Member-only story
The U.K. Labour Party’s New Antisemitism Row
The United Kingdom’s centrist Labour Party head, Keir Starmer, stirred up a vexing controversy when he decided to remove MP Rebecca Long-Bailey from her position as Shadow Secretary of State for Education. Long-Bailey, who is associated with Labour’s left wing and its former leader, Jeremy Corbyn, had shared an article by a prominent actress in which she repeated the unfounded rumor that American police officers had learned the “knee on the neck technique” that Derek Chauvin used to kill George Floyd at a training in Israel.
After the bruising controversies over antisemitism in the U.K. that some believe helped lead to an electoral rout for Labour last year, Starmer was eager to demonstrate his “zero-tolerance policy” on antisemitism.
But an internal Labour investigation last year raised serious questions as to how much of the antisemitism controversy was magnified by Corbyn’s rivals within the party. And while Labour should be commended for taking a firm stand against antisemitism and any other form of bigotry, this action had nothing to do with antisemitism, relating purely to a story — albeit an inaccurate one — about Israel. And it could well cause harm to Labour, to Palestinians, to Israelis, and to Jews in the U.K. and all over the world.
