COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RINF
Recently, there has been a steady drumbeat at The Guardian and other British papers on
this subject with columnist after columnist writing fantastical stuff about
“the Left's anti-Semitism problem.”
And this comes after a long campaign to vilify Jeremy Corbyn
himself - a thoroughly decent man, after his becoming leader of the Labour
Party - as weak, out-of-date, and ineffectual, quoting day after day such
wonderfully credible sources and paid hacks as Tony Blair. This campaign
reached the sickening point of the Prime Minister’s publically insulting Corbyn
and refusing to apologize, but of course we know David Cameron is a corrupt and
unreliable political figure.
The government of Israel thoroughly dislikes Corbyn - as it
dislikes Donald Trump, disliking them both for being independent-minded and
fairly honest speakers - and it is making the force of its views felt in
indirect, behind-the scenes pressures on many matters such as rules against
criticizing Israel and making advocacy of BDS illegal.
Of course, the "anti-Semitism" referred to in
these efforts is not what most people in the world would regard as
anti-Semitism, the actual hatred of Jewish people because they are Jewish.
No, instead it is an unwarranted negative labelling of those
who criticise Israel or who advocate BDS, both legitimate and ethical exercises
of free speech in a supposedly free country. This is anti-Semitism only in the
phony propagandists’ sense that criticising the former Soviet Union might have
been labelled hatred of Russians.
This really is depressing since our political system is
based on free speech and open views, and Israel unquestionably does things
regularly and before our eyes that most of us have long ago have been taught
are immoral and wrong.
Israel refuses to change anything that it does, any of its
abusive and violent and law-breaking policies, but increasingly it also expects
people in other lands to be pressured by unjust laws and rules into shutting up
their objections.
It is definitely poor, short-term thinking to push things in
this fashion and generate an even greater sense of injustice.
This does tell us, along with other measures of recent
years, just how desperate Israel is becoming over honestly-expressed public
opinion in the rest of the world.
So King Canute is going to command the waves on the sea to
stop, and we do come to a ridiculous and unsustainable place, the very same
place motivating Israel’s unreasonable demands.
