Last week, a group of back-bench Labour MPs – many of them known and vocal opponents of Jeremy Corbyn – sponsored and signed Early Day Motion (EDM) 1071:
That EDM turned out to be a damp squib. International reaction, emerging evidence, judicial documents and public opinion have justified Jeremy Corbyn’s measured and statesmanlike response to the government’s attempt to rush to apportion blame for the Salisbury chemical attack.
Today, many of those same MPs have reacted with outrage to a six-year-old Facebook response by Jeremy Corbyn to a Facebook lament by highly-regarded US artist Kalen Ockerman, otherwise known as ‘Mear One’, who has been described as the ‘Michelangelo of graffiti‘.
In 2012, Ockerman complained on Facebook that his mural on a London house wall was about to be effaced – with no mention of the reasons for the local council’s decision to remove it. Corbyn responded:
“Why? You are in good company. Rockerfeller destroyed Diego Viera’s mural because it includes a picture of Lenin.”
On a simple reading, it is a straightforward comment about freedom of expression – which Ockerman did tag in his post.
Some of the MPs now expressing outrage have claimed that Corbyn was supporting antisemitic tropes by making the comment.
However, Corbyn’s own track record in Parliament makes the attempt to attribute anything remotely antisemitic to Corbyn’s comment look extremely weak.
In 2003, Corbyn was among the first MPs to sign EDM 123, explicitly condemning antisemitism:
In 2009, he signed EDM 850, congratulating Jewish News on an investigation into antisemitism on Facebook:
In 2012, around the same time he was making his Facebook comment, Corbyn was a co-sponsor of – and one of only twenty-five MPs to sign – EDM 195, condemning the BBC’s plan to cancel a programme specifically for the Manchester Jewish community:
In 2013, just five months after his Facebook comment about the mural, Corbyn was one of only thirty-three MPs to sign EDM 1133, condemning antisemitism in sport and calling for the adoption of all necessary measures to combat it:
Jeremy Corbyn has admitted he should have looked more closely at the mural before commenting and has welcomed its removal.
But anyone who tries to spin that into a smear that Corbyn has supported antisemitism – as the ‘MSM’ and some Labour backbenchers have – is pushing self-evident nonsense.
Antisemitism is vile.
And Jeremy Corbyn has been at the forefront of parliamentary resistance to it – often when very few others on the Commons benches bothered to join him.
His pedigree on that, as on so many issues of fighting for people and against discrimination and hatred, is a matter of record.
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Yehhhhhh great just learnt Owen Smith ( judas ) been sacked from Front Bench for undermining JC and stance on Brexit .
Well done JC time to make more of a stand against these red Tories
Sorry off topic but great news
Anti Semitism is often mistaken for anti-Zionism,these are entirely different entities,because you don’t have to be Jewish to be a Zionist. It is the Zionists who are the Nazis,and the Jews mostly are regular folk. IMHO.
The artist says the depictions of bankers are based on real people like Rockefeller and Rothschild etc. Some were Jewish some not. This happened a few years ago. Old news, non news. Corbyn bashing again pushed by a Labour MP and taken up by the media.
Any member of the Labour Party, that disagrees with the current leadership should resign,as the party was created by and for the working classes of this country. If any member of the party is not aware of this fact,then why are they a member,Labour was brought into being by the trade unions and working people of this country for the benefit of the entire population,not for the wealthy to take advantage as the tories do,because we were and are less well educated, does not mean we are all stupid!!!
What is more vile and abhorrent…….anti-semitism itself, or fraudulently accusing someone of anti-semitism and, as such, being anti-semitic? They are both of course totally contemptable, and especially the latter when done to smear and demonise someone for political purposes and advantage, as are those in the MSM who are more than happy to disseminate the falsehood to their millions of readers and viewers, knowing full well that it IS a falsehood.
From Chuka Umunna comments over the last 24hrs one could be forgiven for thinking he is passionate campaigner against anti-Semitism, strangely though this doesn’t seem to be reflected in any of the EDMs that he has supported since 2010. I wonder why?
Seems Shai Masots influence still being felt. Re Owen Smith anyone remember the same outrage from Labour MPs when Chris Williamson recently sacked in similar circumstances? Interesting that Hain chose to use the expression “Stalinist purge”
“That EDM (on 14 March 2017) turned out to be a damp squib. International reaction, emerging evidence, judicial documents and public opinion have justified Jeremy Corbyn’s measured and statesmanlike response to the government’s attempt to rush to apportion blame for the Salisbury chemical attack.”
On 16 March 2017 Corbyn wrote in The Guardian “Theresa May was right on Monday to identify two possibilities for the source of the attack in Salisbury, given that the nerve agent used has been identified as of original Russian manufacture. Either this was a crime authored by the Russian state; or that state has allowed these deadly toxins to slip out of the control it has an obligation to exercise”
Mr. Umunna has a long history of making exaggerated claims about anti-Semitism.
https://skwawkbox.org/2016/10/16/analysis-how-chuka-umunna-abused-stats-to-justify-chac-hatchet-job-smearwegoagain/