Britain’s Labour Party ditches the Israel Lobby

“What was not so long ago unthinkable has come to pass.” Thus the Jewish Chronicle‘s verdict on the election of hard-left pro-Palestinian Jeremy Corbyn as leader of Britain’s Labour Party. It was a typically astonished reaction to the news that, for the first time in decades, there would be a British party leader who was not in the pocket of the Israel lobby.

Two Jewish shadow cabinet members, Ed Miliband and Rachel Reeves, have already led an exodus of senior resignations from Labour’s front bench, of those not prepared to work for Corbyn. Virtually all of them are members of Labour Friends of Israel. Rather than settle anything, it seems Corbyn’s election will trigger a civil war in Britain’s main opposition party.

There has been a palpable shock amongst Jewish commentators on both left and right that this could have happened. For months former Blairites like David Aaronovitch and dyed-in-the wool Conservatives like Lord Finkelstein have been united in their position that Corbyn would be a disaster for Labour and Britain. Although Nick Cohen did the definite anti-Corbyn hatchet job. The decision was unanimous — Corbyn was bad for the Jews.

One wag commented that Jewish journalists are so quick to trot out a heart-rending tales of their own refugee family’s flight to Britain.  Now they have got a refugee-friendly politician who would flood Britain with refugees in a moment, if he could, and all they do is offload on him. What is their problem, he asks disingenuously.

It is so true. The tide of vitriol shows no signs of abating. ‘The problem” was highlighted by the aforementioned Stephen Pollard. He was beside himself in the Mail on Sunday but it wasn’t Corbyn’s policies for Britain that concerned him.

Pollard was worried that Corbyn did not approve of a British drone strike in Syria that killed two UK-born Jihadis. (Corbyn did not think it was legal.) Pollard was especially perturbed at Corbyn’s insistence that Britain speak to Hamas and Hezbollah. That is rich given that Britain eventually negotiated with many terrorist groups including the IRA, Stern Gang and Irgun. But Pollard wasn’t letting go easily.

The point is that in the Corbyn world-view any enemy of the West is worthy of support. Any ally is opposed. So he was happy to invite Raed Salah, a 9/11 conspiracy theorist with a conviction for spreading the blood libel (that Jews drink the blood of gentile children), to take tea with him at the Commons.

Bizarre and dangerous as these alliances may be, they are wrapped up in the language of concern — for the poor, for the rule of law and for the powerless.

Given that Pollard belongs to an ethnicity who are never slow to appropriate “the language of concern” so ruthlessly when their own interests are involved, that is a particularly breathtaking remark. The gall of the man takes one’s breath away.

So why should White advocates welcome the election of a Marxist immigrant-loving left-wing extremist who would obviously abolish all borders and flood the country with every refugee who wants to come here?

Well, not for anything that he himself stands for, himself of course, but more for the destabilising hammer blow his election represents to the current system. His election is a huge defeat for the state mechanism of containment with which popular opinion is suppressed across the West.

For months his candidacy has undergone saturation shame-bombing from the controlled media. Jewish commentators and Israeli issues have been central drivers in this. For once the smear machine has been beaten back. It has now been proven possible to survive allegations of anti-Semitism even in the face of a total media onslaught.

Like the support for Donald Trump, it shows that the media control on opinion is not 100% and that people can rebel against it and can succeed if they are provoked hard enough.

The good news is that British politics is becoming increasingly ethnically driven. There is no doubt that Corbyn’s support for the Palestinian cause won him the rapidly growing Muslim membership of the Labour Party.  With the Labour Party having been wiped out in their Scottish heartland they are well on the way to becoming totally identified with the public sector unions. And Muslims.

It is ironic that the Blairite pro-business side of the party which has worked so hard for immigration should be effectively undone by the people they have championed.

Corbyn’s appointment is also a disaster for the ruling Conservative Party. One of the first cries that went up when Corbyn was elected was “If Labour can have a real socialist leader, can we have a real Conservative?”

Good question. The Conservative Party adopted Tony Blair’s New Labour pro-business and social agenda so wholeheartedly that it completely removed the need for a Labour Party. In fact Cameron described himself at one point as the “heir to Blair”.

Now there is no need for the fragile coalition that kept the Tories together. There is a chance of a civil war in the Conservative Party and there is no doubt what the spark would be.  With a referendum on membership in the EU looming, right-wing Tories are becoming extremely agitated.  Much of UKIP’s senior membership left the Conservatives on the issue of European Union membership and immigration. Cameron came to power on the promise that he would reduce immigration to “tens of thousands” a year. Instead, this year it reached record levels of 330,000 per year — higher than any year under Labour.

For the Jews, however, it is all about Israel. One of the shrewdest articles about the implications of Corbyn has come from Haaretz which said that his election creates an opportunity for the anti-Israel BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaign to go mainstream. This seems more than likely. In an interview last month Corbyn appeared to back the boycotting of British universities carrying out Israeli arms research.

According to the Blairite corporate lobbyist Dan Hodges, Corbyn’s election means the death of Labour.  It’s all good.