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Everything you REALLY need to know about Labour’s “antisemitism”

Kit Knightly

The rapidly approaching General Election means accusations of antisemitism are back on the menu, and the mainstream media are eagerly ladling out healthy portions to any and everyone.

It hit the headlines again most prominently yesterday when the Times headlined “Labour antisemitism: Corbyn not fit for high office, says Chief Rabbi Mirvis.

The possibilty that Rabbi Mirvis may not be completely unbiased has yet to make on to a mainstream frontpage.

The Guardian are, as always, in pole position when it comes to large-scale distribution of propaganda. They have a piece, published today, headlined: “Antisemitism and Labour: everything you need to know”.

However, The Guardian editorial staff – or whichever over-keen but under-trained intern was tasked with assembling this quick hit-piece – made a couple of key omissions and errors.

Here’s everything you REALLY need to know about antisemitism and Labour.

Firstly: There isn’t any. At least, none worth speaking of.

Labour incidents of antisemitism account for 0.08% of the membership. That’s one-third of the rate it occurs in the everyday population of Britain. In short – Labour is 66% LESS antisemitic than the general public.

Racism is, of course, an unpleasant fact of life. There will, unfortunately, always be people who hate other people for wildly non-sensical reasons surrounding their identity. But limiting it to less than a tenth of a per cent is pretty good going, wouldn’t you say?

In fairness to the Guardian, it does reluctantly point this out (although they do feel the need to round up):

Labour says that while such incidents must be dealt with robustly, the context is that complaints connected to antisemitism amount to 0.1% of party membership

However, since this fact renders every other word in the article moot, we would suggest it be in bold, at the top…rather than squirrelled away behind some qualifications deep in the middle.

“But”, I hear you say, “if there’s so little antisemitism in Labour, why is it always in the news?”

Well, that’s an easy question to answer: because of two very awkward facts.

A. The recently adopted, and much-hyped IHRA definition of “antisemitism” is incredibly broad, and essentially allows criticism of Israel to be included under the umbrella of “antisemitism”.

AND

B. The Israeli lobby launched a campaign, funded by their embassy and working through the Labour Friends of Israel, to undermine Corbyn because of his stance on Palestinian rights. This was documented in the Al Jazeera film “The Lobby”.

That is why “antisemitism” is always in the headlines. Because powerful people want it to be.

…and that’s it. That is literally everything you need to know about Labour’s “antisemitism”:

  1. It is statistically insignificant.
  2. There was a paid campaign to pretend otherwise.

That’s really all that needs be said.

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