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<\/a><\/p>\nIt is difficult to describe as anything other than a hatchet job the BBC Panorama special this week that sought to bolster claims that the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn has become \u201cinstitutionally antisemitic\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n The partisan tone was set from the opening shot. A young woman whose name was not revealed tearfully claimed to have been abused with antisemitic taunts at a Labour Party conference.<\/span><\/p>\n The decision not to disclose the interviewee\u2019s identity is understandable. It would have discredited the whole narrative Panorama was trying so hard to build.<\/span><\/p>\n The woman\u2019s name is Ella Rose, a senior official in the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM), an organisation representing Jewish and non-Jewish members of Labour at the forefront of attacks on Corbyn. Rose has a secret past<\/a><\/strong><\/span> too: she once worked at the Israeli embassy in London.<\/span><\/p>\n Two years ago she and other JLM officials were exposed<\/strong><\/span><\/a> collaborating with Shai Masot, an Israeli embassy official. He had to be hurriedly removed from the UK<\/a><\/strong><\/span> after an undercover Al Jazeera documentary showed him plotting with activists in the Labour and Conservative parties to discredit British politicians seen as a threat to Israel.<\/span><\/p>\n Most observers believe that Masot was operating within the embassy as part of Israel\u2019s strategic affairs ministry, which in turn has been running black ops<\/strong><\/span><\/a> against western critics of Israel. Corbyn, we can safely assume, is high on that list.<\/span><\/p>\n Rose is on record<\/strong><\/span><\/a> as saying she was a close friend of Masot\u2019s.<\/span><\/p>\n Her emotional, quavering voice as she spoke to Panorama presented a very different image from her appearances in Al-Jazeera\u2019s undercover footage. There she is shown threatening<\/a><\/strong><\/span> to use physical violence \u2013 employing Krav Maga, a martial arts technique developed by the Israeli army \u2013 against another Jewish party member prominent in support of Corbyn.<\/span><\/p>\n Panorama chose to follow in the footsteps of the rest of the British media in ignoring Al Jazeera\u2019s revelations, even though they provide vital context for challenging claims of a supposedly growing \u201cantisemitism crisis\u201d in Labour. For the past three years, the media have produced<\/a><\/strong><\/span> little more than anecdotal evidence, like Ella Rose\u2019s, to support this narrative.<\/span><\/p>\n In a self-fulfilling prophecy, however, the more the media has fear-mongered about antisemitism in Labour \u2013 despite the absence of objective data to back up such claims \u2013 the more polls<\/strong><\/span><\/a> have shown British Jews panicking at the propsect of Corbyn reaching power.<\/span><\/p>\n The Panorama investigation, titled \u201cIs Labour Anti-Semitic?\u201d, will undoubtedly have further stoked such fear by interviewing a handful of disgruntled former employees involved in the party\u2019s handling of antisemitism complaints.<\/span><\/p>\n Stripped of context, these testimonies offer a superficially plausible argument that the Labour leadership sought to minimise, or even indulge, antisemitism in the party. But the comments made by these ex-staff have to be viewed in terms of a wider power-play raging in Labour since Corbyn was elected leader.<\/span><\/p>\n The party has been riven<\/a><\/strong><\/span> by bitter, very public feuds between an old guard, which dominated under Tony Blair, and the rapid rise of the party\u2019s left wing under Corbyn, buoyed by massive support from the wider membership.<\/span><\/p>\n Panorama referenced these rifts only to dismiss them as a conspiracy theory. Instead, the programme refashioned the split as a culture war between those presented as anti-racist centrists, like the disputes team\u2019s former staff, and a supposed influx of anti-Israel, Jew-hating \u201cMarxists\u201d cultivated by Corbyn.<\/span><\/p>\n Some of the former members of the disputes staff interviewed by Panorama appear to have served effectively as a Trojan horse within Labour\u2019s head office, assisting the Blairites in damaging Corbyn.<\/span><\/p>\n Though it was not mentioned by Panorama, these staff members were caught repeatedly violating the party rulebook by excluding thousands of Corbyn supporters during the two leadership contests, in 2015 and 2016. These mass purges had nothing to do with antisemitism. People were ousted<\/a><\/strong><\/span> for \u201coffences\u201d such as retweeting posts by the Green Party or, in one case, praising the band the Foo Fighters.