As compelling as I found Mr. Mishra’s essay to be, in his celebratory mood, he has missed some  very important points about Mayor Khan’s victory: Khan has very pointedly, in this essay at the Guardian,  pronounced himself as New Labour, and made plain that the insurgent Jeremy Corbyn is not his political ally. Political ambition rules Mayor Khan and his road to higher office is conformity to the New Labour Party Line, which is synonymous with the Financial Times’ political slogan of The Rebellion Against The Elites.

Labour has to be a big tent that appeals to everyone – not just its activists. Campaigns that deliberately turn their back on particular groups are doomed to fail. Just like in London, so-called natural Labour voters alone will never be enough to win a general election. We must be able to persuade people who previously voted Conservative that Labour can be trusted with the economy and security, as well as improving public services and creating a fairer society.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/may/07/sadiq-khan-londoners-deserve-better-tory-campaign

And on the manufactured ‘Antisemitism Crisis’ of Labour, here is an interview with Norman Finkelstein on that subject. Two revelatory excerpts:

Last month, Naz Shah MP became one of the most high-profile cases to date in the ‘antisemitism’ scandal still shaking the Labour leadership. Shah was suspended from the Labour party for, among other things, reposting an image on Facebook that was alleged to be antisemitic. The image depicted a map of the United States with Israel superimposed, and suggested resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict by relocating Israel into the United States. It has been reported that Shah got the image from Finkelstein’s website. I spoke with Finkelstein about why he posted the image, and what he thinks of allegations that the Labour party has a ‘Jewish problem’.

Last week, Ken Livingstone took to the airwaves to defend Naz Shah, but what he said wound up getting him suspended from the Labour party. His most incendiary remark contended that Hitler at one point supported Zionism. This was condemned as antisemitic, and Labour MP John Mann accused Livingstone of being a ‘Nazi apologist’. What do you make of these accusations?

Livingstone maybe wasn’t precise enough, and lacked nuance. But he does know something about that dark chapter in history. It has been speculated that Hitler’s thinking on how to solve the ‘Jewish Question’ (as it was called back then) evolved, as circumstances changed and new possibilities opened up. Hitler wasn’t wholly hostile to the Zionist project at the outset. That’s why so many German Jews managed to survive after Hitler came to power by emigrating to Palestine. But, then, Hitler came to fear that a Jewish state might strengthen the hand of ‘international Jewry’, so he suspended contact with the Zionists. Later, Hitler perhaps contemplated a ‘territorial solution’ for the Jews. The Nazis considered many ‘resettlement’ schemes – the Jews wouldn’t have physically survived most of them in the long run – before they embarked on an outright exterminatory process. Livingstone is more or less accurate about this – or, as accurate as might be expected from a politician speaking off the cuff.

He’s also accurate that a degree of ideological affinity existed between the Nazis and Zionists. On one critical question, which raged in the U.K. during the period when the Balfour Declaration (1917) was being cobbled together, antisemites and Zionists agreed: could a Jew be an Englishman? Ironically, in light of the current hysteria in the UK, the most vociferous and vehement opponents of the Balfour Declaration were not the Arabs, about whom almost nobody gave a darn, but the upper reaches of British Jewry.

Let’s zoom out a bit. You’ve written a great deal about how antisemitism accusations have been used to discredit and distract from criticism of Israel. Should we see the current campaign against Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Left more generally as the latest episode in that history? 

