Since taking over the leadership of Britain’s Labor party in 2020, Keir Starmer has done much to tackle anti-Semitism in the party ranks, which festered and spread during the leadership of his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn. One would hope, then, that prominent Labor politicians would have kept their distance from the Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who has a record of anti-Semitic declarations and animus toward Israel. Instead, writes Ian Austin, they “fawned over” her during her recent visit to the UK:

Unfortunately, it now seems easier for Labor’s leader to speak positively about Israel at lunches than challenge the hatred that took hold under Jeremy Corbyn. The Bradford MP and shadow minister for community cohesion Naz Shah called Omar an “inspiration.” The shadow justice minister Afzal Khan described her as “incredible,” adding: “We stand united against Islamophobia.” The London mayor Sadiq Khan said it was a “pleasure” to meet Omar, “to discuss how we keep building bridges, not walls.”

It is a disgrace that Muslim politicians are attacked because of who they are, what they look like or how they worship—but there are mainstream Democrats the mayor could work with on inclusion that have not caused offence with controversial statements like Ilhan Omar.

Labor has taken action to deal with the anti-Semitism that flourished under Corbyn. But progress has been slow and some people who ought to be nowhere near a mainstream party are given temporary suspensions when they should be permanently expelled. Starmer’s cheerleaders criticize those who make this point, but more thoughtful members of the party . . . agree it is clearly much too soon to claim, as Sir Keir did recently, that he has “rooted out the poison of anti-Semitism.”

In October, a young Mauritanian national murdered an Orthodox Jewish man on his way to synagogue in Chicago. This alone should be sufficient sign of the rising dangers of anti-Semitism. Nathan Diament explains how the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act (AAA) can, if passed, make American Jews safer:

We were off to a promising start when the AAA sailed through the House of Representatives in the spring by a generous vote of 320 to 91, and 30 senators from both sides of the aisle jumped to sponsor the Senate version. Then the bill ground to a halt.

Fearful of antagonizing their left-wing activist base and putting vulnerable senators on the record, especially right before the November election, Democrats delayed bringing the AAA to the Senate floor for a vote. Now, the election is over, but the political games continue.

You can’t combat anti-Semitism if you can’t—or won’t—define it. Modern anti-Semites hide their hate behind virulent anti-Zionism. . . . The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act targets this loophole by codifying that the Department of Education must use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism in its application of Title VI.