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A Parliamentary Debate over "Pro-Israel Influence" Sends a Dreadful Message
(Jewish News-UK) Dame Louise Ellman - This week, our parliament will stage a debate on "pro-Israel influence on politics and democracy in Britain." Jews have been stabbed in the streets, murdered at their synagogues, and harassed and intimidated in schools, hospitals and campuses and, somehow, the real problem Britain faces is the alleged outsize influence of the "pro-Israel lobby." It's the result of a petition pushed by a plethora of extremist groups - like 5Pillars, an Islamist news site - clearing the 100,000 signatures requiring a parliamentary debate. This debate is nothing short of an opportunity for centuries-old antisemitic tropes about Jews, money and power to be peddled and propagated in the mother of parliaments. It is a dark, disturbing day for Britain. As the late Lord Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi, suggested in 2017: "In the Middle Ages Jews were hated because of their religion. In the 19th and early 20th century they were hated because of their race. Today they are hated because of their nation state, the state of Israel." The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism is explicit. "Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective - such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions" is antisemitic. I know first-hand just how disturbing and distressing anti-Zionist antisemitism can be. I was subjected to unrelenting hate because I spoke out against antisemitism and I was forced to leave the Labour party - my political home of 55 years. The writer is a former member of Parliament.