Jeremy Corbyn and the British Labor Party’s Legitimization of Anti-Semitism

Jeremy Corbyn may be poised to become the new leader of the UK’s Labor party. Dalibor Rohac comments on his unsavory associations:

[Corbyn] hosted the show Comment, on Press TV, the [official television] channel of the Islamic Republic of Iran. In 2009, Corbyn welcomed Dyab Abou Jahjah to the UK’s parliament. Jahjah is a political activist and publisher who became known for publishing, in 2006, a series of cartoons poking fun at the Holocaust. As late as 2013, Corbyn attended events organized by Paul Eisen, at that time known as an outspoken Holocaust denier. In 2012, he hosted the hate preacher Raed Salah at the House of Commons. In a sermon two years later, Salah—whom Corbyn had called a “very honored citizen” and invited for tea—expressed hope that Jerusalem would soon become “the capital of the global caliphate.“

Corbyn also came publicly to the defense of Stephen Sizer, an Anglican vicar who, as he put it, “dared to speak out against Zionism.” In February this year, Sizer was banned by church authorities from using social media after he suggested on Facebook that Israel was responsible for 9/11.

The shared affection for Iran, Hizballah, and Hamas—“an organization that is dedicated toward the good of the Palestinian people,” according to Corbyn—the numerous ties with anti-Semites, and sympathy for the Kremlin would normally place Corbyn in the company of Hungary’s Jobbik and Europe’s other far-right extremists. What is shocking is the double standard with which Corbyn’s supporters are viewing his, shall we say, “eccentricities.”

Read more at Weekly Standard

More about: Anti-Semitism, Hamas, Hizballah, Holocaust denial, Politics & Current Affairs, Socialism, UK

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society