The disgraceful campaign by the entire main stream media and all major political parties to demonize UKIP as a 'racist' party has now led to Facebook buzzing with messages about an 'antisemitic' UKIP candidate (based incidentally on a report over one year old). Lots of well-meaning Jews are now worriedly passing these messages on imploring people to vote for any 'main stream' party other than UKIP to 'stop these racists winning' in the local and European elections.
In fact, while there may well be a number of racist and even antisemitic candidates among the many thousands being fielded by UKIP, they really do pale into insignificance when compared to the number of antisemites in each of the other 'main stream parties' (by which I mean only those who have at least one member of Parliament - UKIP have NO member of parliament). To show the extent to which antisemitism is rampant in all the main stream parties (and note that I consider anti-Zionism as an example of antisemitism) I have decided to maintain a log of these parties and (as per my log of anti-Israel charities and log of antisemitic footballers) I have awarded a number of Arafats (rather than stars) to each (where 5 Arafats is the worse possible). As you can see UKIP is a long way behind the others in the antisemitism stakes.
The Labour Party
The party that forced its own leader and PM Tony Blair out of office because he supported Israel's right to defend itself against Hezbollah and Hamas terrorists in 2006.
The party whose mayoral candidate was none other than Ken Livingstone the country's best known antisemite, anti-Israel, pro-Jihad politician.
The party represented in the House of Lords by Lord Ahmed who (having being jailed for 12 weeks for dangerous driving when he admitted sending texts before his Jaguar ploughed into a stationary car on the M1, killing its driver) remarked that the prison sentence he received was
"due to pressure that had been placed on the courts by .. Jewish friends who own newspapers and TV channels". He added: "My case became more critical because I went to Gaza to support Palestinians", something that these Jews "opposed".The party in which over a third of its MPs in Parliament (i.e. with real power unlike UKIP) are committed to the total destruction of Israel and who actively push for a total boycott of Israel to achieve this aim. These MPs include the likes of:
- Paul Flynn who accused Britain's first Jewish ambassador to Israel of having 'divided loyalties';
- Martin Linton, who spoke about the "long tentacles of Israel" reaching into British politics;
- Gerald Kaufman who stated that "Just as Lord Ashcroft owns most of the Conservative Party, right-wing Jewish millionaires own the rest," and said "Here we are, the Jews again" when pro-Israel MP Louise Ellman rose to speak in the Commons;
- Jeremy Corbyn, Sadiq Khan, and Andy Slaughter (the latter who even holds the position of Shadow Justice Minister) who not only campaign obsessively for the destruction of Israel, but have a long history of support for Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists, and they have all shared platforms with members of terrorist organisations, and notorious anti-Semitic, homophobic Islamists.
- Former Foreign Minister Jack Straw who claimed that "Unlimited Jewish funds control US policy, and block Mideast peace" while also demanding respect and sympathy for the aspirations of the Islamic Republic of Iran
Rating
The Conservative Party
The ambivalent, and at times openly hostile attitude of the Cameron government to Israel has been extensively catalogued on this blog (where I have argued it is the most anti-Israel government since Ted Heath - another conservative antisemite - was PM in 1973). This Conservative government has led the EU initiative to boycott Israeli goods from the "occupied territories", sells arms to just about every despotic Arab state yet maintains an arms embargo against Israel. This Government even banned two US human rights activists from entering the country because they were 'too pro-Israel'. The antics of Baroness Warsi alone have been the subject of several articles on this blog. There are many current and former members of the Conservative party in parliament and the House of Lords who share the same obsessive 'Zionist conspiracy', anti-Israel world view as their Labour colleagues. These include people like David Mellor who has a long record of antisemitism cloaked in 'anti-Israel' rhetoric and who recently described Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich as an 'Israel-obsessed Russian' and Chris Patten the anti-Israel campaigner who also happens to be the Chairman of the anti-Israel BBC. There are also many good old-fashioned antisemite Conservative MPs like Patrick Mercer who was caught on camera
describing a female Israeli soldier as a “bloody Jew” in 2013. And there are MPs like Aidan Burley who hosted a Nazi-themed stag party.
The LibDem Party
While Labour's Ken Livingstone may be the most well-know main stream antisemitic politician, he is not the most antisemitic. That honour goes to Baroness Jenny Tonge who is so committed to the belief in a world-wide Zionist conspiracy that she is convinced that Israel steals the organs of disaster victims all around the world. She also famously expressed a desire to murder Israeli civilians as a suicide bomber. Yet Tonge is very popular in the LibDem party because her world view is shared by others MPs and most of the Party's grass-roots activists. She is not even the most senior LibDem to demand the destruction of the State of Israel since that is the wish and policy of none other than the Deputy Leader Simon Hughes, and there are few MPs more viciously antisemitic than David Ward, who equates Israel with the Nazis and who tweets about the power of the Jewish Board of Deputies. Not surprising therefore that the LibDems officially promote the campaign to boycott Israel.
