Jeremy Corbyn—a frontrunner for the leadership of Britain’s Labor party—has fond words for Hamas and Hizballah, and considers some of their leaders his friends. Why, asks Brendan O’Neill, don’t these associations earn him opprobrium from within his own party?
There’s no evidence Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-Semite. But the storm over his dodgy associates has thrown up ample evidence that the modern left doesn’t take anti-Semitism seriously.
It’s extraordinary. Ours is an era of super-sensitivity toward race and prejudice. . . . Criticize Islam and you’ll be diagnosed as suffering from the mental malaise of Islamophobia. Share a platform with a British National party nut-job or Christian evangelical who hates gays and you’ll be frog-marched out of polite society.
Yet what has been the left’s response to revelations that Corbyn rubbed shoulders with anti-Semites? In a nutshell: “Chill out. Stop making a fuss over nothing.” All of 21st-century Britain’s racial sensitivities seem to fly out the window whenever Jews are involved. Corbyn, far from facing expulsion from the dinner-party set for having mixed with racists, is being protected from criticism by the dinner-party set. . . .
What’s behind this extraordinary double standard among those who pose as loathers of prejudice?
It springs from the phrase, “anti-state of Israel.” Sadly, today’s anti-Zionists are not as different from anti-Semites as they like to believe. What both sides share in common is an urge to find one thing in the world on which they might pin the blame for every global, political, and social problem. The anti-Semite blames the Jew; the anti-Zionist blames Israel, seeing it and its Western backers as the cause of conflict, the sinister influencers of the media, and, as the Corbyn fuss makes clear, as aspiring controllers of the fate of British politics.
Read more on Jewish News: http://www.jewishnews.co.uk/opinion-anti-zionists-are-not-as-different-from-anti-semities-as-theyd-like-to-think/