Hey, ho! Another day, another anti-Semitism smear against the Labour party from the Beeb. I might be overreacting here, but my respect for Victoria Coren has just taken a very severe dent. On Have I Got News For You tonight she made a very stupid joke about Corbyn believing in the classic conspiracy theory about Jewish bankers. She told the world that Labour had gone from a surplus in funds of several million to being £650,000 in debt. She then told Corbyn, ‘Jeremy, if you want to know someone good with money, it’s the Jewish bankers you believe are conspiring against you.’ Or something like that. I’ve forgotten the precise wording, but no doubt someone will put it up on YouTube tomorrow. But whatever the wording, she definitely mentioned Corbyn and the Jewish banking conspiracy.
I’m really disappointed as I thought she was better than that.
I can’t say I’m a fan of Have I Got News For You. I got sick and tired of seeing the Beeb push lies on it. It annoyed me so much at one point I stopped watching it completely. I wasn’t really keen on seeing it tonight, truth be told. Perhaps I should have kept well away.
But for the information of Victoria Coren-Mitchell and anyone else who might be taken in by the media’s lies, neither Jeremy Corbyn nor his followers believe in stupid, murderous theories about Jewish bankers. Indeed, as Mike and so many others have put up on their blogs, Corbyn has a proud record of defending the British Jewish community. He even criticised the Beeb and other broadcasters for not putting on enough programmes to cater for the Jewish community. What he has done to cause outrage to the Conservative British Jewish establishment – the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Jewish Leadership Council and former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, among others, is demand proper civil rights and equality for Palestinians. Freedom from torture, house demolitions, arbitrary arrest, seizure and eviction from ancestral lands by the Israeli state and militant settlers, the dismantlement of the system of apartheid that exactly mirrors that of White South Africa. You know, basic human rights like that.
In his criticism of Israel, Corbyn has enjoyed the support of Jews, who share his concerns. Hajo Meyer, at whose speech criticising Israel Corbyn committed the heinous crime of nodding in agreement, is not only Jewish but a Holocaust survivor. Many of the entirely decent people smeared as anti-Semites and suspended or expelled from the Labour party by their kangaroo court, are also Jews. People like Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker, Martin Odoni and many, many others.
No-one from the BBC has ever had the decency to talk to any of the people smeared by the witch-hunters, whether anti-racist gentiles like Mike or Ken Livingstone, or the self-respecting, Torah-observant and secular Jews like those I’ve mentioned. They have sought comments on the anti-Semitism smears from people like the Israel-critical Jewish American scholar, Norman Finkelstein, and have given only grudging airtime to Jewish Voice for Labour. Nor has anyone mentioned that some of the heroes of the Warsaw Uprising against the Nazis, like Marek Edelman, were also supporters of the Palestinians. Indeed, Edelman caused notoriety in Israel by stating that the Palestinian rebels were the equivalent of his comrades in their revolt against occupation and murder by the Nazis. Edelman has passed on, but his legacy as an anti-Fascist and supporter of Palestinian rights is admired by veteran anti-racists in the Labour party like Tony Greenstein. A man who is also justly proud of the way British Jews and their gentile comrades in the Labour movement and trade unions resisted Mosley and his thugs before the War.
All this has gone by the wayside. Instead, the Beeb has followed the media pack and its self-imposed groupthink, and pushed ad nauseam the lie that Corbyn and the Labour party are institutionally anti-Semitic. And this latest smear of Corbyn is very suspicious in its timing. Zelo Street yesterday suggested that Louise Ellman’s resignation and the way news of it seemed to come first from the wretched Guido Fawkes was deliberately timed to do damage to Labour. Boris Johnson was in trouble, there hadn’t been an anti-Semitism smear scandal in a little while, so lo! Ellman manufactured one. As has the Beeb. As Mike and Zelo Street have pointed out, Ellman was a Thatcherite entryist parachuted into Liverpool by Blair. Jewish members of her constituency party have made a video stating that they have always been welcomed in the party and they do not recognise her comments about it.
https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/10/louise-ellman-and-guido-fawkes.html
Good riddance to Louise Ellman and her lies about Corbyn and anti-Semitism
I don’t expect anything better than the BBC in this. The Beeb has been pushing the anti-Semitism smears ever since they were first made. But I did expect better of Victoria Coren-Mitchell. How wrong I was.
Tags: 'Guido Fawkes', anti-semitism, Anti-Semitism Smears, Apartheid, BBC, Board of Deputies of British Jews, Boris Johnson, Chief Rabbi, Coinservatives, Conspiracy Theories, Hajo Meyer, Have I Got News for You, Holocaust, Holocaust Survivors, House Demolitions, Jackie Walker, Jeremy Corbyn, Jewish Leadership Council, Jews, Jonathan Sacks, Labour Party, Land Seizures, Liverpool, Louise Ellman, Marek Edelman, Margaret Thatcher, Martin Odoni, Norman Finkelstein, Oswald Mosley, Palestinians, Settlers, tony blair, Tony Greenstein, Torture, Victoria Coren, Vox Political, Warsaw Uprising, Zelo Street
Beastrabban\'s Weblog 
October 19, 2019 at 2:21 pm |
Tbh I feel the dead hand of self censorship (and RW propagndising) from the press including Victoria is gaining primacy. Only fear will have this effect, the fear that the far right instils now the coup is complete. So the press are not unwilling hostages having helped prime the people and paved the way for it. Perhaps there wasn’t too much introspection along the way, the path of least resistance, the path rewarded by the exiled press barons, the path apparently approved by the Establishment. Now they make “jokes” that step over the line between dull compliance and active promotion of the TW agenda, and smearing of political opposition as a very political act itself. Like yourself, I have not watched HIGNIFY much, but I noted that there was little support for that tasteless jibe from the audience or the panel BUT it was kept in the final programme aired. Yes, the BBC editorial line has moved further right yet again and is no longer pretending to hide its alliances. As an adjunct to Private Eye concerns (Ratbiter etc), it is a concern that Ian Hislop dominates the scarce print and broadcast satirical press.
October 20, 2019 at 1:27 am |
[…] the name of balance, we should mention – as Beastrabban has – that Mr Corbyn is on the record as having criticised the BBC for failing to broadcast […]