Owen Jones  🌹Verified account

Anti-Semitism on the left not only exists, but there’s a wider group of people who are in total denial about it and dismiss any suggestion it’s there as a smear campaign. This is completely out of order and has to be confronted and defeated.

Yes, right wing elements will always hijack, weaponise and manipulate any issue. That doesn’t mean the issue doesn’t exist. If I start randomly punching people, right wing elements would use that against the left. That doesn’t mean I’m not randomly punching people!

You can both condemn and oppose anti-Semitism, and oppose Israel’s brutal and illegal occupation. And - and here’s a critical point - you can have a conversation about each without bringing in the other.

If you’re someone who, as soon as anyone raises anti-Semitism, immediately says “what about what Israel?” then you’re part of the problem.

Anti-Semitism is not something which appeared in Germany in 1933 and vanished in 1945. It has a 2,000 year history and is embedded in our culture. It exists inside and outside the left. But our standards on the left have to be the highest of all.

I have firmly socialist Jewish friends who voted for Corbyn twice - some who joined Labour because of him - who are upset and distressed because of how they see people online purporting to be left wing denying anti Semitism or recycling anti Semitic tropes. It’s outrageous.

I’m not going to shut about anti Semitism because it would be politically convenient to do so, or because the right are hijacking the issue. Don’t want an issue to be weaponised by the right? The answer is to take on the issue, not deny it.

Only a small minority on the left are anti Semitic. But that fact should shock us, not encourage complacency. Nobody should be anti Semitic on the left, not a single person. So we have to foster a left wing culture that makes it unacceptable.