Left Turn

In FrontPage Magazine, Melanie Phillips comments on the current rise of antisemitism in Britain. Its most recent manifestations have had a fairly high political profile - first, in connection with two prospective Labour party election posters, and now over offensive remarks made to a Jewish Evening Standard journalist by London's mayor:

And this illustrates the far wider issue – that the Left, of which Livingstone is such a shining ornament, has gotten into bed with radical Islamism. Subscribing to its twisted narrative of “oppression,” the British Left routinely libels the Jews of Israel as “the new Nazis,” has breathed life into Muslim Jew-hatred (which itself borrows deeply from Nazi propaganda), and prompted a terrifying increase in anti-Jewish feeling ranging from muttered social prejudice, through public accusations of the “global Jewish conspiracy,” all the way to record levels of physical attacks on Jews, synagogues, and cemeteries.

Tony Blair has been embarrassed by London’s mayor. But this is a chicken that has simply come home to roost. Livingstone was formerly kicked out of the Labour party on account of his extremism. But when it became clear that he was going to win the London mayoral race as an independent candidate and humiliate Labour, Blair readmitted him to the party to ensure that Labour won that election.

Now Livingstone has re-emerged in his true colors. So, too, has the rest of the Labour movement, with posters and articles disgracefully using anti-Jewish stereotypes in order to appease Muslim sentiment, peddling anti-Jewish prejudice.

For Blair’s government, Britain’s 280,000 Jews are now utterly disposable, to be traduced and abused to buy 1.8 million Muslim votes. That is the real embarrassment of the Livingstone affair — to have hung out the dirty washing of the Left, which grovels before prejudice and terror to stay in power.