These campaigns occur at regular intervals, correlating with Israel’s periodic massacres and consequent political isolation. If you search your nearest library catalogue for ‘new antisemitism’, you’ll come up with titles from the 1970s proclaiming a ‘new antisemitism’, titles from the 1980s proclaiming a ‘new antisemitism’, titles from the 1990s proclaiming a ‘new antisemitism’, and then a huge uptick, including from British writers, during the so-called Second Intifada from 2001. Let’s not forget, just last year there was a hysteria in the UK over antisemitism. A couple of ridiculous polls purported to find that nearly half of Britons held an antisemitic belief and that most British Jews feared for their future in the UK. Although these polls were dismissed by specialists, they triggered the usual media feeding frenzy, as the Telegraph, the Guardian and the Independent hyperventilated about this ‘rampant’ ‘new antisemitism’. It was exposed as complete nonsense when, in April 2015, a reputable poll by Pew found that the level of antisemitism in the UK had remained stable, at an underwhelming seven percent.

https://opendemocracy.net/uk/jamie-stern-weiner-norman-finkelstein/american-jewish-scholar-behind-labour-s-antisemitism-scanda

One only had to read the pre-election political hysterics at The Financial Times which featured thirteen ‘new stories’ about this manufactured crisis, that remained in place for almost a week before the election.

Political Observer

http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-05-09/trumpism-meets-its-first-defeat-in-london

‘“Ungoverned spaces in the Islamic world will be exploited by people who wish us ill, they will not be contained,” he says. “Syria is a veritable political Chernobyl — tsunamis of refugees, contributing to extremist activity even in our own homeland. US leadership is imperative. There is no substitute.”

You just have to marvel at this expression of hubris coming from Petraeus , when it echos much of what Niall Ferguson has written, and said over his long career of advocacy, that the Americans must be the successors to the British Empire. We only need to look to these news items to see that all of  Petraeus’ leadership in Iraq alone has led to what?

Headline: Protests in Baghdad throw administration’s Iraq plan into doubt by Greg Jaffe

President Obama’s plan for fighting the Islamic State is predicated on having a credible and effective Iraqi ally on the ground in Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.

And in recent days, the administration had been optimistic, despite the growing political unrest in Baghdad, about that critical partnership.

But that optimism — along with the administration’s strategy for battling the Islamic State in Iraq — was thrown into severe doubt after protesters stormed Iraq’s parliament on Saturday and a state of emergency was declared in Baghdad. The big question for White House officials is what happens if Abadi — a critical linchpin in the fight against the Islamic State — does not survive the turmoil that has swept over the Iraqi capital.

The chaos in Baghdad comes just after a visit by Vice President Biden that was intended to help calm the political unrest and keep the battle against the Islamic State on track.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/protests-in-baghdad-throw-administrations-iraq-plan-into-doubt/2016/04/30/759fadd4-0f03-11e6-bfa1-4efa856caf2a_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_obamairaq-725pm:homepage/story

Headline: Biden presses Iraq to not let political chaos upend gains, by Josh Lederman

Vice President Joe Biden pressed Iraq on Thursday not to let its crippling political crisis upend hard-fought gains against the Islamic State group as he returned to the country that’s come to symbolize America’s relentless struggles in the Middle East.

Biden slipped into Baghdad on an unannounced trip, his first to Iraq in nearly five years. Officials said the stop was planned before Iraq’s political system descended into turmoil, hindering U.S.-led efforts to defeat extremists who control parts of both Iraq and Syria. Sitting down with Iraq’s beleaguered leaders, he praised them for working “very, very hard” to construct a new Cabinet and touted progress wresting back territory from IS.

“It’s real, it’s serious, and it’s committed,” Biden said as he met with Parliament Speaker Salim al-Jabouri, a Sunni politician facing calls from his colleagues to resign.

Still, the anxious undertones of Biden’s brief visit were clear from the moment he stepped off a military transport plane into blistering heat after an overnight flight from Washington. White House staffers donned body armor and helmets as Biden was whisked by helicopter to the relative safety of the heavily fortified Green Zone, reminders of the dire security situation even in Iraq’s capital.

http://www.cantondailyledger.com/article/20160429/NEWS/160429392

Headline: Hundreds of demonstrators stormed the heavily-secured Green Zone in Baghdad by Stephen Kalin and Ahmed Rasheed, Reuters

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Hundreds of supporters of Shi’ite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr stormed into Baghdad’s Green Zone on Saturday and set up tents beside parliament after Sadr denounced politicians’ failure to reform a political quota system blamed for rampant corruption.

