The BBC is already regurgitating the antisemitism smears against Corbyn and Sultana
In the least surprising news this year, the BBC is regurgitating antisemitism smears against Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn in an attempt to undermine their new political party.
The BBC has written a piece on Sultana's recent comments about how Labour capitulated to IHRA guidelines under Corbyn's leadership and how those guidelines are used to silence legitimate criticism of Israel. An excellent Twitter thread by Jamie SW breaks down a series of errors made by the BBC in its article. I struggle to believe these errors were unintentional.
The BBC says the IHRA guidelines give examples of "antisemitic acts", the implication being that anyone who rejects the IHRA guidelines must support such antisemitic acts.
As Jamie SW points out, the IHRA guidelines do not give examples of antisemitic acts, but rather examples that could be considered antisemitic in certain contexts. This is crucial because the implementation of IHRA guidelines has meant that actions similar to the given examples are automatically considered antisemitic, regardless of context. It is a slight of hand used to silence critics of Israel and is one of the key reasons the guidelines are rejected by many human rights groups.
Absurdly, the BBC says, "The IHRA's working definition of antisemitism is the internationally accepted standard definition, adopted by the government and most British institutions." Last time I checked, being accepted by British institutions was not the same as being accepted internationally!
The IHRA guidelines are not accepted by the UN or a majority of countries around the world. They are heavily criticised by human rights groups for stifling free speech around Israel. Such controversial guidelines cannot sensibly be considered "internationally accepted".
The BBC dedicated a chunk of its article to quoting Zionists laying into Sultana, but it did not quote one person defending her position. As Jamie SW points out in his thread:
"You quote three critics of Sultana's position but no defenders of it. Did you reach out to Kenneth Stern, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B'Tselem, Professor David Feldman, Antony Lerman, or any other critic of the IHRA definition for comment?"
The BBC quoted Labour Against Antisemitism co-director Alex Hearn who denied Kenneth Stern was an author on the IHRA guidelines. This was misleading as Stern describes himself as the lead drafter, not author. The BBC fails to clarify and instead leaves you with the impression that Sultana and others are lying about Stern's role to justify their rejection of the IHRA guidelines.
Here is a quote from Kenneth Stern that the BBC could have included in its article:
"Fifteen years ago, as the American Jewish Committee’s antisemitism expert, I was the lead drafter of what was then called the “working definition of antisemitism”. It was created primarily so that European data collectors could know what to include and exclude. That way antisemitism could be monitored better over time and across borders.
"It was never intended to be a campus hate speech code, but that’s what Donald Trump’s executive order accomplished this week. This order is an attack on academic freedom and free speech, and will harm not only pro-Palestinian advocates, but also Jewish students and faculty, and the academy itself."
The working definition of antisemitism was first published in 2003 but was not adopted by the IHRA until 2016 and suddenly every institution was expected to adopt it. This then led to many people being wrongly fired or expelled for criticising Israel.
The IHRA guidelines provide a non-legally binding working definition of antisemitism which is used to argue unlawful discrimination. The guidelines are so broad that any criticism of Israel can potentially be described as antisemitic. Six of the guidelines relate to how you can and can't criticise the state of Israel.
Ironically, defenders of Israel often use language to describe Palestine that would be considered antisemitic if you used such language against Israel. For example, I've seen many Zionists argue that Hamas has infiltrated western institutions, that it has its tentacles everywhere. I've seen many Zionists hold Palestinians collectively responsible for the actions of Hamas. I've seen many Zionists deny the Nakba and the ongoing genocide. All of these criticisms would fall foul of IHRA guidelines if you made equivalent statements about Israel.
Perhaps if we are going to have IHRA guidelines, we need INHA (International Nakba Remembrance Association) guidelines too! The fact there is no set of guidelines for anti-Palestinian or anti-Arab racism, and Zionists are never shut down when they resort to such racism, tells you everything you need to know. No one has ever been kicked out of a political party or fired from their job or expelled from their university for Nakba denial.
The BBC's article made some claims that are just not true, such as "Corbyn rejected the human rights watchdog's critical findings that there had been three breaches of the Equality Act during his tenure, claiming complaints had been 'dramatically overstated' by political opponents."
Corbyn accepted the findings of the EHRC on the three breaches of the Equality Act, one of which involved Corbyn unlawfully interfering by telling his complaints team they were taking too long to handle complaints - something his critics agreed with!
The BBC did not mention that Labour's antisemitism complaints mostly related to Ed Miliband's time in charge; that most of them upon investigation had nothing to do with Labour members; that Corbyn inherited a complaints system run by political opponents; that the Forde Report found these opponents were mishandling complaints to undermine Corbyn's leadership; and that the complaints procedures dramatically improved when Corbyn ally Jennie Formby took charge and complaints were no longer used as a factional weapon.
Instead of providing this essential context, the BBC dedicated the final paragraphs of its article to laying into Corbyn, ending with the following quote from a Labour source:
"The electorate has twice made their view clear about a Jeremy Corbyn-led party. Keir Starmer's Labour Party rightly tore antisemitism out at its roots. Corbyn almost led the party to extinction. We're not going back."
The BBC did not bother finding a single person to defend Corbyn or Sultana which is interesting because whenever it discusses Israel's war crimes, it never fails to find someone to defend those. Corbyn and Sultana are two of the UK's leading voices when it comes to calling out Israel's genocide and the establishment is desperate to silence them. Only problem is it won't work this time. We are fighting back.
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Does anyone even care about antisemitism anymore? Does it actually mean anything to people?
I was never happy with the guidelines. It can never be right to ban all criticism of a state, or label any such criticism as evidence of bias or discrimination such as antisemitism.