Who are the Jews? They’re a religious group, a minority section of the world’s population, a bunch of folk consisting of good and bad, with most residing somewhere in the middle. In other words, they’re just like the rest of us. With one unique difference, they have a special homeland, should they choose to live there, bequeathed to them under the Balfour Declaration of 1917 by the eventual victors of the Great War, an act designed initially to bolster the support of British Jews in the war.
It takes a lot to rile me these days. Even the crazed antics of the latest American to think he knows what he’s doing while inhabiting the White House, don’t really conjure anger in my breast. After all, I’ve lived long enough to realise that those who think they’re the answer to the world’s prayers are generally the ones who couldn’t organise a successful piss-up, even if it were held in a brewery.
But, dammit, reading an article in the Guardian today really caused my aging red corpuscles to steam. For some years now the UK’s Labour Party has been beset by bad press amid allegations of antisemitism within its ranks. It’s long been an almost standard form of attack by Tory governments attempting to besmirch their socialist opponents, and this latest one resurfaced around 2012 after Labour’s leader, Jeremy Corbyn, defended a London mural by the L.A. political activist artist, Mear One (Kalen Ockerman), after accusations it was antisemitic.[1]
Ockerman denied it was rascist, stating that the mural was about class and privilege, and that the figures sitting around the table were both “Jewish and white Anglos”, but Lutfur Rahman, the then mayor of Tower Hamlets, where the mural was situated, saw an opportunity for making political capital and made a great show of describing it thus:
“…the images of the bankers perpetuate antisemitic propaganda about conspiratorial Jewish domination of financial and political institutions”. [2]
Tower Hamlets was an ideal area for Mear One’s work of art. Run down, poor, with Black, Asian, and other ethnic minorities outnumbering the white population 2-1, it’s one of the world’s most diverse zones, and one of England’s most deprived. A mural decrying class and privilege was certainly not out of place.
Luftur Rahman was later banned from holding political office, accused by two well-known UKTV documentaries of corruption, and, according to the Law Society Gazette:
Lutfur Rahman, the disgraced former mayor of London’s Tower Hamlets borough, was today struck off the roll of solicitors and handed an £86,400 costs order.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal found all allegations put forward by the Solicitors Regulation Authority to be proven, bringing an end to a case which dates back nearly three years.
Rahman, a family law specialist, was ordered to vacate his position of mayor in 2015 after an election court found him guilty of illegal and corrupt practices.
The SRA subsequently charged Rahman with failing to uphold the rule of law and administration of justice, failing to act with integrity and failing to behave in a way that maintains the trust the public places in him and in the provision of legal services.
On the third day of a hearing, a three-person tribunal this morning found Rahman liable on all counts.[3]
We can really take the opinions of this guy seriously!
Frankly, I find this the biggest load of bollocks I’ve heard in a long time, notwithstanding the crap emanating from the mouth of the Trump. There was nothing anti-Jewish in this mural. It’s all about the corruption of Capitalism and the possibly emerging new world order. The artist stated categorically that the figures represent an ‘elite banker cartel of the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, and the Morgans, and that the pyramid symbolised Freemasonry.’
Of the wealthy banking families he identifies one is Jewish, one is Protestant, and the other was possibly Episcopalian. Why did no-one condemn this art work as anti-religious, or even anti-Freemason?
The Labour Party is under attack because the present UK government is corrupt, hanging onto power by a thread, used foul tactics to coerce the public into narrowly voting for Brexit, and made an unholy mess of it since. Accusations of ‘antisemitism’ are now the weapons being used to turn voters away from what the Tories fear is a political party well able to wrest power from them.
Sadly, so heavily is the germ of ‘antisemitism’ embedded in society that there are influential members of the Labour Party themselves screaming the word from the party headquarters and calling for Corbyn’s resignation. Disaffected young people, easily swayed, are taking up the banner and demonstrating against Corbyn’s leadership.
I’m sick to my toes of this ridiculous guilt-trip we’re all supposed to be riding because of what occurred nearly one hundred years ago under the Nazis. Jewish people living outside of Israel are a minority, just like other minorities in countries throughout the world. As such they deserve to be treated with an equal importance to all other citizens – but not more so.
We non-Jews today did not send them to the Nazi gas chambers, anymore than we were responsible for the dreadful suffering of African slaves, or the other atrocities of empire. I was equally riled by the then UK prime minister, Tony Blair, apologising in my name for what my ancestors apparently did to Africans. As yet no politician has tried to apologise on my behalf for the slaughters that took place in India under the Raj, Malaya, or many other so-called nations of the British Empire. I sincerely hope they never do.
I abhor violence, or incitement to violence, against any community whatever their race or creed, but this antisemitism fever is nothing more than a block on freedom of speech, and a go-ahead to successive Israeli governments to steal more land and inflict more suffering on the Palestinians they’ve evicted from their homeland.
I began this by asking: who are the Jews? I believe the vast majority are simply good, ordinary, folk getting on with their lives like the rest of us. Unfortunately, there are a few in powerful positions, with huge chips on their shoulders, who believe we still owe them something for what happened a long time ago.
They’re wrong.
[1] “Antisemitism: Corbyn and the crisis that won’t go away” Guardian, August 5th 2018
[2] “Did Jeremy Corbyn back artist whose mural was condemned as antisemitic?” Jewish Chronicle, November 6th 2015
[3] “£86,000 costs as tribunal strikes off former mayor” Law Society Gazette, December 20th 2017
