JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: DECENT JEREMY CORBYN JUST CANNOT WIN - SMALL UNFAIR MINORITY KEEPS UP THE NAME-CALLING AND MAKING DEMANDS AS IT GETS REGULAR SUPPORT FROM MAINLINE PRESS - NOW CORBYN IS SAID TO "ACKNOWLEDGE" LABOUR PARTY HAS A "REAL PROBLEM" WITH ANTI-SEMITISM - IF TRUE, WHERE WAS IT ALL IN TONY BLAIR'S DAY? - DID IT JUST SUDDENLY SPRING TO LIFE?

John Chuckman


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT



“Jeremy Corbyn has acknowledged Labour has a “real problem” with antisemitism as he attempted to defuse the row engulfing his party.”



Well, yes, "real problems," but not what you might think from a quick glance at the headline.

The real problem is people using the accusation as a cheap attack, a way to libel a decent man and influence a party, and doing so regularly over a considerable period of time.

Where was all this "anti-Semitism" hiding in Tony Blair's day?

Or even after?

It just suddenly exploded into existence under Corbyn? Like a parody of Athena suddenly erupting from the head of Zeus?

No reasonable person can believe that. It's a bizarre notion.

No, what has changed since Blair's day is simply this.

A leader who helped kill about a million people and destroy a society, lying continuously about what he was doing, and received the Israel Peace Prize plus many handsome sinecures for his efforts, stopped being leader.

Another man, a decent man who is fair-minded about the Middle East, as he is about many other matters, became leader.

So, all stops were pulled by interested parties in doing something about it.

He's been attacked from the beginning. He had to win his leadership vote twice. The attacks, here or there, seem to fade a bit, then, wham!, they’re back, this recent round perhaps the worst ever.

Well, you can have whatever kind of country you like, but this way of doing things is shabby and dishonest and can produce nothing good.

Much as some of Theresa May's incompetent efforts and unwarranted attacks, all damaging and utterly without evidence.

As a young man, I always thought of Britain as more honorable political society than the United States with its folks like Senator Joseph McCarthy or FBI Director J Edgar Hoover or blood-drenched liar, Lyndon Johnson.

But either I was naive or Britain has changed, and changed greatly for the worse

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Response to a comment, "But Jeremy Corbyn has said that Jews, uniquely, can't be trusted to define anti-Semitism and that he knows best":



That's just plain dishonest.

He said no such thing.

But your using that claim as an argument is symbolic of this whole shabby business.