Friday, July 12, 2019

Will The BBC Panorama Documentary on Labour Anti-Semitism Change Anything?

I just watched the BBC Panorama documentary "Is Labour Anti-Semitic?", which debuted on Wednesday night in the U.K., online and have arrived at the following five conclusions.


1. The Labour Party has experienced a dramatic increase in anti-Semitic incidents since Jeremy Corbyn became party leader in September 2015.


2. Jewish Labour Party members have become targets of abuse and the Labour Party leadership tolerates this abuse notwithstanding Corbyn's public statements claiming anti-Semitism has no place in the party. A political party whose members can engage in Holocaust denial and make videos about Jewish members being "fucking Jews" without consequence is an anti-Semitic entity.


3. The office of Jeremy Corbyn and that of Labour Party General Secretary Jenny Formby have actively interfered and obstructed the Party's Dispute Committees and National Constitutional Committees from investigating complaints of anti-Semitism and imposing the proper discipline.


4. The Labour Party has publicly smeared whistleblowers from the Disputes Committees as being always opposed to Corbyn when, in point of fact, many were Corbyn supporters or had joined the party because of him.


5. Jeremy Corbyn himself is an anti-Semite and Labour cannot rid itself of anti-Semitism unless he is no longer leader and there is full scale purge of members who engage in anti-Semitic behavior.


So will the Panorama documentary change anything? Short of a full scale rebellion on the part of Labour MPs, I very much doubt it. Indeed, Labour MPs are calling for the resignation of Deputy Leader Tom Watson after he praised the programme and the whistleblowers even while claiming only Corbyn could solve the problem.


All of which tells me that anti-Semitism in the Labour Party is going to get much worse and might never get better.

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