The protesters, who had gathered outside the heavily fortified district housing government buildings and many foreign embassies, crossed a bridge over the Tigris River chanting: “The cowards ran away!” in apparent reference to departing lawmakers.

The initial breach was mostly peaceful, but around sunset security forces fired teargas and bullets into the air in an effort to stop more protesters from entering. Around a dozen people were wounded, police sources said.

A United Nations spokesman and Western diplomats based inside the Green Zone said their compounds were locked down. A U.S. embassy spokesman denied reports of evacuation.

Iraqi security personnel and Sadr’s militiamen formed a joint force to control protesters’ movement, a source in Sadr’s office told Reuters. Most protesters had evacuated parliament and some were preparing for a sit-in in its courtyard, he added.

An army special forces unit with armored vehicles was dispatched to protect sensitive sites, two security officials said, but no curfew had been imposed.

http://www.businessinsider.com/hundreds-of-demonstrators-stormed-the-heavily-secured-green-zone-in-baghdad-2016-4

US Leadership is imperative? US Leadership is failed, and others have paid a heavy price for that failure, while Mr. Luce makes the first order of reportorial business the political melodrama of the general’s Fall from Grace, rather than the policies that have led to the current collapse of US Leadership.In reality we have a series of those collapses, our Iraq Policy is a record of those failures.

Recall earlier in the interview Luce ask this salient question  :

Was the 2003 invasion of Iraq a mistake? “That’s a question I will never address,” he says, recalling how as the commander of the surge and then the head of Centcom he “wrote more letters of condolence to America’s mothers and fathers than any other individual”.

Petraeus refuses to answer on the question of policy, falling back on his  numerous letters of condolence he wrote to ‘mothers and fathers’. Look to this quote as explanatory:

‘Look, I’ve turned a page, my past is over. I’m focusing on the future’.”

To lapse into the jejune, Petraeus is an American, that can be defined as remaking oneself and consigning  the past to the past: a self-willed denial/forgetting. The Puritan Ethic, and this penchant for remaking the self, is the central dialectic in American life. Petraeus is simply this historical moment’s latest enactor of that paradox.

One can just observe that Petraeus is not a Caesar, a Scipio, an Eisenhower nor  a MacArthur,  but rather an unimpressive technocrat.

Premature Antifascist

https://next.ft.com/content/e9104f78-11fe-11e6-91da-096d89bd2173

The Financial Times has found its candidate for mayor of London, or at least someone who responds to their current manufactured political hysterics . Mr. Sadiq Khan has demonstrated that he can play the political game, like an obedient New Labour political conformist.

For another perspective on Labour’s  ‘Antisemitism Crisis’ see  this article at Vox Political of April 28,2016  titled Livingstone vindicated: There WAS a Nazi-Zionist agreement and Hitler DID support it by Mike Sivier that links to this Wikipedia entry on the Haavara Agreement :

The Haavara Agreement was an agreement between Nazi Germany and Zionist German Jews signed on 25 August 1933.The agreement was finalized after three months of talks by the Zionist Federation of Germany, the Anglo-Palestine Bank (under the directive of the Jewish Agency) and the economic authorities of Nazi Germany.The agreement was designed to help facilitate the emigration of German Jews to Palestine.While it helped Jews emigrate, it forced them to temporarily give up possessions to Germany before departing. Those possessions could later be re-obtained by transferring them to Palestine as German export goods.The agreement was controversial at the time, and was criticised by many Jewish leaders both within the Zionist movement and outside it.Hitler’s own support of the Haavara Agreement was unclear and varied throughout the 1930s.Initially, Hitler criticized the agreement, but reversed his opinion and supported it in the period 1937-1939.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haavara_Agreement

