Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has become embroiled in yet another antisemitism row as comments emerge from an article written in 2009 in which he claimed that the Israeli government has huge influence over the “upper echelons” of the British media.
The piece, written for the far-left Morning Star newspaper, was published shortly after the 2009 Israeli-Gaza conflict. The BBC, citing impartiality reasons, did not broadcast a humanitarian relief appeal on behalf of Gaza.
Mr Corbyn’s op-ed said of the situation, “What this embarrassing saga demonstrates is the contempt that the BBC directors appear to have for the views of their license fee-payers and the unbelievably high levels of influence that Israel’s government appears to have in the upper echelons of parts of the media.”
The idea of Jews or the Israeli government controlling the media is an infamous antisemitic trope, and is part of the definition of antisemitism as stated by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which says that examples antisemitism includes “making mendacious, dehumanising, demonising, or stereotypical allegations about Jews,” including “the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media.”
The chairman of the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), Gideon Falter, said that “the notion that the Israeli government has ‘unbelievably high levels of influence’ over the media is a conspiracy theory drawn straight from racist myths about Jewish power.”
He went on to say, “Jeremy Corbyn has a history of endorsing such conspiracy theories, whether he is accusing ‘the hand of Israel’ of being behind Islamist attacks in Egypt, or writing his glowing foreword to a tome alleging that a ‘peculiar race’ has successfully plotted to control Europe.”
“[D]ue to the weight of evidence, we have had no option other than to conclude that the reason Mr Corbyn promotes these views is that he himself is an anti-Semite.”
The comments are the latest in a long line of claims of antisemitism against Mr Corbyn and the Labour Party in general. A recent survey by ComRes for Jewish News found that 51 per cent of the population believe Labour has a serious antisemitism problem while 56 per cent said Mr Corbyn was unable or unwilling to stamp out antisemitism within his party.
Last year, the Simon Wiesenthal Center said that Mr Corbyn “stands directly responsible” for “injecting the world’s oldest hatred into the mainstream of society.”
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