As the most left-wing candidate you should get my vote. But you won't. And here's why.
Congratulations!
By securing a place on the ballot to become the next Labour leader you have put a spring in the step of many party members and trade unionists who feel that you embody their values better than any other candidate. (You embody only some of mine, trampling on some others, but I will get to that.)
You represent a clear alternative to the suffocating consensus that says there is no alternative to neoliberalism: marketisation, deregulation, privatisation, financialisation, an assault on the bargaining power of labor, regressive tax regimes, and cuts to welfare.
You will not tell us to be ‘intensely relaxed’ about people getting ‘filthy rich’ and you will not sneer at the trade union movement.
You are acutely aware that the transformation of European social democracy into a political force pursuing only a slightly kinder and a slightly gentler neoliberalism has caused the erosion of the emotional connection between the party and the working-class.
And you know that neoliberalism has eroded local democracy and the public realm, pushing aside actors other than those at the center, and then micro-managing Britain through a grim and relentless bureaucratising cult of quasi-government bodies.
On that basis you will secure the votes of many party members and trade unionists.
But you won’t get my vote.
You won’t get it because Labour’s best traditions also include anti-fascism and internationalism while your support – to me, inexplicable and shameful – for the fascistic and antisemitic forces of Hezbollah and Hamas flies in the face of those traditions. In particular, your full-throated cheer-leading for the vicious antisemitic Islamist Raed Salah is a deal-breaker.
Why did you lend your support to Raed Salah? No, he is not a ‘critic of Israel’, but a straight-up Jew hater.
You said in 2012, ‘Salah is far from a dangerous man’, even though the left-wing, anti-Netanyahu Israeli newspaper of record, Ha’aretz, reported that Salah was first charged with inciting anti-Jewish racism and violence in January 2008.
You said ‘Salah is a very honoured citizen’, even though Salah was found guilty of spreading the blood libel – the classic antisemitic slander that Jews use the blood of gentile children to make their bread. He did so during a speech on 16 February 2007 in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Wadi Joz.
I mean, just listen to Salah: ‘We have never allowed ourselves to knead [the dough for] the bread that breaks the fast in the holy month of Ramadan with children’s blood’, he said. ‘Whoever wants a more thorough explanation, let him ask what used to happen to some children in Europe, whose blood was mixed in with the dough of the holy bread.’ (The UK Appeal Court decided that ‘We do not find this comment could be taken to be anything other than a reference to the blood libel against Jews.’ It also decided that this would ‘offend and distress Israeli Jews and the wider Jewish community.’)
You said: ‘Salah represents his people extremely well’, even though after the 9/11 terrorist attacks Salah wrote this in the October 5, 2001 issue of the weekly Sawt al-Haq w’al-Huriyya (Voice of Justice and Freedom): ‘A suitable way was found to warn the 4,000 Jews who work every day at the Twin Towers to be absent from their work on September 11, 2001, and this is really what happened! Were 4,000 Jewish clerks absent [from their jobs] by chance, or was there another reason? At the same time, no such warning reached the 2,000 Muslims who worked every day in the Twin Towers, and therefore there were hundreds of Muslim victims.’
You said ‘Salah’s is a voice that must be heard’ even though he has called homosexuality a ‘great crime’ and recently [preached that ‘Jerusalem will soon become the capital of the global caliphate’ which will ‘spread justice throughout the land after it was filled with injustice by America, the Zionist enterprise, the Batiniyya, reactionism, Paganism and the Crusaders.’ i.e. everyone who does not follow his brand of Sunni Islam.
You said ‘I look forward to giving you tea on the terrace because you deserve it!’, even though the Islamic Movement [the northern branch of which Salah heads] has eulogised Osama bin Laden and Salah has incited Muslims against Jews by writing incendiary lies such as this: ‘The unique mover wanted to carry out the bombings in Washington and New York in order to provide the Israeli establishment with a way out of its entanglements.’ Who do you think he meant by ‘the unique mover’?
Why is that kind of conspiratorial antisemitism, dripping with threat and menace, worthy of tea on the terrace?
And it isn’t just a problem with Salah, is it? You said it was ‘my pleasure and my honour’ to host ‘our friends from Hezbollah and our friends from Hamas’ in the Commons.
Really?
Why do you not care that the Hamas Charter states that ‘Islam will obliterate Israel’ and enjoins all good Muslims to kill Jews, whom it blames for all the wars and revolutions in classic antisemitic fashion?
Why don’t you challenge your ‘friends in Hamas’ about the inclusion in their Charter of this canonical Hadith: ‘The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’
And why are Hezbollah your friends? They are an antisemitic Islamist goose-stepping ‘Party of God’ who persecute (and assassinate) liberals and democrats in Lebanon whenever they can. The Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said ‘If Jews all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.’ (NY Times, May 23, 2004, p. 15, section 2, column 1.) Your ‘friends’ were enthusiastically slaughtering Syrian civilians on behalf of the Assad regime long before ISIS or Jabhat Al-Nusra joined the fray.
Yes, you will say I am part of the Israel lobby and people should pay no heed. Yes, I work at the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre. But here’s the thing. I have the same views now about the Israel-Palestine conflict as I did when I was a member of the Socialist Organiser Editorial Board and you were with Labour Briefing back in the 1980s. (I think our two organisations may have even ‘fused’ at some point, though those days are a bit hazy now.)
My views have not changed since I was a member of the editorial board of Historical Materialism. They are the same views I had when we debated each other at Birmingham University some years ago: I believe in two states for two people, a secure Israel and a viable Palestine, a democratic solution to an unresolved national question based on mutual recognition and support for the right to national self-determination of both peoples.
