Whatever reasonable concerns Americans supporters of Israel may have about the direction of the Trump administration’s Middle East policy, they pale in comparison to worries about the direction of a future Democratic administration. Shany Mor warns that it’s easy to imagine the Democrats following in the footsteps of the British Labor party under Jeremy Corbyn, who stepped down as the party leader five years ago. Revisiting this far-left Israel-hater’s career, and the explosion of anti-Semitism in Labor under his stewardship, Mor writes:
The most damaging misunderstanding about Corbyn and the problem of anti-Semitism was the instinctive framing of the issue as a prejudice, rather than as a fully formed ideology. Anti-Semitism, in this sense, was understood as a kind of personal moral failing, the accusation against Corbyn being that in his dotage he had held on to outdated stereotypes about a certain minority group.
But the problem was never a personal weakness, but a comprehensive worldview that is remarkably entrenched in much of the Western left, and which rests on three pillars.
First, that Israel is essentially evil, a state and a society conceived in sin, and a bearer of inherited and ineffaceable guilt. Second, that Western, and especially American Jews, operate a powerful network of moneyed interests seeking to silence critique of Israeli sin. And third, that the Holocaust, while no doubt horrific, wasn’t especially unique, and that anyway the Israelis were guilty of similar crimes.
As with so many more benign trends, Britain is just ten or so years ahead of the U.S.
Read more on Jewish Chronicle: https://www.thejc.com/opinion/corbyn-era-teach-american-jews-shany-mor-dxrnuovw