Eamon Dyas

The idea that a member of the Royal Family would feel compelled to seek the approval of the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, Sir Ephraim Mirvis (he was awarded his knighthood only last year), before commenting on a conflict in which Israel is committing war crimes is noteworthy. If such war crimes were being committed by any other country than Israel a member of the Royal Family would surely feel no obligation to consult the British allies of that country before formulating a statement on that  behaviour. As it was the statement didn’t come anyway near a condemnation and the fact that the statement was so banal in the face of the horrific actions of Israel is testimony to the distorting impact on our common morality of an ideology that places Israel as the arbiter on how our public figures are permitted to give expression that morality. Such is the extent to which the ideology of Zionism has penetrated deep into our body politic.

The extent of the choke-hold Zionism now has on the British political establishment would seem to be a relatively recent thing and it represents something of a reversal of the original relationship of British politics to Zionism. 

That relationship had been based on an exploitation of Zionism by the British establishment in the implementing of its foreign policy. But after Brexit this all changed. While it remained an important component in its foreign policy the destabilisation of British politics as a result of Brexit opened a door that facilitated Zionism’s entry into domestic politics in a way not seen previously.

It’s difficult not to over-estimate the destabilising impact of the Brexit vote. That vote ended up creating chaos to the extent that the normal machinery of politics effectively ceased to function. Party politics was thrown into turmoil and the levers of Parliament became paralysed for long periods of time. The dividing line between the parties no longer held sway as the future relationship between the U.K. and the EU became the dominant issue for politicians. In that turmoil the question of Leave or Remain dictated the political agenda and unofficial alliances formed across party lines. 

Inside the Labour Party those sympathetic to Israel to some extent overlapped and to some extent were embraced by the anti-Corbyn and Blairite component of the party. That component was provided with a political environment in which its disruptive capacity was enhanced by the Brexit vote. It was now possible for it to combine the Leave/Remain issue with its objective of removing Corbyn from the leadership of the party and this combination was later to coalesce around the Zionist efforts to eradicate the prospect of him forming the government of the United Kingdom.

Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party in 2015 – the year before the Brexit referendum. As soon as he became leader of the Labour Party his policy on Palestine triggered a concern within the Israeli security apparatus. It simply couldn’t abide a potential future British government committed to that policy and after an initial period of waiting on normality to return to the Labour Party it went into overdrive in formulating a strategy designed to ensure it would not happen. The Israeli embassy and the powerful Zionist element in Britain became active agents in that strategy. But this did not happen immediately. If we look at Margaret Hodge as a barometer of the change, on 24 June 2016 she tabled a motion of no confidence in him as leader not because of any suspicion of antisemitism but because of the way he had failed the Remain case in terns of the referendum result. The following month in July over 40 female Labour MPs signed an open letter accusing him of being inactive on the issue of online abuse. At this time the primary means by which those in the party opposed him was not through accusations of encouraging antisemitism but on the basis of his supposed culpability in the referendum result (he was considered a secret Brexiteer) and on the more conventionally respectable issue that was then dominating the media – the online abuse of women. 

Up to this point the Israeli embassy and the British Zionists were still hopeful that the advent of Corbyn as leader would be rectified by the normal workings of politics in ways that would ensure that the Labour Party would soon rid itself of such an aberration. After all the overwhelming majority of the Parliamentary party were adamantly opposed to him. It was only after his re-election as Leader in 2016 (despite the opposition of the Parliamentary party) and the party’s good showing in the 2017 general election that the prospects of him as Prime Minister became the basis on which the Israeli Embassy and its British Zionist allies formulated their strategy for ensuring it would not happen. As we now know that strategy was to centre on the development of a perception of the Labour Party under his leadership as a hot-bed of antisemitism. Ensuring that outcome was no easy task and required the mobilisation of a coalition of Corbyn opponents in the Parliamentary and wider party where the old guard, the Blairites, the Remainers and the Zionist supporters joined forces to push that strategy. But it also required the support of the mainstream media where someone with a track record of a lifetime of opposing antisemitism and racism was to be remoulded into what he patently was not. 

It was obvious that the charge of him being a harbinger of antisemitism was never going to be possible along the lines by which antisemitism had previously been defined so the definition had to be reformulated along lines that made the charge stick. Central to all that was the adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism together with all the examples used in that definition which could be used to equate criticism of Israel with antisemitism. This became the issue pushed by the anti-Corbyn coalition with the object of ensuring that it became party policy. Throughout 2018 the pressure on the Corbyn leadership was cranked up to the extent that it made it impossible for the public to perceive his leadership in any other terms. In July 2018 Corbyn sought to diffuse the onslaught by proposing the adoption of a Labour policy on antisemitism that included the substance of the IHRA definition but excluded the adoption of some of the IHRA examples that would inhibit criticism of Israel. The Labour policy on antisemitism was to exclude four of the examples used in the IHRA definition. These four consisted of: comparing contemporary Israeli policies to those of the Nazis; suggesting Jewish people are more loyal to Israel than their home country; holding Israel to different standards to other democratic countries; denying Jewish people have a right to self-determination – for example by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a “racist endeavour”. 

But this was not enough for those determined to undermine Corbyn and it only served to increase the pressure. It was in the wake of Corbyn’s proposed Labour policy that Margaret Hodge now “discovered” that Corbyn was an antisemite when on 17 July she accused him to his face of being “a fucking antisemite and a racist” in the House of Commons. In August, in a further attempt to placate the advocates of the adoption of all the IHRA examples used in its definition, Corbyn made a further concession to the extent that he was prepared to accept three of the previously excluded examples. However, he continued to insist that claiming that Israel was a “racist endeavour” was not antisemitic and sought to ensure that it remained an acceptable part any description of the way in which Israel was founded and continues of function in terms of its treatment of Palestinians. This final attempt by Corbyn to retain some semblance of legality for criticism of Israel also failed. Like all his previous efforts this fallback action only served to encourage the advocates of the full adoption of the IHRA examples and in early September 2018 the party adopted the full definition together with all its examples.

Although this was “sold” to the party as the means of “repairing its relationship with the Jewish community” this proved only the first stage in “cleansing” the party of those who now fell within the new definition of antisemitism. In adopting the IHRA definition the party committed itself to redefining antisemitism in terms that prohibited its members from describing the foundation of Israel as a colonial or racist project and denied them the opportunity of describing the ongoing policy of the Israeli government towards the Palestinian people in such terms. From then on any such expressions became the equivalent of expressing an outward hatred to Jews or of calling for the killing or harm of Jews in the name of a racial ideology.

When the Labour Party adopted this definition in early September 2018 it exposed not only Corbyn but also those in the party who had supported the cause of the Palestinian people and who comprehended that cause in terms of anti-colonialism or anti-racism to the charge of antisemitism. 

The debilitating influence of this Zionist achievement continues to corrode the capacity of British politics to give expression to the human outrage that now engulfs the majority of the populace and no more so than in the Labour Party. The horrific assault on the Palestinian population of Gaza by the State of Israel and the obvious genocidal and ethnic cleansing object of that assault cannot be explained in words that accurately describe that assault because such words and such descriptions now come within the catchment of the new definition of antisemitism.