The further to the left or the right you move, the more your lens on life distorts.

Sunday, December 01, 2019

Corbyn

Americans pay very little attention to politics in the U.K.—and that's a shame, because U.K.'s left-wing Labour Party and its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, may very well be harbingers of the probable direction of an increasingly left-wing Democratic party in the United States. Corbyn is an anti-Semite, plain and simple, and yet, the British left tries to mask his Jew-Hatred as something else. They claim that his anti-Semitic and anti-Israel rhetoric is all about "palestinian rights." If any of this sounds familiar, it should. Increasingly, Dem leaders in the U.S., like Bernie Sanders, have begun to sound a lot like Cprben. Not as overt or as extreme to be sure, but still—a lot like Corbyn.

David Harsanyi comments of a recent Corbyn apologia in the left-leaning Washington Post:
In a now-deleted tweet, the Washington Post informed its 14 million followers that the historic condemnation of Jeremy Corbyn by the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom was triggered by Labour Party leader’s strong support for “Palestinian rights.”

As numerous people quickly pointed out, this is a detestable falsehood. Indeed, the article to which the tweet linked notes that a review of online posts by Labour members uncovered “examples of Holocaust denial, crude stereotypes of Jewish bankers, conspiracy theories blaming 9/11 on Israel, and even one individual who appeared to believe that Hitler had been misunderstood.”

Despite this, the rest of the Post’s story is something of a whitewash. Like so many others that have covered Labour’s moral deterioration, it goes out of its way to note that, “Corbyn, alongside many in the left-wing of his party, are strong supporters of Palestinian rights and fierce critics of Israel’s right-wing government.” This insinuation — that Corbynite animosity towards British Jewry is predicated on the existence of a “right-wing Israeli government” — is a myth.

For one thing, despite public perception, the right-center coalition run by Benjamin Netanyahu hasn’t altered Israeli policy governing the West Bank and Gaza in any significant way from its predecessors (other than, perhaps, by offering Palestinians more autonomy). For another, even if Netanyahu had altered that policy, there has never been — and almost surely never will be — any Israeli government of the right, left, or center that would placate the average Corbynite.

The link the Post draws is nonsensical. Are we to believe that the Leader of Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition referred to anti-Semitic terror groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah as his “friends” in a speech in front of Parliament because he was worried about final status negotiations? Did Corbyn appear multiple times on the Holocaust-denying Hamas-backing Iranian regime’s propaganda channel because he misses Yitzhak Rabin?

The man who participates in a 2014 wreath-laying ceremony for the terrorists who murdered Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics and prevaricates when asked whether it is “anti-Semitic to say that Rothschild Zionists run world governments” is no friend of the Jews.
True ... no Democratic leader in the U.S. has gone as far or as extreme as Corbyn, but then again, the Brits have had a strong anti-Semitic strain of politics for many decades, so Corbyn's overt anti-Semitism is more easily tolerated.

That may very well come to pass in the United States. The Democrats and their left-wing base have adopted a rather strong anti-Israel bias of their own and have been escalating their anti-Israel rhetoric for at least a decade. Give them another decade, and their own 'Corbyn" may very well emerge. Just another reason they do not deserve to lead.

UPDATE (12/3/2019):
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It's easy to find examples of the 'corbynization' of the democratic party on a daily basis. Cameron Cawthorn reports:
Anti-Israel activist Linda Sarsour linked Israel to white supremacy while speaking at a pro-Palestinian conference on Friday.

"Ask them this: How can you be against white supremacy in the United States of America and the idea of living in a supremacist state based on race and class, but then you support a state like Israel that is built on supremacy, that is built on the idea that Jews are supreme to everybody else?" Sarsour said.

Sarsour, a prominent surrogate for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, made the comparison while addressing the American Muslims for Palestine conference in Chicago. She also questioned how Zionists could oppose the separation of families at the U.S.-Mexico border while supporting Israel.
on a daily basis.
It is true that some dems have tried to distance themselves from Sarsour, but criticism of her extreme positions within the party and among the Dem,'s trained hamsters in the media is muted or non-existent. No point in alienating the Dem's hard-left base, is there?

Maybe someone in the media should as Bernie what he thinks about Sarsour's comments. Nah ... not gonna do that.