It’s good to see that the Labour Party has agreed to be investigated by an outside and (I hope) neutral body about claims made against it of ‘anti-semitism’: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/mar/06/equality-watchdog-could-rule-on-whether-labour-broke-law. I’ve made my views up to now on this whole sorry episode clear: see https://bernardjporter.com/2016/04/28/anti-semitism-and-labour/, and two or three of my subsequent posts. But I’m open-minded about it all, and willing to be corrected on the basis of solid and neutral evidence of anti-semitism in the Labour Party, which has been in astonishingly short supply throughout the course of this dispute.

In any event, the inquiry should put the whole distressing matter to rest; so long as it doesn’t rely on the well-known – and deliberate? – confusion of criticism of Israel’s policies, especially towards those other Semites, the Palestinians, with genuine Judenhetze. In connection with this, the Commission could perhaps take on board today’s ‘long read’ in the Guardian, which is the best – the most forensic and rational – argument on this that I’ve seen. Here it is:  https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/mar/07/debunking-myth-that-anti-zionism-is-antisemitic. – Game, Set and Match, I think.

It might also take a glance at the Conservatives, whose Islamophobic pockets – if that’s all they are – don’t appear to be so newsworthy; though they’re starting to come into the open now: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/mar/05/tories-suspend-14-members-over-alleged-islamophobia. Perhaps Islamophobia is not regarded as quite so shocking as anti-semitism. Zionists don’t cut people’s heads off, after all.