Anti-semitism is a global plague. Starmer cannot afford to lose this fight | thearticle

When Sir Keir Starmer became Leader of the Opposition on April 4, he apologised to the Jewish community and clearly signaled his intention to break with the culture of anti-Semitism that had

pervaded the Labour Party under his predecessor. Whether he grasped the difficulties of the task was initially in doubt. That he does has just become clear. By sacking his Shadow Education

Secretary, Rebecca Long-Bailey, for disseminating an article that peddled an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, Sir Keir has picked a fight with the Corbynite far-Left. The latter’s reaction to

the removal of their standard-bearer from the Shadow Cabinet was swift. Jon Lansman, the hard Left NEC member and founder of the grassroots organisation Momentum, described it as “a

reckless over-reaction”. Revealingly, he said that there was nothing in the offending article that a Labour anti-Semitism panel would consider grounds for expulsion. The bar has been set so

high that only the crudest manifestation of prejudice would suffice. Another Corbynite former shadow Cabinet member told the_ Times_: “People are leaving as we speak. It’s a nightmare.” If

the prospect of an exodus of Labour’s lunatic fringe is not enough to encourage Sir Keir to persist, a closer look at Ms Long-Bailey’s sinister allegation and its context just might. She

retweeted a claim in the_ Independent _that the lethal practice of “neck kneeling”, the restraint technique used by the American police who killed George Floyd, had been “learnt from

seminars with Israeli secret services”. In the Manichaean world view of the far-Left, the most potent symbol of American racism and police brutality, which had unleashed global protests, was

laid at the door of the Jewish State. The_ Independent _has now apologised for publishing an “unfounded” smear, but this does not alter the fact that the offending article, an interview

with the actress Maxine Peake, has been trending on social media ever since the story broke. If the lie is big enough, it cuts through.   The “neck kneeling” conspiracy theory is part of a

wave of anti-Semitism that has flooded social media since the outset of the coronavirus pandemic. Jews are being blamed for spreading the virus, especially in the Muslim world, and these

classic anti-Semitic tropes are now mutating to incorporate other global phenomena, such as the Black Lives Matter protests. As usual, such propaganda has consequences: assaults on Jews are

rising, even in places which have not normally been seen as hostile. In New York City, home to the largest Jewish community on earth, the Democratic Mayor has a problem with Jews — but only

the Orthodox minority. Jews have been attacked there on an almost daily basis over the past year. Yet the Mayor, Bill de Blasio, has fed the flames. In a notorious tweet in April, at the

height of the pandemic, he told “the Jewish community” that “the time for warnings has passed” and that the NYPD would arrest anyone gathering in large groups, for example for funerals. By

singling out Jews, the Mayor fuelled conspiracy theories. He has subsequently targeted Jews in public on several occasions, for example by closing down a “dangerous” Orthodox Jewish yeshiva

(school) and sealing the gates to parks in Jewish neighbourhoods, while leaving others open. The public hostility of Mayor de Blasio for the most visible Jews in the largest urban Jewish

community on earth might seem self-defeating: why deny himself their support? The reason is that religious Jews are among the few unashamed conservatives in New York, the most liberal city

in America. And, as a non-Orthodox Jewish New Yorker tells me, the Mayor’s “handling of the Covid-19 crisis is recognised by all as a disaster. Orthodox Jews would be a natural target for

him to lash out at in his threatened self-regard.” He explains the Mayor’s electoral calculation thus: “Liberal and secular Jews no more identify with Orthodox Jews than secular gentiles

identify with Jesuits.” So De Blasio is not risking the vast majority of Jewish votes by bullying the Orthodox minority. Nor is he jeopardising his credentials as a national leader of the

radical wing of the Democratic Party, with presidential ambitions. Keir Starmer is right to stand up to the hard-Left of the Labour Party on anti-Semitism. He must reckon with a long

struggle if he wants to prevail, just as predecessors such as Neil Kinnock and Tony Blair once did. But there can be no place in Labour for those who indulge in “the socialism of fools”

(“_der Sozialismus der dummen Kerle_”) as the German social democratic leader August Bebel dubbed anti-Semitism when it emerged in Germany more than a century ago. For the Labour Party, this

is a fight for survival. It is a fight that Starmer knows he cannot afford to lose.