Yesterday, a high-ranking British parliamentarian by the name of Naz Shah was suspended from the Labor party over a series of anti-Semitic comments that recently came to light. Douglas Murray writes:
I noticed earlier this year . . . that although she had suffered some of the harsher corners of Pakistani culture, Ms. Shah was no moderate. And then yesterday morning the wholly unsurprising news emerged that she has spent recent years railing against the Jews and the state of Israel on social media. Specifically she seems to approve of a plan to remove all the Jews of the Middle East from Israel. If there is any irony to a Muslim [who represents a district with a large immigrant population] telling the Jews of the Middle East to “go back to where they came from,” then it is clearly lost on Ms. Shah.
Of course this is the same Ms. Shah who sits on a parliamentary group investigating anti-Semitism. She has already issued the pro-forma statement stressing that in the wake of this unfortunate outing of her views she will be “seeking to expand [her] existing engagement and dialogue with Jewish community organizations, and will be stepping up . . . efforts to combat all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism.” Yes—that’s it! All that’s needed is for Shah to “fight” racism just that little bit harder. Hitherto she just hadn’t been doing it quite enough. All she needs to do now is promise to crush “all extremists” a little bit more and the sunlit uplands will be reached for all of us.
But she hails from a culture and a religion where anti-Semitism is rife. Why would you expect her not to hold some of the rancid views of that culture as well as some of the nicer bits?
More about: Anti-Semitism, Labor Party (UK), Politics & Current Affairs, United Kingdom