THE ORCHESTRATED witch-hunt against Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn over scurrilous accusations that he and indeed vast numbers of Labour Party members are in fact anti-Semites has reached fever pitch this week after right-wing Labour MP Margaret Hodge publicly attacked him in the House of Commons.
According to reports, Hodge launched a tirade of abuse at Corbyn, described by one senior Labour MP who witnessed her attack as ‘shocking, bullying, intimidating and grossly offensive’, during which she reportedly called him a ‘f*cking anti-Semite and racist’. Hodge denies she used this obscenity.
The MP added: ‘It is beyond belief. I can’t understand that anybody would think that man (Corbyn) would have an anti-Semitic bone in his body.’ What is easy to understand is that this campaign of smears and lies is a deliberate attempt to oust Corbyn as leader. It is no accident that Hodge, who had previously served as a minister in the Blair government, was the first to submit a motion of no-confidence in Corbyn immediately after the EU referendum result in 2016.
What has earned Corbyn the undying hatred of Hodge and her fellow Zionists is the support Corbyn and the Labour Party have given to the struggles of the Palestinian people and their right to have their own state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
In the last general election, the Labour Party manifesto included the commitment that a future Labour government would recognise the State of Palestine and called for an end to Israel’s blockade and occupation of Palestine and for an end to the illegal settlement programme.
It is this support for the struggle of the Palestinian people against the racist and murderous occupation of their country that has driven the Israeli government and its tame stooges in Parliament to launch an ongoing witch-hunt against Corbyn and his supporters.
The immediate cause of Hodge’s vitriolic attack was that the Labour Party National Executive Committee had just approved a code of conduct on anti-Semitism. Although the code of conduct broadly followed the definition of anti-Semitism laid down by the International Holocaust Temperance Alliance (IHRA), it excluded clauses that equated any criticism of the State of Israel with anti-Semitism.
A coalition of 36 international Jewish anti-Zionist groups signed a letter of opposition before the NEC meeting calling the IHRA definition a ‘distorted definition of anti-Semitism to stifle criticism of Israel’. This of course is exactly what Hodge wants to be inserted in the code.
She wants any criticism of Israel to be deemed anti-Semitic and any Labour Party member voicing even the slightest concern about its murderous campaign against Palestinians to be disciplined and expelled. While Hodge was spouting off about racism in the Labour Party she chose to ignore the most blatant racist legislation being debated in the Israeli parliament this week.
Yesterday, Israel passed a law defining the country as the nation state of the Jewish people, making discrimination against Palestinians legal. The law makes Hebrew the national language and defines the establishment of Jewish communalities as being ‘in the national interest’. It stipulates that ‘Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people and they have an exclusive right to national self-determination in it’ and that an undivided Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.
Adalah, the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, called the law a bid to advance ‘ethnic superiority by promoting racist policies’. Hassan Jabareen, general director of Adalah, said: ‘The Jewish nation-state law features key elements of apartheid, which is not only immoral but also absolutely prohibited under international law.’
It is this racist apartheid state of Israel that Hodge and her fellow Zionists want to stifle any criticism of. Hodge, who is now under investigation for bringing the Labour Party into disrepute for her public attack on Corbyn, should be expelled, and the other Blairite right-wingers who have plotted to dump Corbyn and split the Labour Party with their lying smear campaign of anti-Semitism should be deselected and kicked out of the party.
Workers must insist Corbyn stands firm against the plotters and fights to continue the policy of support for the Palestinian people and for an independent state of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital.
