UK Chief Rabbi: Labour guidelines show unprecedented contempt for Jews

T. Belman. Take note that this article uses this spelling for “antisemitism”.  That’s the way it should be.  It was never “anti-semitism”.

It is easy to see what the driving force behind these ommissions was. The Labour Party wants to continue bashing Israel’s policies with attacks that run afoul of these guidelines.

Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis’s letter to Labour National Executive Committee follows strong criticism by 68 leading UK rabbis in The Guardian newspaper on Monday.

BY JEREMY SHARON, JPOST

The Chief Rabbi of the UK Rabbi Ephraim Mirivis strongly criticized the Labour party for failing to adopt in full antisemitism guidelines set out by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, saying its omission of critical clauses constitutes an “unprecedented message of contempt to the Jewish community.”

Mirvis wrote his letter to the Labour National Executive Committee which is set to approve new guidelines on antisemitic behavior within the party which has been beset by numerous antisemitism scandals from its members in recent years.

Labour’s new guidelines are based on the IHRA’s working definition of antisemitism, but exclude several key clauses, including one which stipulates that accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations, is antisemitic.

Another clause omitted is that applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation, is also not included in Labour’s guidelines.

In his letter to the NEC, Mirvis urged it to adopt the full IHRA guidelines, noting that they have been adopted by the UK government, Welsh Assembly, Scottish Parliament, 120 local municipal authorities and the Jewish community.

“It is astonishing that the Labour Party presumes that it is more qualified than all of the above and, in particular the Jewish community, to define antisemitism,” wrote Mirvis.

“Adoption of Labour’s new alternative to the internationally accepted IHRA definition will send an unprecedented message of contempt to the Jewish community… Those who vote for anything but the full IHRA definition will be placing themselves on the wrong side of the fight against racism, antisemitism and intolerance.

The specific clauses of Labour’s new guidelines also omit the IHRA’s clauses that say “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g. by claiming that the State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” and “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” are acts of antisemitism.

Separate paragraphs outside of those specific clauses do, however, state: “The party is clear that the Jewish people have the same right to self-determination as any other people,” and that “to deny that right is to treat the Jewish people unequally and is therefore a form of antisemitism.”

The Board of Deputies of British Jews, together with the Jewish Leadership Council, two leading Jewish communal organizations, have both rejected Labour’s guidelines, while 68 leading rabbis from across the spectrum of Jewish denominations wrote a letter to The Guardian on Monday calling on Labour to adopt the IHRA’s definitions.

“As British rabbis, it is with great regret that we find it necessary to write [this], yet antisemitism within sections of the Labour party has become so severe and widespread that we must speak out with one Jewish voice,” they wrote.

“The Labour party’s leadership has chosen to ignore those who understand antisemitism the best, the Jewish community. By claiming to know what’s good for our community, the Labour party’s leadership have chosen to act in the most insulting and arrogant way.”

The rabbis said it was not the place of the Labour party to rewrite the widely accepted IHRA definition of antisemitism and urged the Labour party “to listen to the Jewish community, adopt the full and unamended International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism including its examples, and like the organizations listed above, use the IHRA definition alone as their working definition of antisemitism.”