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/04/28/livingstone-vindicated-there-was-a-nazi-zionist-agreement-and-hitler-did-support-it/        Or read Robert Mackey’s essay of April 29,2016 at The Intercept titled: Why a British Fight Over Israel and Anti-Semitism Matters to the Rest of Us

Dub Mr. Ganesh’s commentaries London Spleen, after Baudelaire‘s posthumously published masterpiece. Mr. Ganesh’s essays are alive with Tory contempt and bile for everyone, who is not a believer in the natural ascendancy of the Tories, and of course the New Labour of Mr. Blair. But on to the business of pillorying and impugning Mr. Corbyn, the favorite sport of The Financial Times and its hirelings: we have come to bury Mr. Corbyn not to praise him!

The conviction of Mr. Corbyn has already taken place, as of the end of April with, at least by my count, 13 ‘news stories’ about Corbyn’s complicity with rampant Antisemitism in the Labour Party. I’ve summed it up in another post but it bears repeating:

The Livingstone and Naz Shah controversies offer a perfect opportunity to not just throw a bit of mud at Mr. Corbyn, but to bring him down as Labour leader.The charges of fostering the growth of Antisemitism within the Party, of associating with known Antisemites and most unforgivable of all just being on the Left.The fact of being on the Left is indicative of moral/political disorder prima facie. After all the FT invented ‘The Rebellion Against The Elites’, and would like to replace Corbyn with a more house-trained  Neo-Liberal, who can wear a proper suit and sing God Save The Queen with gusto. With the proviso that he has the charm and bonhomie of Tony Blair.

At The Financial Times : Antisemitism & Jeremy Corbyn, the manufactured crisis

More political melodrama is afoot, as the days pass we will see a mounting pressure to remove Mr. Corbyn. The machinery of impeachment is alive in the Tory Press and its political wing. There is no longer any real  question of guilt or innocence worth consideration: the avalanche of propaganda is all that it takes to bring down the miscreant and his fellow travelers. The political necromancy of Mr. Ganesh is the necessary intermediate step to political excommunication.

Political Observer

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/67e4e6a8-0e01-11e6-b41f-0beb7e589515.html#axzz47XkPEqyi

For a compelling look at the British Labour Party’s Antisemitism problem see this Intercept essay by Robert Mackey titled

Why a British Fight Over Israel and Anti-Semitism Matters to the Rest of Us

There is much to agree with in Mr. Luce’s essay, much that resonates with many Americans. Mr. Trump manages, in his long winded way, to highlight American discontent with its global role as the singular world power, now being supplanted by the rise of China, India and Iran or even the reinvigorated role of Russia. The Failure of The Elites, the foreign policy and economic policy technocrats, who have brought disaster in their vaunted areas of expertise over time – Mr. Luce issues a resounding rebuke across the stunted American political spectrum. The Failure of that Elite is perhaps the twin of the Financial Times’ political party line of The Rebellion Against the Elites, Trump and Sanders being its two dramatis personae, in the American political context.

Mr. Luce in his polemic misses two salient points of Mr. Trump’s rambling foreign policy chatter: America First and Containment.

America First Committee as described by a Wikipedia entry:

The America First Committee (AFC) was the foremost non-interventionist pressure group against the American entry into World War II. Peaking at 800,000 paid members in 450 chapters, it was one of the largest anti-war organizations in American history.^[1][2] Started on September 4, 1940, it was dissolved on December 10, 1941, three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor had brought the war to America.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_Committee

Charles A. Lindbergh  was its spokesman, and it had many prominent supporters, yet its historical reputation is disreputable at best. This dubiousness attaches itself to Trump as a function of the use of the title. Call it historical baggage.

