According to Margaret Hodge an anti-Semite is someone who disagrees with her!

Given her cover up of Child Abuse, Hodge should never have been an MP let alone Blair's Minister for Children

Last week it was announced that Labour had taken a 4% point lead over the Conservatives. In jest I remarked on Twitter that it was time to bring out the anti-Semitism allegations. Little did I know that at that very moment Margaret Hodge, whose main claim to fame was covering up child abuse when Leader of Islington Council, was preparing to accuse Jeremy Corbyn of being ‘a fucking anti-Semite.’

The purpose of Hodge, Berger and Smeeth is to damage the Labour Party and give comfort to this woman

Of course there has been total unanimity in the media that Hodge was right to attack Corbyn. From the Sun to the Guardian, the British press has spoken with one Orwellian voice. It is like the days of Pravda and Izvestia and on BBC24 New’s What The Papers Say both journalists sang from the same song sheet. We are witnessing what Chomsky called the ‘manufacturing of consent’.

Simon Kelner in the 'i' repeats the same hackneyed arguments of the press - without an iota of originality

The Zionist argument was summed up by Simon Kelner in the ‘i’:

‘Who is, in fact, better qualified to judge? An understandably sensitised community on one side, or an apparently disinterested party on the o ther? Does the Chief rabbi believe that if a Jewish person feels he or she has been on the receiving end of anti-Semitic behaviour, that is – by definition – anti-Semitic behaviour?’

The argument is as attractive as it’s wrong. Surely, the argument goes, any community or group should be able to ‘define’ what their oppression is? In fact the answer is no. Because all sorts of groups who are anything but oppressed can decide to define political criticism of them as a form of oppression.

I had an idea that antisemitism hadn't run its course!

Many lesbians are defining their oppression in ways that many people would say is transphobic. The Paedophile Information Exchange (with which it has been alleged Hodge had connections) used to define hostility to them as a form of oppression? How about anti-abortionists and the hunting brigade? The National Front and fascist groups define opposition to racism as being nothing more than anti-white racism as did the proponents of Apartheid.

Supporters of Israel, who are the real proponents of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism, are not oppressed. Jews in this country, many of whom identify with Israel, do not suffer from state racism. They are not pulled over by the Police because they are Jewish, nor are there Jewish deaths in custody or deportations because they are Jewish. The Jewish community in this country is a privileged White community.

I had a feeling that antisemitism would rear its head

If members of the Jewish community choose to define their identity as support for Zionism and the oppression of the Palestinians then they should be criticised, called out not flattered. If Jews in this country are racist they should be condemned not allowed to pass it off as opposition to anti-Semitism.

Hodge’s Attack on Jeremy Corbyn Demonstrates why the IHRA Definition of Anti-Semitism is not fit for purpose

No group should be allowed to define its own oppression. That is precisely the pitfalls of identity politics in which you get competing oppressions and subjective definitions which lack all objective justification. Oppression is real, it isn’t a form of words or an international agreement. As if the anti-Semitic Hungarian government endorsing the IHRA makes it somehow kosher. And amongst British Jews many disagree with Zionism and the IHRA definition. Are we to be ignored because Jewish ‘community leaders’ are in bed with Benjamin Netanyahu?

It's no accident that Sajid David and Chuka Ummuna say almost exactly the same - the time has come for Ummuna to be deselected

Zionists pray in aid the MacPherson Report which recommended that the victims of racial incidents be able to define what had happened. However that was in the context of forcing the Police to record an incident as racially motivated. It did not mean that the allegation was necessarily true or that the person against whom an allegation was guilty.

This week Israel officially declared itself an Apartheid state. The Knesset passed the Jewish Nation State Law. In the words of Bradley Burston, a Senior Editor on Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper, this is:

a law which effectively repealed and superseded the equality and democracy provisions of Israel's Declaration of Independence as a guide for the future of the country. Gone is any mention of equality. In its place, directives that veer Israel towards genuine apartheid, including a downgrading of the status of the Arabic language and therefore of Arab citizens of Israel.

This is the context of the attempts by the Zionists to impose the IHRA definition on the Labour Party. No longer is there even any pretence that the false anti-Semitism allegations which have been made against the Labour Party for the last 3 years are about Israel.

