This week’s documentary gives the other side of the media/political narrative which was used to destroy the Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the British Labour Party.
The documentary focuses on an insane situation where Jeremy Corbyn was persistently being accused of supporting antisemitism mainly because he was not persecuting his Jewish supporters fast enough. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party was weak and attempted appeasement in its response to the media attacks, thus they failed to overcome or outwit the ‘no-win’ scenario.
The documentary also reflects the more traditional and moderate left-wing which valued principles, universalism, tolerance, reason, due process, historical accuracy, natural justice, and even had a functional sense of humour.
The following quotes are included below to give the background to the situation and the sort of media coverage the situation received.
"Despite Mr Corbyn pledging to 'continue to take firm action' against anti-Semitism in his keynote speech to the Labour conference yesterday, the party has yet to act against Ms Walker over her Holocaust remarks…
...Even Jeremy Corbyn supporters, including activist Aaron Bastani, called for Labour to expel Jackie Walker over the comments.
The developments came as Labour's ruling committee faced fresh criticism over its handling of the party's anti-Semitism problem."
Matt Dathan, Daily Mail, 29 September 2016
"Following a two-year review, the United Kingdom’s Labour Party expelled Jackie Walker, an activist whose repeated negative statements about Jews for many observers epitomized the British party’s anti-Semitism problem.
An ethics panel on Wednesday deemed Walker’s rhetoric “prejudicial and grossly detrimental,” The Guardian reported.
Walker was suspended in 2017 after falsely suggesting at a training session about anti-Semitism that International Holocaust Remembrance Day commemorates Jewish victims alone.
Walker was previously suspended and later readmitted into Labour for writing on Facebook that Jews were “chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade.”
Walker is a former leader of Momentum, the Labour movement supporting party leader Jeremy Corbyn. According to Walker’s website, her father, Jack Cohen, was a Russian Ashkenazi Jew.
Disciplinary actions against her were among the most high-profile cases involving anti-Semitism in Labour."
Cnaan Lipphshiz, 27 March 2019, https://www.jta.org/quick-reads/key-jeremy-corbyn-supporter-kicked-out-of-uk-labour-party-over-anti-semitism
"There
is an anti-Semitism in the Labour Party which people are afraid to
openly discuss — it is a relentless persecution of
Corbyn-supporting Jews. We receive threats to our safety in myriad
formats, suspensions and defamations. When the media discuss this,
they omit the fact that we are Jewish.
For
example, a Labour Party colleague of mine, whose family escaped
repeated pogroms in Europe and perished in the Holocaust, made a joke
that some deemed inappropriate and was consequently suspended. She
was described in the media not as “Jewish,” but as “claims to
be Jewish.” What I am describing is a process in which Jews are
being made and unmade. Jews who support Jeremy Corbyn are being
unmade, yet people like Joan Ryan, who is not Jewish, are seen and
spoken of as Jewish. Astonishingly, if you criticize Ryan, you are
accused of anti-Semitism!
Jackie Walker as quoted in Truthout, April 2019, https://truthout.org/articles/zionist-campaign-drives-black-jewish-activist-out-of-uks-labour-party/
Made by: Jon Pullman, (director) and Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi (executive producer)
Release: 2019
Links:
Runtime: 60 minutes
Video Description:
“In
2015, while the far right was gaining ground around the world,
socialist MP Jeremy Corbyn was elected as leader of the UK Labour
Party in a landslide victory. Accusations of antisemitism within the
party immediately began to circulate. Well-known anti-racists and
left-wing Jews, such as Jackie Walker, were amongst the chief
targets.
WitchHunt sets out to investigate the stories and the people behind the headlines, examining the nature of the accusations. Is this a witch hunt, as some claim? If so, who is behind it, and what is the political purpose of such a campaign? Has the media failed in its duty to fairness and accuracy in reporting on such serious allegations? Through a series of interviews, analysis and witness testimony, WitchHunt explores the connections between the attacks on Labour, the ongoing tragedy of Palestine and the wider struggle against race-based oppression. It argues that if it is to mean anything at all, the fight against racism must be a shared one that includes all peoples.”
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