Dems’ AIPAC boycott is another sign of their turn to extremism -N.Y. Post March 22, 2019... This year, however, at least eight Democratic hopefuls deliberately snub the AIPAC conference, with its 18,000 delegates, heeding a demand from MoveOn.org that they boycott the event.
That includes Bernie Sanders, who in 2016 said he “would very much have enjoyed speaking at the AIPAC conference” but now accuses the group of providing “a platform” for “leaders who have expressed bigotry.”
Make no mistake: This is yet another deeply troubling sign of the rapidly shifting winds within the Democratic Party when it comes to supporting Israel.
True, the party’s top members of Congress — Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer — will all speak. Mayor Bill de Blasio, to his credit, will also show.
But the fact that major Democratic contenders for the nation’s highest office — including Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand as well as ex-Rep. Beto O’Rourke — are now pointedly turning their backs means that the hard lefties, not Schumer and Co., are the ones calling the shots.
And don’t the bad guys know it. Radical activist (and Louis Farrakhan ally) Linda Sarsour gloated on Twitter that “the tide is turning” on Israel and “the status quo is no more.” Worse, it’s further vindication of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s anti-Semitic attacks on AIPAC and all supporters of Israel.
Now, Democrats aren’t just refusing to hold Omar accountable for her vicious bigotry — they’ve adopted her talking points.
"UK Labour's predictable descent into anti-Semitism" in The Commentator, 5/1/16
The British Labour Party's descent into totalitarian, anti-Semitic bigotry has been driven by the false belief that hatred of the Jewish state of Israel -- itself a vile form of bigotry -- can truly be divorced from hatred of the great mass of Jews.
"Now, Labour has a leader who is essentially anti-Western, and that manifests itself in a multiplicity of ways from opposition to domestic free market economics to a systematic rationalization of the anti-freedom agendas of groups such as Hamas and international leaders such as Vladimir Putin." . . .
As the center-Left(ish) columnist Nick Cohen put it in an article in the Guardian on Saturday:
"When Jeremy Corbyn defended the Islamist likes of Raed Salah, who say that Jews dine on the blood of Christian children, he was continuing a tradition of communist accommodation with antisemitism that goes back to Stalin’s purges of Soviet Jews in the late 1940s.
"It is astonishing that you have to, but you must learn the worst of leftwing history now. For Labour is not just led by dirty men but by dirty old men, with roots in the contaminated soil of Marxist totalitarianism."
And so it is. But it is also important to underline the very specific reasons why, among all the other possible outcrops of totalitarianism, it is anti-Semitism that has taken center stage.
At the top layer, the reason is an obsessive hatred of the Jewish state of Israel that has been building for decades, but which went into overdrive after the second Palestinian intifada and the failure (due to Palestinian rejectionism) of the Clinton-brokered peace talks of 2000.
A generation of Labour youth has now reached political maturity believing that Israel represents some kind of demonic evil. Quite ordinary party members therefore think nothing (indeed they are proud) of turning up on anti-Israel demonstrations alongside supporters of murderous anti-Semitic terror groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
It is often argued that anti-Zionist fanaticism started out in anti-colonialist, rather than traditionally anti-Semitic, Leftist traditions positing the Palestinians as a kind of pet, Third World liberation movement. But by now, what's the difference? Traditionally anti-Semitic and modern anti-Zionist tropes are largely interchangeable.
In both incarnations, real-world Jews are (and were) targeted for delegitimization, boycotts, and, ultimately, destruction.
(Read more)
Question: We've had a year of the Labour Party getting closer to office and what's the condition of Zionism and Zionists in the political zeitgeist in Britain today in the UK today?
Answer: Well, I don't know if you heard the Labour MP Joan Ryan on Sunday evening - Labour Friends of Israel. She's not even Jewish she was almost crying because what's happened to the Labour Party is really is what's happened to Zionism in the country. It's just tragic. We're on a downhill slope from last year when I spoke to you we have a Conservative government that is sleep-walking towards Brexit with no real discernible leadership. Everyone agrees on that and we, on the other hand, we have a Labour possible government who haven't really increased in the polls normally with them they would be miles ahead but they're not because of this man Corbyn. Because his refusal to eject anti-Semites on his party and because of the general fear by so many Jews in Britain that anti-semitism is taking a real hold on what was a great supporter of the State of Israel, the Labour Party.
Question: Hasn't the the Jewish community in the UK traditionally been a liberal-minded politically?
