For Jeremy Corbyn’s Left, Anti-Semitism Isn’t an Aberration; It’s Part of a Larger Worldview

Video appeared on British news websites yesterday of the Labor-party leader Jeremy Corbyn speaking at an event that seems to have been organized in conjunction with Hamas, where he was joined by various anti-Israel conspiracy theorists, supporters of terrorism, and radical Islamists; in his remarks, Corbyn seems to criticize British Zionists for being insufficiently English. To James Bloodworth, this sort of behavior—which by this point should come as no surprise—is not a personal quirk or a strange blind spot regarding anti-Semitism, but part and parcel of the political philosophy of the Corbynite left.

The enemy, [in the minds of Corbyn and his ilk], is not so much capitalism as a system but a shadowy, malfeasant group of undesirables who pull the strings behind the scenes. As always, the vocabulary is the giveaway. The enemy is defined as “the elite” and “the establishment” in language sometimes indistinguishable from that of the alt-right. This conspiratorial worldview inevitably lends itself to centuries-old tropes about Jewish power; anti-Semitism is the ultimate conspiracy theory.

A mural that was removed from East London in 2012 encapsulated this outlook. It depicted hook-nosed Jewish bankers playing Monopoly on the backs of the poor below the “eye of providence,” the symbol of the Illuminati, a long-defunct Bavarian secret society that is a favorite of conspiracy theorists. Corbyn, a back-bench member of parliament at the time, backed the artist responsible for the piece, writing an encouraging comment on his Facebook page. . . .

Corbyn himself indulged in those old, pernicious tropes in 2012, when he speculated on Iranian state television—without a shred of evidence—that “the hand of Israel” might be behind an Islamist terror attack in Egypt. . . . Yet Corbyn also emerged from a political climate in which other forms of casual anti-Semitism were routinely tolerated. Large parts of the far left in Britain have long tolerated anti-Semitic tropes and foaming vitriol under the guise of anti-Zionism. A few left-wing groups have been warning about this for years, but most of the movement turned a blind eye to anti-Semitism among comrades from the developing world because—in a demonstration of the racism of low expectations—they were said not to know any better. . . .

The conspiratorial beliefs of the new cranks have combined with an older form of anti-Semitism emanating from the most unreconstructed reaches of the old left. . . . Israel is viewed through the old Soviet lens. Zionism equals racism, my enemy’s enemy is my friend, and indiscriminate violence by an oppressed nation should be supported, because the ends justify the means. . . . During the 1970s, Soviet authorities, steeped in old-fashioned Russian anti-Semitism, published “anti-Zionist” books that promoted the claims of a “Zionist-controlled” media and described Zionism as a variant of fascism, arguments still popular among some of Corbyn’s supporters today.

Read more at Foreign Policy

More about: Anti-Semitism, Anti-Zionism, Israel & Zionism, Socialism, Soviet Union

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF