The Labour leader appears neither to know nor care about the history of Jerusalem
By Tom Gross, JEWISH CHRONICLE
In the main Labour Party conference hall in Liverpool on Wednesday there were more Palestinian flags being waved than at a Hamas rally in Gaza, or at the opening session of the Palestinian Parliament at Ramallah.
The vote by party members to debate Palestine was the fourth most popular after housing, schools, and justice for the Windrush generation. The subject of “Palestine” gained more votes (188,000) than Brexit and the National Health Service.
The chanting by Labour activists included the Hamas and Islamic Jihad slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free” (i.e. from the river Jordan to the Mediterranean sea, including Tel Aviv, all of Israel should be destroyed).
One of the many lies told about Israel among left-wing Labour activists is that there were almost no Jews there before the Holocaust.
But I wonder how many of them (including Jeremy Corbyn) know who wrote the following in 1854?
“The sedentary population of Jerusalem numbers about 15,500 souls, of whom 4,000 are Mussulmans [Muslims] and 8,000 Jews. The Mussulmans, forming about a fourth part of the whole, and consisting of Turks, Arabs and Moors, are, of course, the masters in every respect, as they are in no way affected with the weakness of their Government at Constantinople.
“Nothing equals the misery and the sufferings of the Jews at Jerusalem, inhabiting the most filthy quarter of the town, called hareth-el-yahoud, the quarter of dirt, between the Zion and the Moriah, where their synagogues are situated – the constant objects of Mussulman oppression and intolerance, insulted by the Greeks, persecuted by the Latins, and living only upon the scanty alms transmitted by their European brethren.”
That was Karl Marx, writing in the New York Daily Tribune, in 1854.
Does Corbyn know this? Does he care?
Marx was part of a small fringe of antisemitic self-hating (or self-loving, depending how you look at it) Jews, who have attached themselves to antisemites throughout history, of the kind that Corbyn likes to associate himself with today.
To cite one example of Marx’s antisemitism, in an article in 1856, he wrote: “We find every tyrant backed by a Jew…if there were not a handful of Jews to ransack pockets. Here and there and everywhere, there is ever one of these little Jews ready to…place a little bit of a loan.
“Thus do these loans, which are a curse to the people, a ruin to the holders, and a danger to the governments, become a blessing to the children of Judah.”
Marx was not alone among antisemitic Jews. The spiritual father of the fanatical incitement that led to the Spanish inquisition was Abner of Burgos, a Jew who converted to Christianity. Abner wrote “the Jews must be deprived of the easy livelihoods…they must be deprived of their autonomy and that they must be terrorized and subjected to harsh laws. Only then would they merit redemption.”
There were even some deranged Jews who supported Hitler and Stalin.
And there are still some today, including Britain’s leading Holocaust denier, Paul Eisen, with whom Corbyn has shared a platform (and even reportedly donated money).
At Labour conference there were no mass flag wavings for the Kurds or Tibetans or Baluchis or Catalans or Abkhazians or South Ossetians or Western Saharans of Nagorno-Karabakh Azeris or Chechens or Papuans or the more than 100 other independence movements throughout the world.
(In case the BBC forgot to report on it, over 500,000 Papuans have been killed, and thousands more have been raped, tortured and imprisoned by the Indonesian military in the last 50 years.)
There were no British flags anywhere to be seen.
So the question is: for a party that claims it does not want to be thought of across the world as the most antisemitic mainstream political party in Europe today, why do you keep promoting those that wish to kill Jews?
This is not helpful for the promotion of Middle East peace, as Britain’s first MP of Palestinian descent, Layla Moran, the Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, told the BBC earlier this month in regard to other anti-Israel slogans plastered on London bus stops by left-wing Corbyn supporters.
“I’m a Palestinian,” she said. “The fact that this has come from a group that purportedly is speaking for Palestinians, I take great offence at myself, because I think it is blatantly antisemitic.”
Tom Gross is a former Jerusalem correspondent for the Sunday Telegraph.
ONe of the most telling aspects of antisemitism is that one generation after another has adhered to it with “passionate intensity” (W.B. Yeats’ phase) despite that absence of any rational basis for it at all. A telling comment on the baseness of the human species. Jonathan Swift once called humans “the most pernicious race of perfidious little vermin that ever crawled upon the face of the Earth.”
@ Uzitiger: Could you give me more information about the Sumatran victims? These “Indonesians” (meaning in practice mainly Javanes) seem to be among the most despicable human beings on Earth. It is really telling that for all their genocides and crimes against humanity, going back generations, they are a thoroughly respedtable member of the international “club,” while generous , humane and democratic Israel is not. The entire “internaational community” are nothing but a bunch of disgusting predators.
