Jeremy Corbyn's 'shocking' refusal to distance himself from anti-Semitism has been denounced by the woman who took on the Holocaust-denying British historian David Irving and won.
Acclaimed American academic Professor Deborah Lipstadt claimed the Labour leader has 'fomented a sense among Jews of being unsafe in Britain'.
Professor Lipstadt was speaking ahead of the publication of her new book, Anti-Semitism Here And Now, to mark International Holocaust Memorial Day on Sunday.
Acclaimed American academic Professor Deborah Lipstadt claimed the Labour leader has 'fomented a sense among Jews of being unsafe in Britain'. In her new book, Professor Lipstadt devotes several pages to Corbyn
She made headlines worldwide when Irving, who dismissed Hitler's gas chambers as a 'fairy tale', sued her for calling him a 'Holocaust denier'.
The story of her epic legal victory was turned into the 2016 film Denial, in which Lipstadt was portrayed by Rachel Weisz and Irving by Timothy Spall.
In an interview with the Mail, Professor Lipstadt compared Mr Corbyn's refusal to disown Holocaust deniers with those in the U.S. who refuse to disown people who use the 'n' word.
'No respectable politician would associate with anyone who used the 'n' word,' she says. 'The same should apply to Corbyn over anti-Semitism.'
She made headlines worldwide when Irving, who dismissed Hitler's gas chambers as a 'fairy tale', sued her for calling him a 'Holocaust denier'
Professor Lipstadt also took aim at Corbyn's repeated references to his mother Naomi's role in the anti-fascist Cable Street riots in 1936, when Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts marched through a district of London's East End which had a large Jewish community.
'His view is 'I'm a progressive so I can't be anti-Semitic',' she says. 'He boasts how his mother was at the Cable Street demonstration — 'I had progressive mother's milk so you can't call me anti-Semitic.'
In her new book, Professor Lipstadt devotes several pages to Corbyn.
Here, in this extract, she explains why she believes the Labour leader is guilty of facilitating, amplifying and institutionalising anti-Semitism. . .
As horrific as the Holocaust was, it is in the past. Contemporary anti-Semitism is not. It is about the present. It is what many people are doing, saying and facing now. Today, anti-Semitism is 'back'.
Jeremy Corbyn's record in politics is deeply rooted in firmly held ideological beliefs. Fundamental to his political philosophy is an automatic — critics might call it knee-jerk — sympathy for anyone who is or appears to be oppressed or an underdog.
Those who fight with rocks are always preferred to those who use tanks. Coupled with that is a class and race-based view of the world.
Let's call it the Corbyn Syndrome — a syndrome in which Jews, for the most part white, privileged members of the elite, cannot possibly be considered victims.
Jeremy Corbyn's record in politics is deeply rooted in firmly held ideological beliefs. Fundamental to his political philosophy is an automatic — critics might call it knee-jerk — sympathy for anyone who is or appears to be oppressed or an underdog
Indeed, anyone white, wealthy or associated with a group that seems to be privileged cannot be a victim. Whereas anyone who is, or claims to be, victimised by those who are white, wealthy and/or privileged deserves unequivocal support.
It is doubtful that Corbyn deliberately seeks out anti-Semites to associate with and to support. But it seems that when he encounters them, their Jew-hatred is irrelevant as long as their other positions — on class, race, capitalism, the role of the state, and Israel/Palestine — are to his liking.
Alan Johnson, the former moderate Labour MP, aptly described Corbyn as someone who does not 'indulge in anti-Semitism himself. It is that he indulges the anti-Semitism of others'. The only type of anti-Semite Corbyn seems to have no trouble condemning is that of the neo-Nazi or Right-wing extremist.
In August 2015, Corbyn defended Stephen Sizer, a former Church of England vicar who was accused of posting a link to an avowedly anti-Semitic website, The Ugly Truth, which contends that Jews were responsible for 9/11, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the daily murder of Palestinian children for sport and harvesting organs from Gentiles at gunpoint.
