour party conference firmly believe that your Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is racist. Do you?
Nahmias-Verbin: Well, I think Binyamin Netanyahu is not racist, but I do believe he’s doing a lot of things the wrong way […] But I do not believe that he’s racist. You can’t really be Prime Minister of Israel and be racist, I’ve got to tell you, even if your name is Binyamin Netanyahu.
With those words the interview ends, and it’s a real jaw-drop for many of us.
Nahmias-Verbin did not provide any actual evidence whatsoever for her claim that Corbyn is an anti-Semite. Here is the bit where she calls Corbyn an anti-Semite, and here one can follow her reasoning of why that is supposedly so.
Dale: Do you believe that Jeremy Corbyn is anti-Semitic himself?
Nahmias-Verbin: Unfortunately and sadly, I believe that he [Corbyn] is anti-Semite [sic] himself, he really is not concerned with being balanced when it comes to Israel-Palestinian issues, but more importantly, he is, maybe, anti-racist, you know, I really didn’t see any indications for that, real indications for that, but his is anti-Semite [sic], and unfortunately, the Jewish community, the wonderful Jewish British community here, who really want to remain both identities [sic], to stand strongly by both identities, feel unsafe when it comes to the option that Mr. Corbyn should go into Number 10 [Downing Street]. And I think that indicates more than anything else, that we are dealing with something that is very untypical, and definitely, definitely, has nothing to do with Labour party values. What kind of, really, what kind of values do you share, Mr. Corbyn, with those terrorists, what kind of Labour party values do you share with those inhumane people?
On the one hand that’s a real mouthful. But it’s also void of any substance as an answer to the interviewer’s question.
Notice how Nahmias-Verbin begins with politics – she attacks his politics as being imbalanced, in her view, when it comes to Israel-Palestine issues. That’s a political opinion. This doesn’t indicate anti-Semitism per se. In fact, when it came to Verbin-Nahmias’s critique of Netanyahu later, she said pretty much the same things: “I do believe Netanyahu is doing things the wrong way,” she said, criticizing his intransigent position on dialogue with Palestinians. “I’m not happy about what [Netanyahu is] doing, that’s why I wake up in the morning, every morning, picking a new fight”, she says.
So when it comes to political disagreement with Netanyahu, his bias concerning Palestinians in no way suggests that he is racist, according to Nahmias-Verbin, and neither could he be, because he’s the Prime Minister of Israel… But when it comes to Jeremy Corbyn, his political bias, according to Nahmias-Verbin, is the core of the matter.
Ironically, she is revealing a great truth in her rant. This is about politics and nothing else.
Nahmias-Verbin cannot cite any real, substantial evidence suggesting that Corbyn is anti-Semitic, because there is none. “He really is not concerned with being balanced when it comes to Israel-Palestinian issues.” Her next statement is about him possibly being anti-racist, but certainly anti-Semitic. Of course, if you are anti-racist, that precludes your being anti-Semitic, because anti-Semitism is a form of racism, just one of the many which Corbyn opposes.
Then after those two rather invalid points, including the vacuous circular logic that Corbyn is anti-Semitic because he just is, Nahmias Verbin turns to how British Jews will feel “unsafe” if Corbyn were to become Prime Minister, because they want to stand strongly by “both identities”. The two “identities” Nahmias-Verbin is ostensibly referring to are the Jewish and British ones. But there are many Jews who feel utterly safe with the idea of Corbyn becoming Prime Minister. There has been no indication of a rise in anti-Semitism due to Corbyn’s election to lead Labour. What this really is about is not the duality of Jewish and British identities, but rather Zionist and British.
The conservative Jewish leadership, as well as the conservative Labour constituency and the Tories wants to maintain an unflinching support of Israel, and the “unsafety” they feel is about their politics being challenged.
This is what this has always been about. These Jewish “feelings” of “unsafety” have been the substance in itself, in lieu of any actual substance to the charges against Corbyn of him being an anti-Semite and of Labour in general having an “anti-Semitic problem”.
Nahmias-Verbin’s rant portrays precisely this lack of substance, this hot air of emotion concerning a political issue, dressed up as if it was racist and anti-Semtic, since it threatens to challenge the Zionist orthodoxy.
Notice – this message is being delivered to us by an Israeli lawmaker who is supposedly on the left – in a party that is supposed to be the equivalent of the British Labour party, and she is trying to condition it from the ‘inside’. This tactic is not new. One may be reminded that the British Jewish Labour Movement leader, Ella Rose, had stepped into the JLM outfit straight out from her Public Relations office at the Israeli Embassy. Rose had featured in the Al Jazeera investigative documentary ‘The Lobby’ where she expressed the hope that journalist Asa Winstanley would “die in a hole” for having exposed her record, and vowed to use “Krav Maga” –Israeli hand-combat techniques– to take down Jackie Walker, a leading critic and now twice suspended member of Labour. Asa Winstanley has noted how The Jewish Labour Movement had acted as a proxy for the Israeli embassy, and how Rose worked closely with Shai Masot, the Israeli embassy spy who was forced out of the UK after the undercover Al Jazeera investigation in 2017 exposed him plotting to “take down” a senior UK government minister.