@ Michael S:I had great difficulty getting this site on my computer. I kept getting “site not found” messages with a “lock” sign on the Papuan web address. Eventually I managed to get into the site via a link from a wordpress blog. Weird. Obviously there is a systematic news blackout oabout this genocide. We live in a world of truly unbelievable treachery and viciousness and sanctimonious hypocrisy at the highest levels of government in nearly every one of the world’s countries. Either the entire human race is rotten, or the overwhelming majority of people who obtain positions of power and influence throughout the world. Take your pick. When so many human beings who know better treat other human beings so barbarously, all the while “virtue-signaling” like crazy, it makes me wonder if the human race deserves to survive. In any case, its extreme self-destructiveness may mean that it won’t.
@ Edgar G.: I did , too. I still don’t fully understand what motivates these Jewish rats, past and present. I guess it is what John Le Carre (an antisemite himself) once called “a sense of power lost, and power regained through treachery.”
Corbyn doesn’t care who spews hatred of Israel or the Jewish people. He is an antisemitic pig. His Labour Party is also a hotbed of antisemitism.
@ adamdalgliesh:
Don’t forget the Sumatrans they murdered for their so called Allah.
@ Michael S:
This explanation never occurred to me. I’d never heard the term before. I very well remember the matters you mention. My recollection is that they were not “invited”, but the British Government issued a statement that all members of the contracting British Empire would be regarded as British and entitled to British passports and even live in Britain if desired. So naturally they took the then open opportunity…which was later amended.
There was a mid 20th cent. member of Parliament, I just can’t recall his name but he was unpopular with the major parties, but a strong populist and always spoke the unpleasant truths. He was against extending British citizenship, and became condemned for this, but prophesied what would occur, A very staunch man, everybody’s “sore thumb”.
I just recalled his name…Enoch Powell. ….
I thought perhaps,that it was connected to those Ian Carmichael films, and that others on this site had seen and enjoyed them.
@ adamdalgliesh:
If you type “Abner of Burgos” in to the internet you’ll get quite a bit on him. I just looked it up
@ adamdalgliesh:
Over 500,000 civilians have been killed in a genocide against the indigenous population. Thousands more have been raped, tortured, imprisoned or ‘disappeared’ after being detained. Basic human rights such as freedom of speech are denied and Papuans live in a constant state of fear and intimidation.
— https://www.freewestpapua.org/info/human-rights/
What is the Windrush generation?
The Windrush generation refers to the immigrants who were invited to the UK between 1948 and 1971 from Caribbean countries such as Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados.
The name derives from the ship MV Empire Windrush, which on June 22, 1948, docked in Tilbury, Essex, bringing nearly 500 Jamaicans to the UK.
— https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/04/uk-windrush-generation-scandal-180418074648878.html
Easy lookup.
I would also like to learn something about Indonesia’s alleged murder of 500,000 Papuans. Can anyone direct me to some sources? If this is true, the media’s failure to report this genocide is almost as criminal as the genocide itself. But I would first like to very Mr. Gross’s casual, in-passing allegation.
I’d be interested to know what was the specific article from which Mr. Gross took the antisemitic rquotations from Karl Marx, so that I can look it up in his collected works, verify it and learn the context. I am familiar with Marx’s antisemitic article “On the Jewish Question,” which is found in all editions of Marx’s collected works, including those published by the Soviet Union. As far as I know, no Communist Party or even prominent Marxist ever disassociated themselves from that article. Still, I would like to be able to track down Marx’s later antisemitic statements and collect them with full source attributions. I could be a very useful polemical weapons whenever leftists trying to deny they are antisemitic and or make a hero of Karl Marx.
I would like to learn more about this Abner of Burgos as well. I never heard of him before, although I know that there were many Spanish Jews who became Christian monks or priests and took part in the persecution of their fellow Jews. Can anyone provide me with information about this guy?
A very telling article and considering that Corbyn recently announced that if he becomes P.M. he’ll immediately recogise “Palestine”, makes me wonder just how deeply the virus has spead amongst post WW2 Britain. I thought at one time that it surely had to be on the downgrade, but there is never any shortage of rabble rousing liars to stoke the fires of irrational hatred.
Just one question, unrelated to the meat of the article, but mentioned peripherally.
What is “The Windrush Generation”. I’ve never heard the word …except in connection with that wonderfully humourous military farce, “Private’s Progress” in which Ian Carmichael plays the part of Stanley Windrush, .He did another one in which he was just as good “I’m all right Jack” …….Peter Sellers was absolutely fantastic..
So….I’d be obliged for an answer to this question.