<\/span><\/p>\n It was the enormous backlog created by these exclusions that overwhelmed the party machinery, leaving it incapable of handling disciplinary matters involving antisemitism.<\/span><\/p>\n Labour officials note<\/a><\/strong><\/span> that, even after Corbyn was secure as leader, the obstruction continued. A small number of staff \u2013 the people Panorama interviewed \u2013 actively blocked the rapid resolution of high-profile antisemitism cases, dragging them out to embarrass the leadership.<\/span><\/p>\n Since a new general secretary, Jennie Formby, was brought in and a new and larger disputes team appointed, including staff with legal training, the speed of handling antisemitism complaints is reported to have increased four-fold.<\/span><\/p>\n The paradox is that those telling Panorama that Labour is \u201cinstitutionally antisemitic\u201d are the very people who failed to deal effectively with antisemitism complaints when they were in charge.<\/span><\/p>\n The most astounding and intentional ommission from the programme, however, are the countervailing voices in support of Corbyn. The Labour leader himself and senior staff like his chief strategist, Seumas Milne, declined to be interviewed. That is understandable. They had strong grounds to suspect that Panorama planned a stitch-up.<\/span><\/p>\n Interviews of Labour leaders denying \u201cinstitutional antisemitism\u201d set against footage of tearful Jewish party members like Ella Rose speaking of abuse would have been a bad look.<\/span><\/p>\n But what was undoubtedly inexcusable was Panorama\u2019s failure to interview even one of the many Jewish Labour members who deny the antisemitism narrative, or to note that many of the most high-profile party members suspended or expelled for antisemitism are, in fact, themselves Jewish.<\/span><\/p>\n One of the explusions briefly mentioned by Panorama was Jackie Walker, who is herself Jewish, as well as black.<\/span><\/p>\n The fact that Jewish activists have been disciplined<\/a><\/strong><\/span> for their criticisms of Israel or disputing the Labour antisemitism narrative suggests that the furore, in part at least, represents the redrawing of battle-lines within the Jewish community about who gets to speak for Jews about Israel.<\/span><\/p>\n This was vital, but missing, context for understanding one of Panorama\u2019s central charges: that Corbyn\u2019s inner circle had interfered in the complaints process by offering advice to the disputes team.<\/span><\/p>\n What Panorama failed to mention was that the advice was actually sought by the disputes staff. And it related to the need to handle sensitively the issue of the party being seen to take disciplinary action against Jewish members accused of antisemitism by other Jewish members.<\/span><\/p>\n Labour administrators were effectively being asked to take sides in an ideological fight between different kinds of Jewish activists \u2013 hardline Zionists and anti-Zionists.<\/span><\/p>\n Why, one can reasonably ask, did Panorama ignore Jewish Voice for Labour<\/strong><\/span><\/a> in this supposed \u201cinvestigation\u201d of Labour and anti-semitism? The group was specifically set up by Jewish members to counter the claims being made by activists like Rose.<\/span><\/p>\n Groups like the Jewish Labour Movement have implied that Jewish supporters of Corbyn are the \u201cwrong kind of Jews\u201d \u2013 an extremely ugly insinuation that Panorama appeared to endorse by entirely sidelining them. This was one of the reasons the Labour leadership censured the programme-makers in a 50-page document presented to BBC boss Tony Hall, in which it argued that Panorama had \u201cpre-determined the outcome of its investigation\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n As Corbyn\u2019s office noted, Panorama had cherrypicked and distorted evidence, presented only one side of the story, and relied almost exclusively on staff who have very large axes to grind.<\/span><\/p>\n Score-settling may make for lively TV, but it is execrable journalism.<\/span><\/p>\n As a public service broadcaster, the BBC is subject to an editorial policy requiring it to be impartial<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.<\/strong><\/span> Its guidelines also state<\/strong><\/span><\/a> that audiences should not be able to infer \u201cthe personal prejudices of our journalists or news and current affairs presenters on matters of public policy, political or industrial controversy, or on \u2018controversial subjects\u2019 in any other area.