Containment was a theory first articulated by George F. Kennan in the Long Telegram, later published in the ‘July 1947 issue of Foreign Affairs with the pseudonym “X”, entitled “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” ‘

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_F._Kennan

The Sources of Soviet Conduct:

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=3629

Walter Lippmann criticizes the Containment theory here:

http://www.learner.org/workshops/primarysources/coldwar/docs/lippman.html

Even Kennan repudiated his theory later in his career. So what we as readers are confronted with in Trump’s Foreign Policy address is an exercise in dubious, even unwitting political nostalgia for two failed ideas/practices: America First and Containment, due to willful historical ignorance, nothing new when it comes to Trump. As I recall Trump said to an audience, give me your vote I’ll know what to do.

The failure of those policy technocrats is here amplified with this news from Iraq:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Hundreds of supporters of Shi’ite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr stormed into Baghdad’s Green Zone on Saturday and set up tents beside parliament after Sadr denounced politicians’ failure to reform a political quota system blamed for rampant corruption.

The protesters, who had gathered outside the heavily fortified district housing government buildings and many foreign embassies, crossed a bridge over the Tigris River chanting: “The cowards ran away!” in apparent reference to departing lawmakers.

The initial breach was mostly peaceful, but around sunset security forces fired teargas and bullets into the air in an effort to stop more protesters from entering. Around a dozen people were wounded, police sources said.

http://www.businessinsider.com/hundreds-of-demonstrators-stormed-the-heavily-secured-green-zone-in-baghdad-2016-4

Political Reporter

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/61b84bb4-0d5f-11e6-ad80-67655613c2d6.html#axzz47LrFIllT

Cut off the head, Corbyn, the posited enabler of Antisemites, so that New Labour’s sycophants, i.e. Blair clones of Thatcherites, can regain control of the Party. Take your cue from Strauss, and his political ally/confederate Carl Schmitt: sow the seeds of political rancor and hate, masquerading as political virtue, bound together by myth making or just plain lies. After all  Isaiah Berlin set the standards for ‘Liberalism’s probity and directness! But be chastened by the singular idea of Schmitt’s, that the world is divided between friends and enemies. In practice Mr.Berlin’s conformist sensibility made him a natural follower of Schmitt.

David Caute and Tariq Ali both provide some useful insights into the exercise of Mr. Berlin’s Liberalism, in situ.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/06/28/the-dishonesties-of-isaiah-berlin/

Political Observer

At The Financial Times Robert Shrimsley opines on April 28, 2016:

How Jeremy Corbyn turned me into a political Jew. It is simply impossible to vote for a Labour party that does not appear to like us.

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/5e642d92-0c57-11e6-9456-444ab5211a2f.html#axzz47LrFIllT

A Financial Times April 28,2016 editorial states:

Jeremy Corbyn’s halfhearted shrug over anti-Semitism.The Labour leader’s failure on this issue is tarnishing his leadership.

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/433ec60e-0c60-11e6-9456-444ab5211a2f.html#axzz47LrFIllT

The Financial Times editors even resurrect this February 19, 2016 essay by Simon Schama:

The left’s problem with Jews has a long and miserable history. Anti-Israel demonstrations are in danger of morphing into anti-Semitism, writes Simon Schama

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d6a75c3c-d6f3-11e5-829b-8564e7528e54.html#axzz47LrFIllT

Also see this picture of the suggested stories that might be of interest to me because of my browsing history, under the Shrimsley essay:

The Livingstone and Naz Shah controversies offer a perfect opportunity to not just throw a bit of mud at Mr. Corbyn, but to bring him down as Labour leader.The charges of fostering the growth of Antisemitism within the Party, of associating with known Antisemites and most unforgivable of all just being on the Left.The fact of being on the Left is indicative of moral/political disorder prima facie. After all the FT invented ‘The Rebellion Against The Elites’, and would like to replace Corbyn with a more house-trained  Neo-Liberal, who can wear a proper suit and sing God Save The Queen with gusto. With the proviso that he has the charm and bonhomie of Tony Blair.