Jewish Labour MP Luciana Berger MP walked with two police officers back to the Labour Party conference last year
Corbyn did more than defend Sizer. He attacked Sizer's critics, claiming the vicar was under attack only because he 'dared to speak out against Zionism'.
When the Church of England disciplined Sizer, Corbyn seemed to suggest that Church authorities were part of a pro-Israel smear campaign.
Corbyn has come to the defence of other questionable personalities.
One month after 9/11, Raed Salah, a Palestinian Islamist preacher, contended that American Jews working in cahoots with Israel had planned and carried out the attacks as a means of 'diverting attention' from Israeli wrongs and directing sympathy 'towards the American continent'.
Salah asserted that 4,000 Jews had been warned not to go to work on September 11, and were saved as a result. In 2007, Salah revived the pernicious accusation that Jews used the blood of gentile children in making matzah [bread]. When the Home Office announced it was denying Salah permission to enter the UK, Corbyn protested, declaring him an 'honoured citizen'.
Corbyn publicly invited Salah to Parliament, where he promised to serve him tea on the terrace, because he 'deserves it'.
While some people were not surprised that Corbyn was willing to keep company with a person who had such radical views about Jews, they were a bit perplexed that he would welcome a man who had declared homosexuality to be 'not only a crime, but a great crime'.
Even though the EU and the U.S. have classified Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organisations, Corbyn has described them as 'friends', attacked the notion they were 'terrorists' and invited them to meet him at Parliament. (He eventually backed down from his 'friends' description, but only after repeatedly refusing to do so.)
Corbyn also worked with Dyab Abou Jahjah, an Arab political activist who described his sense of 'sweet revenge' as he watched the 9/11 attack on TV, but later denounced the attackers as criminals. Corbyn invited him to speak at a London anti-war rally in 2009.
During the 2015 UK election campaign, Jahjah praised Corbyn's 'common belief in dialogue, justice and equality of all', which made their 'collaboration' possible.
When questioned about this, Corbyn said he could not remember ever having worked with Jahjah. When reporters produced pictures of the pair together, Corbyn quickly withdrew his claim.
Members of London's Jewish community are pictured on a protest outside Parliament last March. The Jewish community have called on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to stamp out anti-Semitism in the Labour Party
In 2010, he hosted a call-in show on Iranian Press TV — the Islamic Republic's only legal television station. To a caller who described Israel as a 'disease' Arabs must 'get rid' of from the Middle East, Corbyn responded: 'OK. Thank you for your call.' Another caller described the BBC as 'Zionist liars'. Corbyn said the caller had 'a good point'. That same year on Holocaust Remembrance Day, he hosted an 'Auschwitz to Gaza' event in Parliament at which repeated comparisons were made between Jews, Israelis and Nazis.
In 2011, he proposed that Holocaust Remembrance Day be renamed Genocide Remembrance Day because 'every life is of value'. Of course every life is of value. Of course every genocide is deplorable. But his determination to erase the specific Jewish connection to this day was striking.
In 2012, American graffiti artist Kalen Ockerman painted a mural, entitled Freedom For Humanity, on a privately owned building in London's East End. It depicted elderly, formally dressed men (described by the artist as an 'elite banker cartel') playing Monopoly on a table that rested on the backs of naked, darker-skinned men.
The hook-nosed, repulsive-looking characters at the table were straight out of an anti-Semitic Nazi publication. A local Labour politician stated that the 'images of the bankers perpetuate anti-Semitic propaganda' and the local council ordered the mural to be removed.
When Corbyn learned about it, he praised the artist and defended his artwork. His comments resurfaced last March when screenshots of his Facebook post about it appeared in the media.
Asked about the post by Labour MP Luciana Berger, Corbyn's staff replied: 'In 2012 Jeremy was responding to concerns about the removal of public art on the grounds of freedom of speech. However, the mural was offensive and used anti-Semitic imagery, which has no place in our society, and it is right that it was removed.'
Corbyn's
