Social media reacts with grotesque antisemitism to Sir Keir Starmer’s participation in Jewish charity event at synagogue and to Dame Margaret Hodge for calling out anti-Jewish racism
Users of social media have reacted to a visit by Sir Keir Starmer to a synagogue earlier this week with grotesque antisemitism.
The Labour leader was participating in a Jewish charity event in his constituency, and users of social media responding to pictures of the event accused him of “bending to the Jewish lobby”, being a “slave to Israel”, being financed by people opposed to “helping palestine [sic]”, accepting donations in return for “[promises] to support Zionism” and “doing his pay masters bidding [sic]”.
Others asked him (using inflammatory language) whether he called for similar kindness from the local Jewish community to be “extended to [those] being oppressed, tortured and murdered by the Zionist apartheid state of Israel”, while other racist accusations were made against the Jewish community using antisemitic tropes, including claiming that the Jews have “wealth”, “power” and “influence”, as well as references to the “Rothschilds” who “funded the majority of conflicts”.
Antisemitic online abuse targeting Sir Keir and the Jewish community has been commonplace in pro-Corbyn Facebook groups over the past year, as previously documented by Campaign Against Antisemitism. Labour has even asked Facebook in the past to remove such groups.
Meanwhile, Dame Margaret Hodge, a prominent Jewish Labour MP, has shared some of the reactions she has received to calling for action against antisemitism in the Party, including: “I hope she dies soon. Dumb bitch. Member of a rich and powerful Jewish dynasty. Mossad agent. Liar. Rat. Old c***. Snake. Nazi. Traitor. Zionist stooge. Evil personified. Cancer. Zionist hag. Pig. Infiltrator. Racist witch. Controlled and funded by Israel. Palestinian child murderer.”
“This abuse,” she stated, “is not normal. This is why zero tolerance matters. This is why people have to take responsibility for their actions.”
The Labour Party was found by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to have engaged in unlawful discrimination and harassment of Jews. The report followed the EHRC’s investigation of the Labour Party in which Campaign Against Antisemitism was the complainant, submitting hundreds of pages of evidence and legal argument. Sir Keir Starmer called the publication of the report a “day of shame” for the Labour Party.
In the first release of its Antisemitism in Political Parties research, Campaign Against Antisemitism showed that Labour Party candidates for Parliament in the 2019 general election accounted for 82 percent of all incidents of antisemitic discourse by parliamentary candidates.
Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer 2019 showed that antisemitism on the far-left of British politics has surpassed that of the far-right.
Campaign Against Antisemitism advocates for zero tolerance of antisemitism in public life. To that end we monitor all political parties and strive to ensure that any cases of concern are properly addressed.
