Pro-Corbyn Jewish woman elected national chair of Young Labour despite unprecedented antisemitism within party

A Jewish woman has been elected as national chair of Young Labour, despite relations between Jews and the Labour Party being at an all-time low.

24-year old Miriam Mirwitch, who describes herself as “proudly, visibly Jewish”, served as chair of London Young Labour in 2017 before being elected as national chair. Ms Mirwitch says that she joined Labour aged sixteen, citing the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition as her motivation. In 2017 she was named “activist of the year” by the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM).

Ms Mirwitch reports that she encounters antisemitism and receives abuse online: “I get a lot of antisemitism online. Also there’s sexism and abuse from the far-right, memes on eugenics and such. Some of it is because I’m Jewish, not all. I don’t really talk about Israel online but a lot of trolls obsessively make up my views on Israel. I just don’t interact with them.”

Despite Mr Corbyn’s record on antisemitism, Ms Mirwitch has defended the Labour leader, claiming that “Jeremy has taken amazing steps forward with the Jewish community.”

Elaborating, she opined that “I think he’s done really good work in the past year reaching out to the community but obviously we still need to do more. Jeremy’s supporting the JLM a lot more now. He even came to the Chanukah party!”

Campaign Against Antisemitism will be holding a national demonstration against antisemitism under Jeremy Corbyn on Sunday 8th April.