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n But the fact that Panorama made no attempt at even-handedness or fairness in its programme on Labour should have come as no surprise. The man in charge of the investigation was John Ware, a former Sun journalist. He cannot be considered dispassionate either about Corbyn or the prospects of Labour defeating the Conservative Party at a general election, which may be just around the corner.<\/span><\/p>\n Two years ago, Ware wrote a lengthy article for a right-wing magazine warning of the danger of Corbyn reaching power. He was a politician, wrote<\/a><\/strong><\/span> Ware, \u201cwhose entire political career has been stimulated by disdain for the West, appeasement of extremism, and who would barely understand what fighting for the revival of British values is really all about\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n Shortly after Corbyn\u2019s leadership election victory in 2015, Ware headed<\/a><\/strong><\/span> a Panorama documentary that sought to malign the new leader.<\/span><\/p>\n Ware is also a strident supporter of Israel and of its state ideology, Zionism. In a 2005 edition of Panorama he suggested<\/a><\/strong><\/span> that Muslims in Britain who spoke out about Israel\u2019s crimes against Palestinians were \u201cextremists\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n In an article in the Jewish Chronicle last year Ware concluded<\/a><\/strong><\/span> that anti-Zionism had \u201cmorphed into anti-Semitism \u2013 itself a Corbyn legacy\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n But that claim \u2013 that criticism of Israel is equivalent to antisemitism \u2013 needed to be interrogated rather than, as it was, assumed to be true by the Panorama special. It lies at the heart of both the split between the right and left wings of Labour, and the divisions within Labour\u2019s Jewish membership.<\/span><\/p>\n Equally disturbing is Ware\u2019s apparent view that some kinds of racism matter far more than others. This appears to be what he means by \u201cBritish values\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n While he has repeatedly expressed concern about criticism of Israel, and has himself conflated it with antisemitism, his work has shown an apparent indulgence of Islamophobia. Over nearly two decades Ware has produced reports for the BBC that have antagonised Britain\u2019s Muslim community.<\/span><\/p>\n In 2003 David Blunkett, Labour\u2019s home secretary of the time and no ally of Corbyn\u2019s, compared<\/a><\/strong><\/span> a programme by Ware on asylum seekers to the notoriously racist hate speech of Enoch Powell back in the 1960s.<\/span><\/p>\n Two years later the Muslim Council of Britain accused<\/a><\/strong><\/span> a Panorama documentary headed by Ware of amounting to a \u201cwitch-hunt against British Muslims\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n In 2013 Ware claimed<\/strong><\/span><\/a> that Islamophobia, or what he called the \u201cI-word\u201d, was stopping people \u2013 though not himself, it seems \u2013 from talking about Muslim \u201cextremism\u201d. Ware argued that Islamophobia, unlike antisemitism, was rational and justified \u2013 or in his words, hatred of Muslims was simply \u201creactive\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n He wrote in the Jewish Chronicle newspaper: \u201cIt is surely Muslim radicals who have brought it [anti-Muslim bigotry] on their fellow Muslims \u2013 by their promotion of Islam as a political ideology, and by invoking Islamophobia to close down criticism of this ideology.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Imagine how that would sound if one replaces \u201cradical Muslims\u201d, \u201cpolitical Islam\u201d and \u201cIslamophobia\u201d with the equivalents of \u201cIsrael zealots\u201d, \u201chardline Zionism\u201d and \u201canti-semitism\u201d. Let\u2019s try it:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt is surely Israel zealots who have brought it [anti-Jewish bigotry] on their fellow Jews \u2013 by their promotion of hardline Zionism as a political ideology, and by invoking anti-semitism to close down criticism of this ideology.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Suggesting that Jews are to blame for the racism they face because some extremists among them are fanatical supporters of Israel and its oppression of Palestinians would surely amount to antisemitism in most people\u2019s view.<\/span><\/p>\n The relevance of this is that Ware and the BBC made a highly politicised decision to choose to focus exclusively on Labour and antisemitism, while ignoring the well-documented racism of the Conservative Party. That choice matches Ware\u2019s own skewed political priorities.<\/span><\/p>\n The BBC\u2019s flagship political documentary assumed that Labour suffers from an \u201cantisemitism crisis\u201d so severe that it needed to be the sole focus of an investigation into racism in British politics.