https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/295247/red-yellow-journalism
According to a report published earlier this month, 84% of British Jews feel that Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn is a “threat specifically to Jews.” Two-thirds of Labour supporters hold at least one anti-Semitic view, the frequent, public expression of which since Corbyn’s ascension four years ago has caused the party to come under investigation by Britain’s Equalities and Human Rights Commission (making Labour the only political party, after the avowedly racist British National Party, to face such an inquiry). Most chilling is a pollcommissioned by the Jewish News finding that half of British Jews would “seriously consider” leaving the country if Corbyn becomes prime minister after next week’s general election. In the words of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism’s Gideon Falter, “British Jews are considering leaving the country on a scale unprecedented since medieval times.” This is a very disturbing moment for British Jewry, but it is also, I might argue, an even more threatening moment for Britain itself.
Which is why I am baffled that The New York Times, which prides itself on fearlessly reporting the truth, would in this case overtly and obviously obfuscate it.
Last month, in a piece titled, “At Odds With Labour, Britain’s Jews Are Feeling Politically Homeless,” Times London correspondent Benjamin Mueller portrayed a community torn equally between the party that has long been its traditional political home (Labour) and one that represents a “little England” nationalism historically inimical to progressive Jewish values (the Conservatives). “Online and over Shabbat dinners, arguments about the election have grown bitter,” Mueller reports. “Those grudgingly planning to vote for Labour have been called traitors to the community and self-hating Jews. Anti-Corbyn die-hards, on the other hand, have been branded the handmaidens of a hard Brexit.”
There is no such division within the Jewish community: 94% of British Jews will vote for any party but Labour next Thursday. For those Jews who cannot stomach a vote for Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s pro-Brexit Tories, the Liberal Democrats offer the option of unambiguous support for continued European Union membership without the rank stench of anti-Semitism. Last year, the country’s three Jewish newspapers—each representing different political and communal traditions and constituencies—all published the same, front-page editorial warning that a Corbyn-led government would present an “existential” threat to British Jewry. The old joke about two Jews, three synagogues really does not have any pertinence when it comes to the matter of how the British Jewish community sees Jeremy Corbyn.