Almost Marx

Its April 30th 2016 and this has been published at Vox Political: titled Livingstone vindicated: There WAS a Nazi-Zionist agreement and Hitler DID support it published April 28, 2016 : http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/04/28/livingstone-vindicated-there-was-a-nazi-zionist-agreement-and-hitler-did-support-it/

‘It turns out all those who clamoured for Ken Livingstone to be suspended from the Labour Party – on the basis that Nazi Germany and Zionist Jews never had an agreement – were completely wrong.
Perhaps John Mann needs to reconsider his actions of earlier today (April 28) – along with all those who accused Livingstone of “rewriting history” when he really was simply quoting it.’

Read the rest of this enlightening essay and wonder why The Economist hasn’t at the least acknowledged the facts of the case?
This isn’t about the cancer of Antisemitism destroying the Labour Party, but about an Economist Witch Hunt against Jeremy Corbyn! The Bagehot column has become one more instrument in the Anti-Corbyn phalanx, as if one more were needed!
Bagehot even spells out the game plan, such as it is, about not just the political danger of Corbyn, but the moral threat of his leadership: never let a manufactured crisis go to waste!

The truth is that Labour is dying, and every MP who thinks she can wash her hands of responsibility for that with the odd disapproving tweet has another thing coming. Today’s fracas will repeat itself, in slightly different forms, again and again, burying any scraps of self-respect (let alone electability in the next decades) the party has left. Perhaps there is a case for not rocking the boat before the European referendum. But then moderates must move to oust Corbyn. If they fail, they should proceed with the Haines solution. I see no good reason why if, say, 100 MPs and a sizeable minority of members quit and set up a Labour Party with integrity, they could not give the Conservatives a run for their money in 2020. This would not be “abandoning” their party. But staying put would be.

One more thing: Zionists are continually re-enacting the conditions of their European oppression upon, not just the Palestinians, but on African Refugees, Jewish and Non-Jewish, and on the Bedouins.

Almost Marx

http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2016/04/labour-disarray

In sum, Jacob Weisberg argues the case for Clinton as her supporters have argued it: Bernie has lost and it is now time for him to step aside gracefully and cede to Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Weisberg extemporizes on the theme here at The Financial Times of The Rebellion Against The Elites, but in a more carefully modified, a less hysterical tone, as if he were trying to reason with a child. Call his tone patronizing, to be charitable!  I’m a voter in California and I have yet to cast my ballot, and when I do it will be for Bernie. I’m heartened to see that Sanders will persist in his Quixotic Crusade, till then, ignoring the Clinton Apologists like Mr. Weisberg, and the rest of the experts and the almost technocrats.

Is it a surprise that Mr. Weisberg uses this platform to advocate ‘Free Trade ‘ as codified in the TPP as some sort of answer to our present economic doldrums? Obama has become its champion, but Clinton has discarded her enthusiasm, Bernie bullied her into it, as Weisberg tells it. At least until after her election? Free Market Utopianism has not just failed, but crashed in a deafening thud! And what do those advocates of that failed utopianism offer now? the mirage of ‘Free Trade’ as its replacement. One Utopianism followed by another? But call the TPP  by its proper name Corporatism.

One can see more than clearly that Mrs. Clinton of not just a Hawk ,but in all but name a Neo-Conservative. With a disturbingly worshipful attitude to Netanyahu, as her speech at AIPAC made clear. If one has the enthusiastic support of both Jeffrey Goldberg and Wm. Kristol, that is proof of her – yet compared to her presumptive rival Trump, she almost appears to be rational and level headed.

Mr. Weisberg closes his essay on an almost elegiac note, that resembles more of the shopworn patronizing tone that pervades the whole of his essay:

Mr Sanders’ most significant effect will be felt over time. As the overwhelming choice of voters under 35, he points the way towards a more progressive future for the Democratic party. Millennial voters strongly prefer his European social democratic model to the centrist one represented by the Clintons. At 74, Mr Sanders will not be the one to lead his young followers into the promised land. Nonetheless, he has brought a more radical political future into view.