Rating
The Green Party
The Green Party is represented in Parliament by the MP and fanatical Israel-hater Caroline Lucas. She is not only one of the most active campaigners of the "Israeli apartheid" lie, but she has blamed Israel for most of the
world’s problems, including bizarrely the Mumbai terrorist attack of 2008 in
which Pakistani Muslims massacred nearly 200 people including the Chabad Rabbi
and his wife. Not content with the Party's official and total boycott of Israel, Lucas also supports violent action against Israeli interests in the UK. A former member of the Green Party has explained in detail the extent to which the Party is institutionally anti-Semitic. Lucas is certainly not alone. The Green Party is closely aligned with the antisemitic Palestine Solidarity Campaign and some of its leading activists (like the insane Deborah Fink) are now standing as Green Party candidates. The Green Party is also increasingly aligned with the antisemitic socialist-Muslim party Respect (see below) - during the 2010 General Election the Green Party stood down in favour of Respect candidates in Birmingham Sparkbrook and Manchester, Blackley and Broughton.
Rating Respect
The Party (led by George Galloway) whose only three objectives are sharia law, socialism, and the destruction of Israel. Galloway's evangelical hatred of Israel is legendary, but he has plenty of competition in the Respect Party for the honour of being the most antisemitic. Yvonne Ridley (Respect's parliamentary candidate in the 2012 Rotherham by-election) said that "any Zionists in the Respect Party ... would be hunted down and kicked out. We have no time for Zionists." Many others in Respect have been less careful in saying "Zionist" when they meant "Jew". Abul Hussain, a former member of Respect's national council, posted antisemitic comments on Facebook about "chopping off a Jewish person's sidelocks and confiscating their kippah". He also wrote about Jews, "Here's a penny go put it in the bank and [you] just might get a pound after ten years interest!". Following her appointment as Respect's women's officer in Bradford in October 2012, it emerged that Naz Khan had recently commented on Facebook that "history teachers in our school" were and are "the first to start brainwashing us and our children into thinking the bad guy was Hitler. What have the Jews done good in this world??” Carole Swords, the chairwoman of the Respect Party in Tower Hamlets, was convicted for a public order offence after an assault on a Jewish man in 2011. Inside a Covent Garden Tesco Metro supermarket she had struck him in the face while he was protecting Israeli goods from unlawful damage (a subsequent appeal cleared her of the offence). At one rally she described Zionists as "cockroachs ... bugs [which] need to be stomped out" and at a different rally, Swords had told a Jewish protester to "go back to Russia"
Rating
To be added: SNP and Welsh Nationalists
UKIP
After every major media outlet in the country spent months trawling through the background and social media activity of every one of the thousands of candidates and also tens of thousands of supporters of UKIP the 'antisemite' they managed to come up with was Anna-Marie Crampton, a candidate in East Sussex, who apparently posted a blog article claiming that Zionists conspired with the Nazis to kill Jews in the Holoaust (a viewpoint, incidentally, that is shared by many 'progessive' thinkers including writers for the Guardian and Independent, as well as many of the MPs cited above who continaully equate Zionism with Nazism). In fact, she told the party her account had been hacked and she was not responsible for the posts. Nevertheless, she was suspended from the party pending an investigation. If only the other main stream parties would take the same approach to their genuine and proud antisemites.
My owns views of UKIP, based on attending a meeting with Nigel Farage, are described here.
Rating
While the above has focused on antisemitism, at some point in the future I will extend the analysis to other forms of prejudice. Given the disproportionate number of Muslims in the Labour Party and Respect especially, expect the 'star rating' for those parties to increase further as we take account of the sexist, homophobic and Islamist supremacist views of many of those people.
Update: On the reaction to this article.
I love this post and its follow-up, Edwin. It's great to have a synopsis like this for reference.
ReplyDeleteI can remember, when I was living in London at the time of the Yom Kippur War, how shamefully the Heath Government acted towards Israel by refusing to supply Israel with spare parts for British-built tanks in its armoury. Even Harold Soref, the Tory right-winger who had been an anti-Zionst when editing the AJA's "Jewish Monthly", crossed the floor on that occasion to vote with the Opposition. I'm not sure how antisemitic Heath was, though, since his closest friend from Oxford days was Madron Seligman.
One anti-Israel Tory MP was a good candidate for the psychiatrist's couch, namely Sir Tufton Beamish, an extreme Israel-hater who was halachically Jewish (though few at the time realised it).
I blogged about him and fellow members (including MPs) of CAABU in its early stages here:
http://daphneanson.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/caabu-in-beginning-spot-bbc-connections.html
Whoops, sorry - I called you Edwin by mistake!
ReplyDeleteDaphne, Ted Heath's behavior in 1973 was so bad that the Liberal Party leader at the time Jeremy Thorpe said "We (the British) behaved like bastards" Ted Heath was always a lackey of Georges Pompidou and I am not surprised that he constantly sniped at Margaret Thatcher who was one of the more sympathetic to Israel Prime Ministers. Heath also backed out of a promise to sell Israel Chieftain tanks after Israel spend three years evaluating the tank to replace the Centurion, yet Heath sold the tanks to Jordan and Iran. However the betrayal motivated Israel to build the Merkava tank.
ReplyDelete