Anti-Israel Corbyn defender rants about the ‘Jewish Question’

Activist demanding reinstatement of former UK Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn unleashes rant on the “Jewish Question.”

By Benjamin Kerstein, The Algemeiner

A meeting of far-left UK Labour party figures on Friday included an anti-Semitic rant on the “Jewish Question.”

The virtual event was held to protest the suspension of former party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who the vast majority of British Jews consider personally anti-Semitic, the Jewish Chronicle reported.

Corbyn was suspended after he denounced a government report that found Labour under his leadership had engaged in illegal anti-Semitic harassment and discrimination.

The former Labour leader claimed the findings were the result of a conspiracy against him, saying, “One anti-Semite is one too many, but the scale of the problem was also dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party, as well as by much of the media.”

The Labour Party announced shortly after, “In light of his comments made today and his failure to retract them subsequently, the Labour party has suspended Jeremy Corbyn pending investigation.”

At the event held Friday demanding Corbyn’s reinstatement, one of the participants, freelance writer and activist Rivkah Brown, defended Corbyn by quoting from a 1942 book called Anti-Semitism and the Jewish Question.

“Throughout the ages anti-Semitism and the Jewish Question have been used as a diversionist weapon against the progressive forces and their struggle for a better and higher order of things, and today they can still be used for the same purpose,” Brown quoted.

“This is entirely relevant to our moment,” she claimed. “We have just had a day, and you know years, when anti-Semitism and the Jewish question, as we might call it, have been used to distract us from what ought to be the focus of the Labour party, which should be about winning power but should also be about transformative change.”

The book in question was written by Israel Panner, a one-time communist who wrote for numerous publications as a journalist and engaged in extensive apologetics on behalf of Joseph Stalin.