“Let’s annihilate them all”: Leaked documents show rampant antisemitism in Labour and disciplinary processes unfit for purpose
Leaked documents show that antisemitism is rampant in the Labour Party and that its disciplinary processes are unfit for purpose.
Notwithstanding Jeremy Corbyn’s claims to the contrary, many cases have resulted in lenient sanctions, if any.
Several newspapers have highlighted a handful of alarming cases, a selection of which are summarised below.
One Labour Party member wrote a series of Facebook posts saying: “I call for the complete annihilation and extermination of every Jew on the planet”; “The Jew is worse than Black Death, worse than ebola virus. The Jew represents pure evil”; “You have to think with a scientific method…with clarity of thought. No emotion. We need to eliminate this infection. We kill viruses every day”; “Can we hope for the complete extinction of all Jews by 2017? It is possible by doing your bit to eliminate this global infection”; “Every EU country should kick out every single Jew”; and Jewish people worldwide were funding “a Holoacust against every Arab nation”. Although the Party suspended him the day after receiving a complaint and noted that his words “would not be out of place in the Third Reich”, it took the Party ten months to expel him.
One Labour activist angrily told a veteran councillor that he was “licking the bum of Jews for money”. That comment was passed to Labour’s disciplinary team, along with a social media post she had shared that said: “Our Jewish agenda is to employ the tools of chaos magic — to use deception lies, craft and magic — to obtain the conquest of the Gentile world and establish our Jewish New World Order.” Nevertheless, the Party took four months to process the case, did not suspend her, gave her only a ‘formal warning’ which has no ramifications, and despite the Party’s insistence that future behaviour would result in stronger sanctions, the same activist is known to have shared posts alleging that a Jewish woman MP is an “intelligence asset of the United States”.
A Labour member who joined the Party after Mr Corbyn became leader claimed before joining: “I am not a Jew hater but in terms of stopping being taken over, you are well too late.” After joining the Party he said: “the whole antisemitic thing is to undermine Corbyn and nothing more. Feck off.” Other posts abused Jewish MPs and referred to “Swindlers List: Obama’s Zionist Jews in power” and “Rothschild’s Choice”. He was given a warning on the condition that he underwent antisemitism training; he reportedly resigned his membership over another matter before taking the training.
A Labour member who suggested that only “thousands” of Jews had died in the Holocaust and that Jews were “rich, interested in finance and intent on controlling or exploiting others” received only a warning from the Party, before being suspended apparently only after the case had elicited bad publicity.
In the first release of its Antisemitism in Political Parties research, Campaign Against Antisemitism has shown that Jeremy Corbyn is personally responsible for 24 incidents of antisemitic discourse, which is equal to fifteen percent of all recorded incidents involving parliamentary candidates and party leaders. Overall, Labour Party candidates for Parliament account for 82 percent of all incidents.
Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer 2019 showed that antisemitism on the far-left of British politics has surpassed that of the far-right, and that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is the party leader of choice for those who hold multiple antisemitic views.
On 28th May, the Equality and Human Rights Commission launched a full statutory investigation following a formal referral and detailed legal representations from Campaign Against Antisemitism, which is the complainant.
Over 58,000 people have now signed our petition denouncing Jeremy Corbyn as an antisemite and declaring him “unfit to hold any public office.”