A British Parliamentary committee of inquiry on Sunday published a damning report on antisemitism within British institutions, delivering harsh criticisms of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, the National Union of Students and social media giant Twitter for failing to adequately and appropriately address what it called a “pernicious form of hate.”
The “Antisemitism in the UK” report, compiled by the Home Affairs Select Committee of the House of Commons, the lower house of the British Parliament, called on UK government and political leaders to combat growing antisemitism within their ranks by adopting a formal definition of antisemitism that promotes “a zero-tolerance approach while allowing free speech on Israel and Palestine to continue.”
“History shows that antisemitism is a virus that is too easily spread, through subtly pernicious discourse, ignorance and collusion,” said MP Tim Loughton, Acting Chair of the Committee.
“We call on all leaders of political parties to lead by example to tackle the growing prevalence of this insidious form of hate, opposing racism and religious hate in all its forms and working harder to promote inclusion and understanding among party members and the wider public, as befits the UK’s status as a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-religious society,” Loughton said.
The report struck an especially accusatory tone towards Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the UK’s Labour movement, which has been plagued over recent years by accusations of institutionalized prejudice against Jews.
“The failure of the Labour Party consistently and effectively to deal with antisemitic incidents in recent years risks lending force to allegations that elements of the Labour movement are institutionally antisemitic,” the report noted.
The Parliamentary committee lambasted Corbyn for creating an atmosphere within the Labour movement in which antisemitism has been able to thrive.
“[Cobyn’s] lack of consistent leadership on this issue has created what some have referred to as a ‘safe space’ for those with vile attitudes towards Jewish people, exacerbated by the Party’s demonstrable incompetence at dealing with members accused of antisemitism,” the report charged.
Corbyn has come under fire for referring to the Hezbollah and Hamas terrorist groups as "friends" and for urging dialogue with Hamas, as well as for meeting representatives of both organizations.
In response to the UK Parliamentary committee report, Corbyn said Sunday that he welcomes some recommendations in the report, such as strengthening anti-hate crime systems.
The Labour leader also had some criticism for the report, saying that "some important opportunities [were] lost."
"The committee chose not to look in any detail at – or come up with proposals for – combating antisemitism in other parties, our major civic institutions, in the workplace, in schools, in all those places where Jewish people’s life chances might be at risk through antisemitism," Corbyn said.
In June, Labour was forced to release a report on racism and intolerance within the party following months of controversy in which several party members were suspended for antisemitic social media posts, culminating in the former London mayor Ken Livingstone saying in a live radio interview that Adolf Hitler supported Zionism.
However, the Parliamentary Committee acknowledged widespread doubts regarding the independence of the Labour Party inquiry, which was lead by Shami (now Baroness) Chakrabarti. Accusations of her inquiry being a “whitewash” emerged after she joined the Labour party the same week as agreeing to conduct the inquiry, and then accepted a peerage offered to her by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn almost immediately after she published her report. She was then appointed to Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet.
The report called on Labour to to make “sweeping reforms” to its disciplinary procedures, including providing specific training to party members on the issue and eliminating a ‘statute of limitations’ on investigations into Party members accused of antisemitism proposed by Chakrabarti in her inquiry.
Of particular concern to the Committee was the persistent use of the term ‘Zionist’ in an accusatory manner. The report recommended that its use in such contexts be considered “inflammatory and potentially antisemitic” by law enforcement and political officials.
Also coming under fire in the report was President of the National Union of Students, Malia Bouattia, for failing to take sufficiently seriously the issue of antisemitism on university campuses. As such, the committee called on Bouattia and the Union of Jewish Students to mend their broken relationship.
Bouattia, who once called Birmingham University a “Zionist outpost,” was elected head of the NSU in April, and has voiced support for violent attacks on Israelis and blocked passage of a motion condemning the Islamic State terrorist organization on the basis of Islamophobia.
Online abuse was also a featured in the report with the committee expressing particular concern at the volume and viciousness of antisemitism appearing on social media platforms, notably, Twitter.
“It is ‘deplorable’ that Twitter has allowed itself to become an inert host for vast swathes of antisemitic hate speech and abuse, given that the media giant ‘has the necessary resources and technical capability’ to address this, and believes that the onus should not be on victims to monitor their accounts for ongoing abuse and report it to the company.”
As part of its recommendations, the report called on Twitter to invest in enforcement and employ considerably more resources to identifying abusive users proactively.
“To help address online hate crime more broadly, the Committee recommends that individuals reporting it should have a single point of contact within their local police force for the duration of the investigation and any subsequent prosecution,” the report said.
With reports of antisemitic crime on the rise, the report noted what it called “a worrying disparity in police-recorded antisemitic crime across the country.”
The first half of 2016 saw an 11 percent rise in antisemitic incidents in the United Kingdom, and a 62 percent rise in London, the Jewish Chronicle reported earlier this year. Earlier this week a month-long study by a Jewish neighborhood watch was released and the findings showed that the British ultra-Orthodox Jewish community is subject to "shocking racist abuse suffered daily."
Even with this increase in crime, the committee noted a lack of reporting of such crimes. It called on the National Police Chiefs’ Council to investigate this apparent under-reporting, and to provide support to police forces with less experience of investigating potentially antisemitic incidents.