“We work with Shai, we know him very well,” Ella Rose admitted to an undercover reporter in 2016.
The Jewish Labour Movement is not really about being Jewish – it is about being Zionist. And they want to tell us, even force it down our throat (maybe by Krav Maga techniques, who knows), that being Jewish and Zionist is absolutely one thing. Just as chief UK Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis said: “One can no more separate [Zionism] from Judaism than separate the City of London from Great Britain”. Mirvis also said that we should not use the Z-word, because Jewish students at universities were confronted with a “wall of anti-Zionism, which they feel and know to be Jew hatred”.
Neither is Ayelet Nahmias-Verbin using the Z-word. But it’s in the name of her party, the Zionist Union. There’s a reason why that Z-word is in the name – it is very important for Israeli Zionist leftists to mark that although they are leftists, they are certainly not “Arab-lovers”, as former Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog had warned them about.
And that is basically what the Israeli Zionist Union wants to do to the British Labour. It wants to ensure that its leader is not an “Arab lover”. Nahmias-Verbin noted in the interview that her party had “disengaged from Jeremy Corbyn’s office, but not from the Labour party”. Imagine that – a party democratically elects its leader, and a sister-party in another country doesn’t like the leader, so it boycotts the leader, but maintains relations with the party as a whole, and the party lets it. If this is not insurgency, what is?
But we must return to Nahmias-Verbin’s last claim, that’s a real eye-opener: “You can’t really be Prime Minister of Israel and be racist”.
No, those Jewish Zionist terrorists and ethnic cleansers who became Prime Ministers from right and left, basically running in a series from Israel’s inception, they couldn’t possibly be racists. But if Corbyn engages with any of those who were on the receiving side of that colonialist onslaught, then he’s meeting “terrorists” and “inhumane people”. But Zionist leaders are never terrorists nor inhumane. Their actions are merely due to them being Zionists, and that’s always humane. Thus the inherent suggestion in the Zionist Union’s lawmaker’s words is, that Zionism couldn’t possibly be racist, and if you’re a Zionist, you just can’t be a racist – at least not an anti-Semite.
This is the idiocy that even the British left allows in as a supposed logical advocacy. Apparently, so many are so scared of potentially being embroiled in an anti-Semitic witch hunt, that they rush to the safest haven – Zionism. If you love Israel, you couldn’t possibly be an anti-Semite. Who cares if you’re an anti-racist in general or not – that’s secondary. The moment you challenge Zionist hegemony in any way, you’re risking it. Bottom line: make sure you’re not seen to be an Arab-lover, that’s the worst.
H/t David Sheen
I have no idea who this insignficant individual is and I don’t care.
There is this though:
“do believe he’s doing a lot of things the wrong way”
Classic LibZio! It’s not that the things he are doing are wrong, it’s that he’s doing them the ‘wrong way’!
“You can’t really be Prime Minister of Israel and be racist, I’ve got to tell you, even if your name is Binyamin Netanyahu.”
But what if his name is Mileikowsky?
Oh, and there’s this, buried deep in the recesses of the Guardian’s Letters page:
“We have long had serious concerns about the lack of due impartiality and accuracy in the reporting of allegations of antisemitism against Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party. The recent report by the Media Reform Coalition examining coverage of Labour’s revised code of conduct on antisemitism shows that we are right to be concerned.
The research examined over 250 articles and broadcast news segments and found over 90 examples of misleading or inaccurate reporting. In relation to the IHRA definition of antisemitism that was at the heart of the dispute, the research found evidence of “overwhelming source imbalance” in which critics of Labour’s code of conduct dominated coverage, with nearly 50% of Guardian reports, for example, failing to include any quotes from those defending the code or critiquing the IHRA definition. Moreover, key contextual facts about the IHRA definition – for example that it has only been formally adopted by eight countries (and only six of the IHRA member states) – were consistently excluded.
The researchers conclude these were not occasional lapses in judgment but “systematic reporting failures” that served to weaken the Labour leadership and to bolster its opponents within and outside of the party.”
That the Jonathan Freedland Guardian is one of the worst offenders will surprise noone who has been observing (!) the sad decline of this once admirable newspaper over the past several years.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/sep/30/flawed-reporting-on-antisemitism-claims-against-the-labour-party
But you can really be Prime Minister of the “Jewish State” of Israel and be a supremacist. Which he definitely is.
This Nachmias-Verbin is a racist herself, if only because of the way she describes Palestinians in general as terrorists and inhumane people:
“What kind of, really, what kind of values do you share, Mr. Corbyn, with those terrorists, what kind of Labour party values do you share with those inhumane people?”
The only thing I can take away from this woman’s notion that netanyahoo can’t be racist because he’s the PM of the racist ‘state’ of ‘israel’ is because he’s a jew and jews can’t be racist because (insert your favorite ziosplanation for that one – there’s at least 6 million of them that have nothing to do with palestinians)) BUT Corbyn is definitely antisemitic because he’s not a jew and therefore does not recognize/honor/fellate the entitled zionist jewish supremacy and he thinks all people are created equal and because he looked at her weird.