Answer: Very much so - very much like the Jews of United States of America great Democratic supporters so who I mean I happen to know that many of our great rabbis have been quietly Labour supporters but not anymore. How can they be? Labour does not have any of the values that we espouse - particularly with regard to the Middle East and the growth of the spread of anti-Semitism in Europe particularly with that and also because they condemn the United States and Israel as two colonialist powers and that's how they see the world. It's becoming a Left/Marxist party that no one wants to touch with a bargepole!
Question: When you say Marxist - meaning that the beginnings of socialism leading to communism?
Answer: The people who are now running the Labour Party want to reject all previous Labour members of parliament who had an idea that Tony Blair was the correct leader. The New Labour- as it used to be which was so successful in popular they want them all out they want to start again.
Question: What was the the the psychological adjustment that it took for liberal British Jews to say that this this party which I've voted reflexively for so long- to be able to say are you going to vote against them now?
Answer: Because of the way they treated first of all the Jewish MPs who are in the Labour party. They and of all the tweets and the terrible anti-semitic slurs against them that they and they realized now that we are in a very toxic atmosphere politically and they don't know what to do. No one really wants to leave and go on aliyah. They have no intention of leaving Britain this idea that Jews are going to be leaving Britain I don't think it's going to happen we just have to fight to make sure that the Conservative Party comes to its senses and can win the next general election or
Question: The Jewish population of Britain are they supporting the Conservatives now against Labour?
Answer: I would think there's very few Jews that I know that would vote Labour in the next general election. How can they when they are controlled by a small clique of left-wing previous Marxists and Communists?
British Parliamentarian, Joan Ryan's remarks to AIPAC Policy Conference 24 March '19:
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| British Parliamentarian Joan Ryan addressing AIPAC in D.C. 24 March |
"As a member of the British Parliament, I am proud to be with you all today. I am proud to be a Zionist, I'm proud to be a staunch supporter of the world's only Jewish state and I am proud to be chair of Labour Friends of Israel, a group in the Parliament that promotes support for a strong relationship between Israel and Britain.
Over the past four years, Britain's Labour Party, of which I've been a member for 40 years, has been transformed. Once, a close friend to Israel and an unwavering ally of British Jews, it has been taken over by the far left. It is now, despite the best efforts of some decent members, riddled with anti-Semitism. It now seeks to demonize and delegitimize Israel. It is now led by a man who proudly declares Hamas and Hezbollah to be his friends. I would never have believed just three years ago, that the party which backed a Jewish homeland even before the Balfour Declaration, would have sunk so low so fast.
And so along with eight other members of Parliament, we made a choice. We decided that words were simply not enough. We walked away from the Labour Party.
Why did I, a non-Jewish friend of Israel, travel to your conference to tell you this? I did so to remind you that things can change quickly; to remind you that we must stay on our guard and to remind you that we must stand our ground. We must condemn anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism unequivocally wherever we find it, whenever we find it. We must always call out politicians from whatever side of the aisle who question Israel's right to exist and engage in vile anti-Semitic tropes about the loyalties of British or American Jews to their countries.
I served as a minister under Tony Blair and I saw that sticking to your convictions is not always popular. But it is always right. When I announced my decision to leave the Labour Party, I received an unprecedented torrent of abuse and hate mail. So too have many of my Jewish friends and colleagues. But those threats only strengthen my resolve. Threats will not stop me doing my job. Threats will not stop me standing by British Jews against the far left and the far right.
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| Liberal at Labour rally: "Jeremy Corbyn made me a Tory" (photo: AFP via The Financial Times 7/16/18 ) |
And let me tell you, threats will not stop me standing up for Israel. Why? Because I never forget that Israel is not just a Jewish state but a democratic state, in a neighborhood where democracies are few and far between. Because it is a state with the rule of law in a region not blessed with an abundance of independent courts. And because it is a country where Christians, Muslims and Jews are free to practice their faith in an area where many nations still practice religious intolerance.
We should support Israel not just because it is Jewish but because the values which underpin it are worthy of our support. I'm a former teacher. I always told my students never give in to a bully. And I can tell you, I never will.
That is why I made the stand, spoke out and I took action. And that's what I'm going to keep doing.
So to you, the members of AIPAC who serve on the front lines to ensure that Israel remains our cherished friend and ally, I deliver this message from your friends in Britain.
Thank you for your support for Israel. Let us stand together, proud of each other and proud of Israel in the battles that lie ahead. Thank you. "
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