What does this election result mean for British Jews?
The Labour Party arrives in Government as levels of anti-Jewish racism have skyrocketed and rocked the Jewish community for months. Our polling of British Jews is proof of the widespread fear that antisemitic extremists in our country are now completely out of control, with the effects of their hatred most visible on our streets and our campuses.
So far, precious little has been done to tackle this outpouring of hatred and we are making urgent proposals to the new Government, seeking firm action to halt the surge of Jew-hatred in Britain.
Labour has had to confront rampant antisemitism in its midst in recent years, and we hope that at this time of need it will do what is necessary to confront antisemitism in society, and defend this country’s Jewish community.
Two other noteworthy local results were in Islington North and Rochdale:
Jeremy Corbyn comfortably won his London seat as an Independent. This is the man who led Labour from being an anti-racist party to becoming the first ever political party found by the Equality and Human Rights Commission to have unlawfully discriminated against, harassed and victimised Jews, following our referral. At a time of record-breaking antisemitism, the man who used to call Hamas his “friends” and oversaw the normalisation of Jew-hatred in one of the most shameful episodes of modern British politics is back making our laws. Many British Jews will find it hard not to read into this.
George Galloway narrowly lost his Rochdale seat, which he had won in a by-election earlier this year (the Labour candidate was suspended by the Party in relation to antisemitism allegations which we helped to publicise). Given Mr Galloway’s track record and the situation currently faced by Jews in this country, it seems unlikely that many in the Jewish community will be mourning his departure from the institution that makes our laws.
But the real stories of this election were beneath the surface.
First, the fragmentation of our politics. While the Labour Party won a landslide, it was with fewer votes than Jeremy Corbyn had won, and with one of the smallest vote shares of any winning party in modern British history. The Conservatives, meanwhile, suffered their worst-ever defeat, in an election with one of the lowest turnouts in recent times.
Taken together, it meant that the main parties haemorrhaged more vote share than ever to smaller parties, with the Liberal Democrats, Reform UK and the Greens all breaking records in votes or seats. Numerous candidates for the latter two parties faced serious antisemitism allegations during the campaign following our revelations, albeit not those who ultimately won seats. In Northern Ireland, meanwhile, Sinn Fein became the largest party for the first time.
Regardless of one’s political views, this result clearly represents heightened scepticism about our nation’s institutions – a feeling apparently shared across the Channel as well, judging by the recent French election results. While the Jewish community may share some of this disillusionment, given the failures of the authorities to act decisively against the antisemites over the past several months, it also cannot be forgotten that political and societal instability also tend to pose unique risks to the Jews.
Second, the Gaza vote. One of the biggest stories from this general election has been the rise of sectarianism in our politics. The emergence of single-issue pressure groups purporting to represent particular communities risks pitting certain communities against others. It is an extremely worrying omen for our politics, and all major parties must be absolutely resolute in their rejection of its implications.
The prospect of a handful of MPs – some of whom have records of grossly inflammatory language – bringing what seems to be a single-minded obsession with Gaza to Parliament is not a positive development.
Jeremy Corbyn declared on election day, “Today, Palestine is on the ballot,” and promised that he would “stand up for the people of Gaza” and fight for “an end to the occupation of Palestine”. He was joined in victory by four other Independents who ran on the Gaza issue: Ayoub Khan in Birmingham Perry Barr, Adnan Hussain in Blackburn, Iqbal Mohamed in Dewsbury and Batley, and Shockat Adam in Leicester South – where Shadow Cabinet member Jonathan Ashworth was defeated.
We have published an exposé on these new MPs.
Meanwhile, Health Secretary Wes Streeting and prominent backbencher Jess Phillips were among several more Labour MPs who only narrowly escaped defeat by other Gaza candidates, whose presence was felt in many constituencies across the country.
As a Parliamentary grouping, this Gaza caucus is level with Reform UK on five MPs, outranking the Greens and Plaid Cymru.
