Today’s Top Stories
1. UK Labour Party leader Jeremy announced he appointed an independent investigation of anti-Semitism in the party.
Shami Chakrabarti, the former head of civil rights group Liberty, will lead a panel which will consult with the Jewish community and examine ways to tackle anti-Semitism and discrimination. The panel will present its results to the party leadership in two months.
The move comes after Corbyn was forced to suspend former London mayor Ken Livingstone from the party for saying Adolf Hitler supported Zionism.
If you’re trying to keep up with the mess, you’ll appreciate Adam Taylor‘s well-documented “guide to the wild scandal rocking Britain’s left,” as well as the Daily Telegraph‘s formidable dossier of the party anti-Semitic incidents.
Historians Antony Beevor and Andrew Roberts explained why Livingtone was wrong. Roberts wrote:
The Nazis couldn’t frankly care less where the Jews went, so long as they left Germany, preferably with as few possessions as possible. Later on they conceived ideas such as the Madagascar Plan of July 1940 which would they hoped involve mass migration to places where the Jews would suffer and eventually die of disease and malnutrition, all long before the full-scale genocidal programme conceived at the Wannsee Conference in 1942. Jews were being killed in large numbers as soon as the war began, but especially after Hitler’s invasion of Russia in June 1941. The idea that Hitler ever wanted a fully-functioning successful Jewish state in Palestine – the dream of Zionists – is ludicrous, as Mr Livingstone undoubtedly knows.
Livingstone claimed that Benjamin Netanyahu “agreed with him.” Labour MP John Mann took to the Daily Mirror to explain why he called Ken Livingstone a ‘Nazi apologist’ Meanwhile, BBC Magazine had a nice piece explaining the difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. British elections for local councils, the mayor of London, and other officials are scheduled for May 5. See below for a lot of commentary.
Join the fight for Israel’s fair coverage in the news
2. Giant Austrian bank shuts down BDS account.
3. Details are scarce, but according to Israeli media reports, two Israeli Bedouin medical students who traveled to Turkey were freed by kidnappers who threatened to sell them to Islamic State if their families didn’t pay a ransom.
4. HonestReporting’s “Red Lines: The Eight Categories of Media Bias” is a video series based on our latest E-book (available on Amazon for a small fee). In the second video of the series, The Jerusalem Post’s Steve Linde and Gil Hoffman, and Dan Diker of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs discuss imbalanced reporting.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Two 14-year-old Palestinian girls are in custody after trying to stab Israeli soldiers at a West Bank checkpoint Thursday night.
• A delegation of Palestinian Islamic Jihad leaders is visiting Iran to discuss “ways to bolster the intifada in the West Bank and Jerusalem.”
Mideast Matters
• What kind of battlefield experience Hezbollah is gaining in Syria that could one day be used against Israel? Experts tell the Voice of America that “Hezbollah has become more proficient at mass force maneuvers and of tying together different battle groups,” counter-insurgency tactics, “coordinating with irregular militias,” even working with the Russian military.
• Can you imagine the headlines if Israel did this?
• The Jerusalem Post reports that Lebanese journalist Nadim Koteich kicked up a storm for tweeting
“If Israel would have annexed Aleppo, it would have been safe today, like the Golan. Aleppo’s citizens would have been better off living under occupation than living under ruins,” Koteich wrote.
Around the World
• Aside from Livingstone, Labour’s Director of Strategy and Communications, Seamus Milne, praised the terror group Hamas for its “spirit of resistance.” Guido Fawkes posted the latest video.
• Israeli envoy slammed Austria’s hosting of Palestinian hijacker terrorist Leila Khaled. She gave a talk at an Austrian-Arab cultural center in mid-April; Austrian officials said they the Netherlands authorized Khaled’s visa, which couldn’t be revoked under the European Union’s open borders system. According to the Jerusalem Post, it wasn’t clear why Holland issued Khaled the visa.
• Reuters: Italy arrested three Islamic State suspects who discussed attacks on the Israeli embassy in Rome and the Vatican.
• The Iowa Senate approved an anti-BDS bill, prohibiting the state from investing in companies that boycott Israel. More at the Des Moines Register.
• The Times of Israel picked up on a report which found violent anti-Semitic incidents in the UK have risen 50 percent in the past two years.
Commentary/Analysis
• Anti-Semitism in the UK Labour Party dominated weekend op-eds. Most notable among them was Mehdi Hasan, who calls out anti-Semitism in Britain’s Muslim community.
It pains me to have to admit this but anti-Semitism isn’t just tolerated in some sections of the British Muslim community; it’s routine and commonplace. Any Muslims reading this article – if they are honest with themselves – will know instantly what I am referring to. It’s our dirty little secret. You could call it the banality of Muslim anti-Semitism.
I can’t keep count of the number of Muslims I have come across – from close friends and relatives to perfect strangers – for whom weird and wacky anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are the default explanation for a range of national and international events . . .
It is sheer hypocrisy for Muslims to complain of Islamophobia in every nook and cranny of British public life, to denounce the newspapers for running Muslim-baiting headlines, and yet ignore the rampant anti-Semitism in our own backyard. We cannot credibly fight Islamophobia while making excuses for Judaeophobia.
• Staff-eds on Labour’s woes included the Wall St. Journal (click via Google News),The Independent, and The Observer. The latter got a big thumbs-down from Lahav Harkov.
tl;dr The Guardian thinks anti-Semitism isn't the real problem, it's just a distraction from housing problems #wtf https://t.co/mp8adwAMGS
— Lahav Harkov (@LahavHarkov) May 1, 2016
• Here are more of the op-eds on the issue.
– David Horovitz: Ken Livingstone, using Hitler to demonize Israel
– Stephen Pollard: The Left’s hatred of Jews chills me to the bone
– Yair Rosenberg: Labour’s anti-Semitism scandal was entirely predictable
– Nick Cohen: I saw the darkness of antisemitism, but I never thought it would get this dark
– Harry’s Place: “But Ken Livingstone is right; Google the Haavara agreement!”
– Douglas Murray: Labour’s anti-Semitism problem stems from its grassroots
– Anshel Pfeffer: Why Britain’s Labour Party became synonymous with anti-Semitism
– Rex Murphy: Ken Livingstone takes British politics to new lows
– David Aaronovitch: How the state of Israel lost its underdog status
– Peter Beaumont: Ken Livingstone muddies history
– Rabbi David Wolpe: Stop the surge of anti-Semitism in the UK
– Toby Young: It will take more than Labour’s ‘inquiry’ to deal with the left’s anti-Semitism problem
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Richard Kemp et al: Why we are optimistic about Zionism
– Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: University students vote for terror
– Ben-Dror Yemini: From freedom to enslavement
– Ruthie Blum: Stephen Hawking and Nobel Prize-worthy chutzpah
– Jeff Jacoby: ‘Never forget,’ the world said of the Holocaust. But the world is forgetting
Featured image: CC BY-SA Tom Woodward with additions by HonestReporting; Livingstone (CC BY-NC Overseas Development Institute; Khaled CC BY Sebastian Baryli;
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