I edit a journal, Fathom, which publishes many voices critical of the current Israeli government, from the Israeli left, from Israel’s Arab citizens, and from Palestinians.
I just do not understand how you can support so unthinkingly those political forces which oppose to their dying breath everything – literally, everything – the labour movement has ever stood for: trade union rights, freedom of speech and organisation, women’s equality, gay and lesbian rights, anti-racism, the enlightenment, and reason.
But as long as you do support those forces you will not get my vote. As long as you do, I will just have to remain politically homeless. Which is a pity, because there you are on the TV screen, talking with élan like a proper social democrat about full employment.
I want to cheer you on. Can you respond in such a way that I can?
Alan Johnson is the editor of Fathom – For a deeper understanding of Israel and the region, and works for the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM)
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497 Responses to “An open letter to Jeremy Corbyn”
The contentious centrist
This was your allegation:
“In the recent election Netanyahu had an election broadcast in which he
pointed to a map and warned that “Arab voters are advancing in large
numbers towards voting places” – as if this was a military threat.”
Where, in the accurate and honest translation, do you see the pointing to the map, the ominous militarism of “advancing in large numbers”?
Looks to me (and I may be mistaken of course) that you were duped by the Guardian into imagining the worst about the PM and being informed about it, you refuse to let go of your point.
Here is what I think: Netanyahu’s call to his base to come out and vote was perfectly legitimate. This is democracy at work. That he spoke crudely there is no doubt. So you can really blame him for not finessing the point but where do you get that he says ” Israeli Jews should stop the Arabs from winning the election for “the left” ?
Do you mean that Likkud voters bestirring themselves to the voting stations -in droves- is about “stopping” the Left from winning? So in your conception, in a democracy, the Right voters should stay home and let the Left win, undisturbed by any Right voters going to the voting stations?
The contentious centrist
“No Israeli Arab politician or party has ever been allowed to be part of a coalition government in Israel.”
How can Arab parties who profess their anti-Zionism openly, be part of a Zionist coalition dedicated to the defense of the Zionist entity?
In Canadian 1993 elections, the Quebec sovereigntist Bloc Québécois won enough seats to be eligible to lead the official opposition. However, because the bloc’s platform was the breaking of Canada, it was challenged by the Reform party that claimed that Official Opposition is styled as Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition to demonstrate that, although the group may be against the sitting government, it remains loyal to the Crown (the embodiment of the Canadian state) and thus to Canada. The bloc’s platform breached this basic principle, and therefore Reform was considered to be main opposition to the Liberals on all issues (except Quebec).
So you see that coalition politics in Israel are not that different from other countries where there is a constituency within the country that calls for the dissolution of the very state in whose parliament they serve.
Duncan_McFarlane
If he had said “left wing voters are heading to the voting places in large numbers, so should you” it wouldn’t be an issue – but he said the left were bringing Arabs to the voting places in large numbers. If Arabs are equal citizens and as entitled as anyone else to vote, why would he even mention that Arabs were voting, as if it was something unusual or illegitimate?
Duncan_McFarlane
If he had said “left wing voters are turning out to vote in large numbers, so should you” there would be no issue. And no i have never said right wing voters shouldn’t vote. Don’t pretend i have. The issue is that Netanyahu said the left were encouraging Israeli Arabs to vote in large numbers. Why would he mention that they were Arabs, except to imply that it was illegitimate for Arabs to vote, or that them voting was a threat? If Israeli Arabs were really equal in practice and treated as equal in Israel, why would he mention that Arabs were coming to vote in large numbers at all?
tamimisledus
“Nor will it with the muslims”
I didn’t realise when I posted my response that you could tell the future. I should have guessed from your previous authoritative statements that you might be omniscient. But I did not think that it also applied to the future as well as the past and resent.
If you can tell the future you already know what I am going to say. But in case you are just deluded I will say it anyway.
What was the point of the labour party, when in power, in encouraging mass immigration of muslims who, like them, wanted to see the destruction of UK society, and then not using them, like Ed, in their (failed!) attempt to gain power?
I didn’t say that ” Labour party are going to help the Muslams [sic]impose their religion on us all”. That is not likely to happen until the Labour Party has been taken over by muslims. But until then, the Labour Party can unwittingly serve as useful idiots in the advancing the aim of muslims in imposing divinely sanctioned islam on the entire world.
In “Mein Kamp” Hitler quite clearly (if any outside of nazi supporters bothered to read it) expressed his totalitarian vision for the world. Similarly the koran makes it quite clear that allah (god of the muslims) wishes to see the totalitarian system of islam imposed on the entire world. It is about time those who speak in virtually total ignorance of islam, took responsibility for reading this fundamental islamic text.
By the way, did you file these warnings about the aims of islam in the same place as, in the seventh century, those Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, etc.filed the warnings they received before their societies were devastated by the primitive barbarian muslim hordes. I’ll bet that now they would have wished they hadn’t. But now that is too late.
But of course, you have not addressed the other main issue I raised. Why is that? Could it be that you have absolutely no refutation? To save you looking back, here it is again in a simplified more direct version. The Labour Party have betrayed the White Working Class in order to gain power by appealing to the immigrant voters. Many of the White Working Class know that, and they will be unwilling to trust the Labour Party again. So Labour should not now expect to get into power, at least until the immigrant population grows to such a size that they can effectively nullify the votes of the White Working Class.
Unless, that is, your prophetic gifts tell the world otherwise.