StephenKMackSD

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/48197fc4-0df1-11e6-b41f-0beb7e589515.html#axzz47Dvp3LwD

Alan Johnson is the editor of Fathom and a senior fellow at BICOM, Britain Israel Communications & Research Center:

‘BICOM, the Britain Israel Communications & Research Centre, is an independent research centre producing research and analysis about Israel and the Middle East. Our overall aim is to improve understanding of Israel and the many issues facing the countries of the Middle East and the region. We believe in the right of the State of Israel to live in peace and security and the right of the Palestinians to an independent state brought about though a negotiated agreement. We support a close relationship between Britain and Israel, based on shared values and interests.’

Liberal Zionist advocate/apologist Alan Johnson comments on Jeremy Corbyn, as providing a safe space for  Antisemites, while making clear that Mr. Corbyn is not himself one of that loathsome breed. Not very convincing, but first we must wade through Johnson’s lengthy indictment till we reach this:

Anti-Semitism has shape-shifted through history, employing different modes of justification. Its core motif is that the Jews, collectively and in their essence, are not just Other but malign. The content of this perceived malevolence changes with the times and the needs of the anti-Semites. “God-killers,” “aliens,” “cosmopolitans,” “sub-humans” and now “Zionists” have all served as code words to mark the Jew for destruction.

The new anti-Semitism does not criticise Israel—it demonises it. It twists the meaning of “Israel” and “Zionism” until they are so bent out of shape they can serve as receptacles for the tropes, images and ideas of classical anti-Semitism. That which the Jew once was, the Jewish state now is: evil, vampiric, full of blood lust, the all-controlling but hidden hand in global affairs, the obstacle to a better, purer, more spiritual world, uniquely deserving of punishment, and so on. “For World Peace We Must Destroy Israel,” as that new anti-Semitic placard puts it.

Antisemitism has shape-shifted through time to become, in the political present, Anti-Zionism: BDS is the current enemy, and all those who support it as a legitimate answer to Apartheid Israel, and its thuggish leader Netanyahu. There can be no legitimate criticism of Israel: the rhetorical invention of Antisemite/Self-Hating Jew has rendered the very expression of a critique irrational, as argued by apologists like Johnson and others. It never occurred to the advocates/inventors of Zionism, that their politically emancipatory idea and practice, might lead to a critique founded on a rational critique of their politics: one need only look to Arendt’s prediction that Israel would become Sparta.

‘And even if the Jews were to win the war, its end would find the unique possibilities and the unique achievements of Zionism in Palestine destroyed. The land that would come into being would be something quite other than the dream of world Jewry, Zionist and non-Zionist. The ‘victorious’ Jews would live surrounded by an entirely hostile Arab population, secluded into ever-threatened borders, absorbed with physical self-defense to a degree that would submerge all other interests and acitvities. The growth of a Jewish culture would cease to be the concern of the whole people; social experiments would have to be discarded as impractical luxuries; political thought would center around military strategy…. And all this would be the fate of a nation that — no matter how many immigrants it could still absorb and how far it extended its boundaries (the whole of Palestine and Transjordan is the insane Revisionist demand)–would still remain a very small people greatly outnumbered by hostile neighbors.

Under such circumstances… the Palestinian Jews would degenerate into one of those small warrior tribes about whose possibilities and importance history has amply informed us since the days of Sparta. Their relations with world Jewry would become problematical, since their defense interests might clash at any moment with those of other countries where large number of Jews lived. Palestine Jewry would eventually separate itself from the larger body of world Jewry and in its isolation develop into an entirely new people. Thus it becomes plain that at this moment and under present circumstances a Jewish state can only be erected at the price of the Jewish homeland…

– See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2012/01/arendt-born-in-conflict-israel-will-degenerate-into-sparta-and-american-jews-will-need-to-back-away/#sthash.W1ugfYki.dpuf

Political Observer

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-is-incapable-of-tackling-labours-anti-semitism-problem