DR Joseph Fell (Letters, July 27) cites The Macpherson Principle in justifying the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, completely ignoring the fact that Professor David Feldman, in his sub-report to the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism, said that Macpherson intended that the perception of the alleged victim should be taken as a starting point only and would require further investigation. He did not mean that such incidents were necessarily racist. He concluded that those who took this to be the case were building their argument on weak foundations.
It is patently absurd to adopt a definition of anti-Semitism that is so wide-ranging that it would stigmatise thousands of Jews (many as proud of their Jewishness as Dr Fell) worldwide, who just happen to be critical of the Israeli state and its actions.
I would go further and say that such an all-encompassing definition of anti-Semitism, as supported by Dr Fell, would risk robbing the term anti-Semite of the opprobrium which it truly deserves. I am no supporter of Jeremy Corbyn but this nonsense, accusing him of being any sort of racist, is nothing more than a tawdry attempt to smear him.
Jim Meikle,
41 Lampson Road, Killearn.
THE UK, just like most countries, is riven with bigotry and bias of all types and at all levels of society as the recent furore over this year’s Glasgow Orange Walk clearly demonstrates, however the suggestion that the Labour Party’s attitude to anti-Semitism poses an existential threat to UK Judaism is farcical. How can UK Jews be an oppressed minority when despite accounting for less than 0.5 per cent of the UK population 20 or so MPs (including John Bercow the Speaker) are Jewish as are 10 per cent of those entitled to sit in the House of Lords? Those are statistics difficult to reconcile with Jews being an endangered oppressed powerless minority group.
It is difficult to offer an opinion on this subject when currently criticism of anything pertaining to Israel or the behaviour of its government and armed forces is immediately labelled anti-Semitic. One loses count of the number of UN resolutions in regards to its behaviour with related territories and its inhabitants that Israel has violated yet apparently 80 per cent of Tory MPs and a significant number of Labour MPs are members of their Friends of Israel groups. Its just a pity the “Friends of the poor in the UK” don’t have similar financial resources to drum up the same levels of enthusiasm and commitment in our elected representatives.
I wonder whether, apart from trying to nobble the Labour Party, that the increasing violence directed towards the inhabitants of Gaza, the recent Knesset legislation further disenfranchising non-Jewish natives of Palestine and Israel’s increasing military involvement within the borders of Syria, part of which it has illegally occupied for decades, is the real rot behind the repeated picking at this scab that Jeremy Corbyn keeps trying to heal.
David J Crawford,
85 Whittingehame Court,
1300 Great Western Road, Glasgow.
THERE is no way any Democratic Party can endorse the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. It is obviously a propaganda tool against any criticism of Israeli policies. This is particularly apt due to the recent blatant apartheid law passed in Israel under the guise of Nation State legislation.
Brian Mckenna,
Overton Avenue, Dumbarton.
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