(Note: this is NOT a Labour leadership election thread)
This letter was just published in Jewish Voice for Labour:
https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/labours-urgent-need-for-...
This Labour councillor, facing a totally unjustified investigation and possible suspension and expulsion from the party, felt obligated to recant her solidarity for the people of Palestine in a humiliating, degrading fashion, reminiscent of the statements defendants in the Moscow Trials were forced to read before being executed:
https://antisemitism.uk/brighton-and-hove-labour-councillor-apologises-a...
Before that, there was the expulsion of Tony Greenstein-who, being Jewish, can't actually even BE an antisemite-simply for expressing viewpoints in solidarity with Palestine-the expulsion of Jackie Walker, who is black AND Jewish, and thus is never a person any white gentile can ever be entitled to lecture about antisemitism-AND that of Chris Williamson, who simply questioned whether Labour has any significant incidence of antisemitism at all.
Things like this are being done to thousands of Labour members all across the UK. Virtually ANY expression of public solidarity with Palestine or even any acknowledgment that Palestinians have legitimate grievanace is being equated...in an equation everyone knows is fundamentally unjust and completely irrational...with bigotry against Jews.
In some cases, people are facing threats of expulsion or suspension simply for stating that charges of antisemitism against OTHER party members are false-as if everyone charged should simply be assumed to be guilty.
This clearly will not stop until every Labour Party member agrees to keep complete public silence about what the Israeli government does to Palestinians.
Given that everyone who does express solidarity with the Palestinians is also a public opponent of bigotry against people who are Jewish, how can anybody defend this?
And given that imposing public silence within the Labour Party about Palestine does nothing whatsoever to protect Jews from actual antisemitism, just as the existence of Israel itself does nothing to protect that long-oppressed community from that scourge...what, exactly, is the point of subjecting Labour Party members who are in solidarity with the people of Palestine to what is becoming a purge trial?
How can anybody defend what is being done here?
Bigotry against Jews, suppression of Judaism as a series of religious traditions, and attempts to suppress Jewish cultural traditions.
Israel is simply a country.
Zionism is simply another nationalist movement.
What is the point of trying to force everyone within the Labour Party to agree with the false assertion that either Israel as a country OR Zionism as a nationalist movement are synonymous with Jewishness or Judaism?