A letter from a reader
When my local Labour MP joined the antisemitism bandwagon some years ago I emailed him to say that I hadn’t come across any evidence of it and asked him if he had. His response was not to point me towards examples but to claim that my questioning of it meant that I too was part of the problem. In other words, any questioning of the claim made by outside bodies that it exists or asking for specific examples of it in order to form a conclusion on the extent to which it was claimed to exist was antisemitic in his mind. It was “part of the problem”.
All these years later, aside from a few specific examples of outright antisemitism revealed by the most intense and long-term forensic investigation of any political party by outside agencies in Britain, I haven’t seen any evidence that it exists on a scale that warrants the charges brought against it.
It now seems that, devoid of the capacity to produce evidence of actual antisemitism, the accusers are resorting to the tactic employed by my local MP and arbitrarily broadening the definition to include anyone questioning the accusation or asking for evidence. We are now inhabiting the Kafkaesque world where the questioning of the charge has become the evidence of the charge – and indeed the only required evidence of the charge.
The effect, and the object, of all of this is to close down debate not only on the actions of the Israeli State but on the charge that the Labour Party is institutionally antisemitic.
My local MP ended up blocking me from his FB page. That was within his power and privilege. But the liberal media retains its credibility by claiming to provide access from the wider spectrum of opinion and because of this the crude blocking of one side of the debate will always be difficult to justify. Far better that it does all it can to ensure that awkward questions are never actually asked in the first place. And what better way to guarantee this than to become complicit in the closing down of the debate in which the question might arise.
Eamon Dyas
Labour Affairs Magazine 