It is difficult to think of another instance in modern times when a foreign policy issue in which Britain is not directly involved has captured so much attention at home as to bring our streets to a standstill week after week, undermine many of our major institutions, and bring more MPs to Parliament than even some long-established parties – with numerous more candidates only narrowly missing out.
Why this foreign policy issue in particular? The Jewish community believes that it knows why, and it will take a fundamental reset of our political culture to convince British Jews that they have nothing to fear from this ominous development.
What we do know is that all of the attention on Gaza in the UK is not bringing peace to the Middle East but spreading hatred here at home. We have sought to promote that message.
BBC lets Gaza propaganda go unchallenged
One of the reasons that Gaza candidates do so well is that our broadcasters allow unverified statistics and propaganda to go unchallenged – and sometimes even repeat it.
Recently, BBC Newsnight allowed a panelist – the climate activist Mikaela Loach – to say: “The Lancet yesterday, in one of their reports, said that the death toll [in Gaza] is probably more likely to be more than 186,000 people.” The host did not challenge this assertion.
For context, the so-called “report” to which Ms Loach was referring is simply a letter to The Lancet – the prestigious medical journal – by readers with documented hostility toward Israel. It is not a peer-reviewed study nor a figure which the journal has endorsed. It is not even an estimate of current deaths. It is a speculative estimate about a future, final death toll that includes excess deaths and other categories. Indeed the letter itself acknowledges that even Hamas, a proscribed antisemitic genocidal terror organisation, estimates the current death toll at around 37,396, a figure that does not differentiate between combatants and non-combatants and which has been revised downwards considerably by the United Nations.
Given how controversial these statistics have proven, it is not possible that the host of a debate on Newsnight could plausibly plead ignorance of this issue.
We are submitting a complaint to the BBC. It will be just the latest of the many complaints that we have submitted to our national broadcaster in recent months.
While our broadcasters are failing in their duty, one social media company is making an effort.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has announced: “We will now remove speech targeting ‘Zionists’ in several areas where our process showed that the speech tends to be used to refer to Jews and Israelis with dehumanising comparisons, calls for harm, or denials of existence.”
Our polling shows that eight in ten British Jews consider themselves to be a Zionist. Only six percent do not.
While there is still more work to be done in combatting online antisemitism, this is certainly a step in the right direction.
“They use the Holocaust as a sort of cover”
Last week, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Redbridge National Education Union (NEU) hosted an event “in association with” the Newham, Tower Hamlets and Redbridge branches of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC). According to an online flyer for the event, the supposed conference would include “workshops on antisemitism and anti-Zionism”.
Attendees at the antisemitism workshop were told: “They use the Holocaust as a sort of cover”; “It makes me very angry when people talk about the Jewish community because there’s no such thing”; and “Israel is nothing to do with being Jewish”; among other outrageous remarks.
It appears that this so-called workshop was rife with antisemitism, from comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany, to allegations that the Jewish state was somehow complicit in the murder of its own people on 7th October, to characterising Israel as a ‘racist endeavour’, to describing Zionism as a virus, to the wild claim that Israel ‘wanted the Holocaust to happen’.
Both the PSC and NEU have long histories of causing distress to the Jewish community. You can listen to excerpts from the here, which we have published exclusively.
No expulsion for Sir Alan Duncan
The former Conservative MP and Minister, Sir Alan Duncan, recently suggested on-air that members of the House of Lords were working at the behest of the Israeli state, and that was not the first time that he had made such an assertion. We submitted a complaint to the Party and urged the Conservatives to expel him as a member.
However, a spokesperson for the Conservative Party has now said: “Following a two-month investigation, an independent panel has reviewed the complaint and dismissed it.”
At a time when antisemitism is at an all-time-high, invoking conspiracy theories and tropes about dual loyalty only inflames the situation for British Jews. This is a shameful decision, and we are aware of members resigning from the Party in response.
The new Government comes into office facing an array of challenges. For the Jewish community, skyrocketing antisemitism is among the most important. Sir Keir Starmer has shown a willingness to confront antisemites in his own party. Now he must do it in wider society, and ensure that the authorities do so as well.
