Even being a rank-and-file left-wing Jew means persecution by Starmer’s party
Jewish Voice for Labour, the left-wing grouping of Jewish members of the Labour party, has sent a supplementary submission to the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) – to add to its landmark dossier earlier this month – telling the EHRC that Labour’s assault on left-wing Jewish members has ‘dramatically’ intensified since JVL’s first document.
And that JVL’s leaders are more than 200 times more likely to be targeted by the party for investigation than other Labour members, while ordinary JVL members are four times more likely to face persecution by the Labour right regime:
This submission is an update to our submission dated 5th August 21 entitled How Labour’s Claim of Countering Antisemitism Has Resulted in a Purge of Jews.
In the three weeks since then our situation has continued to deteriorate. We have received many messages from Jewish Party members informing us how our documentation echoes their experience in the Party and how they increasingly feel unwelcome in a party to which they have given many years of commitment and effort. Others have told us that, because of the attitudes we have described, they have with heavy hearts quit the Party.
As at the 24th August we have become aware of seven new investigations of Jewish Party members. Notifications of new investigations and auto-exclusions are arriving on a daily basis.
This means it would appear that over four times more Jewish than non-Jewish Labour Party members have faced actioned complaints of antisemitism. The disproportion is even greater in relation to JVL Committee members and officers. The staggering numbers suggest that these Jews are nearly three hundred times more likely to be investigated than non- Jewish Labour Party members (see the note on Annex 7 below). In all these cases the charges of so-called antisemitism are deeply offensive and should be withdrawn immediately in accordance with the party’s own NEC Code of Conduct.
The document goes on to describe:
- harsh treatment of Jewish members, with even requests for an extension to the party’s near-impossible deadline for responding to auto-exclusion notices because of serious ill-health either refused or ignored
- evidence-free escalations of cases against left-wing Jewish members
- demands to prove impossible negatives
- negation of the heritage, politics and tradition of Jewish members – in most cases by non-Jewish investigators
- complaints submitted by left-wing Jews about discrimination and racial abuse against them being either summarily dismissed or often simply completely ignored by the party machine
- 65% of JVL committee members being targeted with antisemitism complaints – a rate more than 220 times higher than the estimated average level among other members
- an admission by the party that the reason the whole JVL organisation has not been proscribed like several other left-wing (and substantially Jewish) groups is that the party fears it will be successfully sued for discrimination
- briefing by the party to the media against left-wing Jewish members, while the names of their vexatious accusers are ‘carefully protected’
- retrospective punishment applied by Labour to Jewish members
and more.
The new document also includes extended and new addenda detailing particular cases of discrimination against and persecution of left-wing Jewish members of the party – and it summarises the impact of the myriad and accelerating forms of racism faced by left-wing Jews:
JVL comes out of a rich, vibrant radical Jewish tradition, drawing significantly on the heritage of the Jewish Bund.. This inheritance is also embodied in such groups as the Jewish Socialists Group and Jews for Justice for the Palestinians. Our understanding of antisemitism, what it is, how to fight it, and how not to fight it, flows from this tradition. Yet dozens of Jewish members are now being targeted by Labour as antisemites, for voicing an understanding of antisemitism that is a direct product of our Jewish political and personal heritage.
The effect of rejecting or ignoring complaints made by JVL members of antisemitism; our experience of bullying and harassment; and the refusal to consult or involve JVL in, for instance, the EHRC required Action Plan; all show disdain for our status and roles as Jews.
We are not heard; in particular we rarely get a chance to voice our opinions in the print and broadcast media; when we do we are treated too often with hostility and aggression and Ofcom appears to refuse to hold broadcasters to account.
The party’s war on left-wing members is escalating. Its war on left-wing Jewish members is intensifying further and faster – the very definition of discrimination.
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