medialens | Elite power cannot abide a serious challenge to its established
position. And that is what Labour under Jeremy Corbyn represents to the
Tory government, the corporate, financial and banking sectors, and the
'mainstream' media. The manufactured 'antisemitism crisis' is the last
throw of the dice for those desperate to prevent a progressive
politician taking power in the UK: someone who supports Palestinians and
genuine peace in the Middle East, a strong National Health Service and a
secure Welfare State, a properly-funded education system, and an
economy in which people matter; someone who rejects endless war and
complicity with oppressive, war criminal 'allies' such as the United
States, Saudi Arabia and Israel.
In a thoroughly-researched article,
writer and academic Gavin Lewis has mapped a deliberate pro-Israel
campaign to create a 'moral panic' around the issue of antisemitism. The
strategy can be traced all the way back to the horrendous Israeli
bombardment of Gaza in the summer of 2014. A UN report estimated that
2,252 Palestinians were killed, around 65 per cent of them civilians.
The death toll included 551 children. There was global public revulsion
at Israel's war crimes and empathy with their Palestinian victims.
Support rose for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement (BDS) which
campaigns 'to end international support for Israel's oppression of
Palestinians and pressure Israel to comply with international law'.
As Lewis observes, BDS came to be regarded more and more as a
'strategic threat' by Israel, and a campaign was initiated in which
Israel and its supporters would be presented as the world's real
victims. In the UK, the Campaign Against Antisemitism was established
during the final month of Israel's 2014 bombardment of Gaza. Pro-Israel
pressure groups began to bombard media organisations with supposed
statistics about an 'antisemitism crisis', with few news organisations
scrutinising the claims.
In particular, as we noted in a media alert
in April, antisemitism has been 'weaponised' to attack Corbyn and any
prospect of a progressive UK government critical of Israel. Around this
time in Gaza, there were weekly 'Great March of Return' protests, with
people demanding the right to reclaim ancestral homes in Israel. Many
were mown down by Israeli snipers on the border firing into Gaza, with
several victims shot in the back as they tried to flee. According
to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, a total of 155 Palestinians were
killed in the protests, including 23 children and 3 women. This is part
of the brutal ongoing reality for Palestinians.
Recently, much media attention has focused
laser-like on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)
definition of antisemitism, including 11 associated examples. Labour
adopted 7 of these examples, but dropped 4 because of their implication
that criticism of Israel was antisemitic. As George Wilmers noted in a piece for Jewish Voice for Labour, Kenneth Stern, the US Attorney who drafted the IHRA wording, has spoken out about the misuse of the definition. It had:
'originally been designed as a "working definition" for the purpose of trying to standardise data collection about the incidence of antisemitic hate crime in different countries. It had never been intended that it be used as legal or regulatory device to curb academic or political free speech. Yet that is how it has now come to be used.'
Examples of the curbing of free speech cited by Stern in written testimony to the US Congress include Manchester and Bristol universities.
