MPs look into rise of anti-semitism

The Guardian is reporting that MPs are to look into the rise of anti-semitism

MPs yesterday launched an all-party inquiry into anti-semitism amid fears that incidents have reached record levels.

Denis MacShane, the former minister for Europe, will lead the investigation, which will take submissions from groups and members of the public as well as oral evidence during sessions at the House of Commons.

John Mann, chairman of the parliamentary committee against anti-semitism, said the problem had moved into the mainstream. "Anti-semitism is back in fashion," he said. "It was once considered solely a problem of the far right, but this is no longer the case."

He said the "liberal and progressive left" could not absolve itself. "With the levels of anti-semitic incidents at their highest for over a generation, an investigation of this type is much needed and overdue."

Comments

[Lior]

I am very pleased that John Mann, Labour MP for Bassetlaw, Nottinghamshire, is not claiming that the "liberal and progressive left" can absolve itself in the matter of increasing anti-Semitism.

But, cynic that I am, I wonder if any investigation will be honest enough to admit, and tackle, what is to all but the "liberal and progressive left" an open and shut case of such self-evidence that even a blind beggar in a dark alley could not but see it for what it is. And that is, quite simply, that the "liberal and progressive left" are themselves the major contributing factor.

The Guardian, The Independent, the BBC, Channel Four and nearly every "progressive" commentator has, in the last five to ten years, seized upon Israel as the latest obsessive bone of contention. The unfairness of the reporting, the intrinsic bias, the innate double standards in moral outrage and the utter contempt they hold for any other "ethical" or "principled" opinion, in the delusion that theirs are the only legitimate "ethics" and "principles" have led, inexorably and inevitably, to an identification of Israel with every Jew, rendering this permitted anti-Israel stand to spill over into outright anti-Semitism. The hypocricy of those who would condemn anti-Semitism as the worst of the extreme right's excesses are they themselves the harbingers of the new, acceptable anti-Semtism: Israel bashing.

It must also not go unnoticed that in their indulgence of the now excessive creed of multi-culturaralism, the "liberal and progressive left" have conflated tolerance of the ever-increasing demands of excessive Islam, a component of which is an even greater contempt and hatred of Israel and have too easily, if not willfully and purposefully, overlooked the historically established links between radical Islam and the very rightwing extremists they so readily condemn in the same breath as they do Israel.

There are a number of explanations for the "liberal and progressive left's" antipathy toward Israel but I see the major impetus as being Israel's abandonment of socialism, its founding principle, and the election of free market, conservative parties to power; the seizure by the "liberal and progressive left" of the instiutions of the European Union that, with its "democratic deficit" and government by decree, has resulted in a suppression of true, democratic debate thus denying pro-Israeli sentiment equal airtime and byline; and the end of apartheid in South Africa - once the Boer was put in his place, they had to find another bone to chew on and they found it in Israel, the racist state, the militaristic state and, ultimately, the new Nazi state as they deem it to be.

This will come as no news to those who obtain their news from a source other than The Guardian, The Independent, the BBC, Channel Four and nearly every "progressive" commentator.

There are, of course, some very well-intentioned sitting MPs who are members of "The Friends of Israel" of both the Labour and Liberal Democrat Parliamentary parties. But with the "liberal and progressive left" as the established driving force behind the new anti-Semitism, I fear it is rather to our own that we must now look in order deprive them of the legitimacy that the Jewish community has, until now, given them.

To be more explicit, it is those reckless Jews who, subsumed and heretofore beyond reach in the fastness of their ideologically leftwing soundness who must be called to account by the Jewish community at large, disciplined and prevented from aiding and abetting the "liberal and progressive left" from its now life-threatening campaign of vilification of Israel and Jews in general.

I invite you to go to the pages of the Liberal Judaism website at http://www.liberaljudaism.org amd download their "latest news" and also their November/December edition of Liberal Judaism Today. In it, you will find tributes, accolades and grief-filled pages to "Rabbi" John Rayner, their "life president" and the former resident rabbi at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, St Johns Wood.

Once he had earned himself a reputation for the schmaltz of the Liberal Jewish siddur, he turned his linguistic "talents" to a constant and carping litany of inexactitude, exaggeration, excoriation, resentment, embittered and scathing condemnation, of Israel, delivered with all the po-faced, sanctimonious puritanism of a reformed Church of Scotland minister in need of intravenous whisky. His hate-filled and condescending diatribes against half the world's Jews, uttered contemptuously from the safety of his armchair, could have been put down to senility - except that he made a life-long career out of it, conflating his
leftwing, partisan views and the pulpit into one, right-on grandslam of de-legitimization worthy of an Iranian nuclear strike. Born a Jew, and seemingly indifferent to his methods of conversion that left his converts in the never-never land of Liberal Judaism as a self-declared entity of its own fantastic making, he could himself have made Aliyah, stood for the Knesset - in the only democracy in the Middle East - and made efforts to change that country's policies, even if he had to a jig round falling Kassam rockets. (Don't worry, he wouldn't have dropped his Torah scrolls on Simchat Torah, because he believed such manhandling to be idolatrous.) He could have gone into politics in this country for that matter, but I suppose the snobberies of "New" Labour's elitism had yet to come to tempt him.

Worse still, he legitimized the illegitimate views of the "liberal and progressive left" who seized on his every word and used it to the ultimate danger of us all.

Worse, perhaps, than his deliberate and willfull undermining of the Jewish community, he set in train a fashion of emulation in the younger generation of Liberal Jewish rabbis who, fighting for his mantle, have gone from excess to excess down his chosen path of condemnation of Israel. That "Rabbi" Danny Rich has been appointed as Liberal Judaism's new Chief Executive is proof of this. A graduate of Manchester University, he read Politics and Modern History and where he completed his undergraduate thesis on ‘The Palestinian Experience in Jordan: 1948-1970’, one wonders at the appropriateness of his studies to lead a Jewish organization. Would that he had perhaps concentrated on Israel.

Aside from the fact that his appointment is rather like promoting the Suffragan Bishop Kensington to the post of the Dalai Lama's chief press officer, we see here the fruits of John Rayner's work.

And that work must stop. The Jewish community will have no bearing on the proposed parliamentary investigation into anti-Semitism and the problem of anti-Semitism will not go away until those members of our community who fuel anti-Israel bias and collaborate with our true enemies realize that their actions condone such activities.

In the 1950s, the Conservative Party had no Jewish MPs in the House of Commons. Now it is lead by one. And since the 1970s, what the "liberal and progressive left" would call a "paradym shift" has taken place in British and world politics.

It is as plain as the noses on our faces: anti-Semitism is now the preserve of "liberal and progressive left". We can do little to prevent the inexorable and unremitting indulgence of this anti-Semitism in The Guardian, The Independent, the BBC, Channel Four and by nearly every "progressive" commentator. But we can cease to legitimize their views by censuring Jewish collaboration with them. We need collectively and promptly to shame these reckless, unreasonable and intolerant Jewish mouths into silence.

[Herbert Kaine]

The cause of increased anti-Semitism in the UK is obvious. It is the anti-Jewish press, namely the Guardian, the BBC, and other Julius Striecher inspired publications. The UK itself is in decline, with a healthcare system that is defeatist and staffed by non-English speaking third worlders and has the highest rate of hospital acquired infection in Europe. The population of the UK is riddled with a spiritual mad cow disease, perhaps caused by real prions. It is no surprise that anti-Semitism is rife in the UK, which lashes out at Jews in the same way a demented person lashes out at well meaning relatives.