<\/span><\/p>\n The decision to ignore the more visible issue of racism in the Conservative Party smacks of dangerous interference by the state broadcaster in the democratic process.<\/span><\/p>\n Panorama\u2019s choice is even more astonishing given that the objective data \u2013 again overlooked by the programme \u2013 indicates that Labour has much less of a racism problem than the ruling Conservative party.<\/span><\/p>\n A survey<\/strong><\/span><\/a> this week confirmed what was already widely known: that Islamophobia \u2013 racism towards Muslims and Arabs \u2013 is rampant in Conservative ranks. A YouGov poll showed an astounding 56 per cent of party members believe Islam threatens the \u201cBritish way of life\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n The Tory party\u2019s former chair, Sayeeda Warsi, has long been ringing the alarm<\/strong><\/span><\/a> about senior officials, warning that they are indifferent to, or supportive of, Islamophobia in the party.<\/span><\/p>\n In addition to rampant Islamophobia, figures show<\/strong><\/span><\/a> that the Conservatives also have a greater problem than Labour with antisemitism.<\/span><\/p>\n While Corbyn has been critica<\/strong><\/span>l<\/a> of antisemitic world leaders, the Conservative leadership has been cosying up to<\/a><\/strong><\/span> figures like Viktor Orban, Hungary\u2019s prime minister, who is known for his Jew-baiting and expressions of support for former Hungarian pro-Nazi leaders.<\/span><\/p>\n Boris Johnson, the Conservative MP widely expected to become the next prime minister when Theresa May steps down, has a long track record<\/strong><\/span><\/a> of making inciteful, racist statements.<\/span><\/p>\n While the Conservatives\u2019 undeniable racism problem has failed to attract any sustained media attention, the Labour Party\u2019s much less serious antisemitism problem has been blown out of all proportion.<\/span><\/p>\n The Panorama team ignored the most elementary facts undermining the now-pervasive narrative of a Labour \u201cantisemitism crisis\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n First, surveys<\/a><\/strong><\/span> show Labour voters are less likely to hold antisemitic views than the wider general public or Conservative voters, and the proportion of Labour supporters expressing such views has fallen dramatically under Corbyn. The data clearly refute suggestions that Corbyn has made the party more attractive to antisemites.<\/span><\/p>\n Second, Labour\u2019s disciplinary process has found<\/a><\/strong><\/span> that instances of discernible antisemitism is marginal, at 0.06 per cent of its half a million members. And that is after Corbyn\u2019s political enemies have been scouring party members\u2019 accounts seeking evidence of antisemitism.<\/span><\/p>\n And third, much of the media coverage has attributed often anonymous hate speech on social media targeting Jews, including Labour MPs, to Labour activists when no evidence exists to support such attribution. The politicised climate is such now that far-right antisemitism is also being blamed<\/a><\/strong><\/span> on Corbyn.<\/span><\/p>\n Corbyn\u2019s critics, of course, have been trying to deflect criticism of the BBC, Panorama and Ware by arguing that Labour\u2019s complaint is some kind of Trumpian attack on journalism. That is patent nonsense.<\/span><\/p>\n The BBC is a public service broadcaster paid for by British taxpayers. Its credibility and legitimacy depends on it being seen to maintain strict neutrality and a commitment to evidence, not become a media attack dog in the hands of the ruling party.<\/span><\/p>\n The question is why did the BBC\u2019s flagship political investigations show decide that the marginal problem of racism in Labour was a much more urgent matter than the provable and significant racism in the Conservative Party?<\/span><\/p>\n Unlike Labour, the Conservatives are actually in power and, through policy-making, are in a position to improve or damage the fabric of life for minority communities in Britain.<\/span><\/p>\n This isn\u2019t about protecting Corbyn. It is an expectation that the BBC sticks by its commitment to assess dispassionately British political life rather than interfere, as it did with the Panorama special, in an overt, partisan manner.<\/span><\/p>\nSelf-fulfilling prophecy<\/h2>\n
Bitter feuds<\/h2>\n
The mass purge<\/h2>\n
Fears of a stitch-up<\/h2>\n
Jewish members expelled<\/h2>\n
\u2018Wrong kind of Jews\u2019<\/h2>\n
Strident supporter of Israel<\/h2>\n
\u2018Witch-hunt against Muslims\u2019<\/h2>\n
Islamophobia \u2018rational\u2019<\/h2>\n
Skewed political priorities<\/h2>\n
Rampant Tory racism<\/h2>\n
Anti-semitism data ignored<\/h2>\n
Questions for the BBC<\/h2>\n