In the Jewish Chronicle two weeks ago its editor Stephen Pollard berated the ‘institutionally anti-Semitic’ Labour Party for refusing to adopt wholesale the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. Pollard complained that

‘instead of adopting the definition as agreed by all these bodies, Labour has excised the parts which relate to Israel and how criticism of Israel can be antisemitic.’

This is the same Stephen Pollard who has not hesitated to defend genuine anti-Semites like Michal Kaminski because he is pro-Zionist. [see Poland's Kaminski is not an antisemite: he's a friend to Jews]

Anti-Semitism is hostility to or prejudice against Jews it is not disagreeing with the Chief Rabbi, Margaret Hodge or the Chief Rabbi

The argument that everyone has the ‘right to define’ their own oppression is an absurdity. Anti-Semitism is not a difficult thing to define. According to the Oxford English Dictionary it is ‘Hostility to or prejudice against Jews’ all of 6 words. The IHRA definition of anti-Semitism is over 500 words. In the words of Sir Stephen Sedley, a Jewish former Court of Appeal judge, the IHRA ‘fails the first test of any definition: it is indefinite’.

However as I have also said Corbyn has made a rod for his own back. His fatal mistake was in adopting the IHRA definition at all. It isn’t about anti-Semitism but about conflating criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism. Instead of stupidly going along with Theresa May and accepting the IHRA without any debate Corbyn should have had the courage to say no.

The false anti-Semitism allegations were never aimed at expelling me or Marc Wadworth or Jackie Walker. That is why it was stupidity itself for Corbyn to give these bogus allegations the time of day. Zionist MPs like Luciana Berger and Ruth Smeeth are in the forefront of the attacks on Corbyn. Appeasing these racists has not helped his situation it has made it worse. The more you appease racism the more it grows and the Labour Zionists have felt emboldened.

Now with Hodge’s false accusations she should not be reprimanded, she should have the whip withdrawn. The electors of Barking are entitled to have a socialist, not a New Labour millionairess represent them. She should never have been allowed to be an MP given her record of covering up child abuse in Islington.

Last week we had people like West Streeting MP calling for sanctions on Israel for the proposed demolition of the Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmer. This week he does his usual bowing and scraping whenever the word ‘anti-Semitism’ is mentioned.

What Streeting and others refuse to understand, to put it charitably, is that allegations of anti-Semitism are used to undermine support for the Palestinians. If Streeting was being genuine in his outrage over Israel’s actions then he and others should not be supporting an attempt to conflate criticism of Israel and Zionism. The same people who support Israel right or wrong are those who proclaim that they are victims of ‘anti-Semitism’. False allegations of anti-Semitism enable the real anti-Semites to get off the hook by being able to say that people are only attacking them because of their support for the Palestinians. Zionism historically has always seen genuine anti-Semitism as a force for good, but it has also tried to redefine anti-Semitism as hostility to their political project.

With a past like hers, Margaret Hodge might show a bit more humility. Margaret Hodge is perhaps the last person to go around throwing stones. As Matthew Norman wrote in The Independent

In the Eighties Hodge was aware of previous child sex abuse in the care homes for which she was responsible, and did nothing about it.

Hodge was

‘A local politician who had heard the gravest imaginable allegations about the maltreatment of children, refused to examine them on budgetary grounds, smeared a victim, attacked the newspaper that did its duty by investigating, and finally – after years of running for cover – offered the dismal excuse that people knew less about child abuse back then, became the national politician with responsibility for children.’

Of course this Uncle Tom is lying. Hodge didn't 'raise concerns about racism' she accused Corbyn of being an anti-semite

We also had other Labour right-wingers jumping on the bandwagon such as Chuka Ummuna who is politically White inside a Black skin. He made the fatuous comment that because Hodge had lost relatives in the Holocaust she was therefore right to defame Corbyn. By that logic I should be able to accuse Chuka Ummuna of being a racist because I too have lost relatives in the Holocaust. A Black politician who supported the Immigration Act 2014, which led to the Windrush Scandal is in no position to lecture anyone on what racism is. Ummuna is an Uncle Tom who is playing to the racist gallery.

For the benefit of those who don’t understand what anti-Semitism is, I print the following guide to anti-Semitism.

Tony Greenstein