A senior officer in the Hampstead and Kilburn Labour party has condemned a “highly offensive” document circulated at an executive committee meeting of the local party, which asked why the Jewish Labour Movement “seems to focus only on antisemitism in the Labour party”.
Rebecca Shirazi, the vice-chair and campaigns officer for Hampstead and Kilburn Labour, described the document, titled “critical questions for the Jewish Labour Movement”, as “not represent[ing] the view of our membership and was not part of the official literature”, adding that it “should never have been circulated."
The two-page leaflet, circulated on Wednesday evening, included questions such as asking why the JLM decided not to campaign for Lisa Forbes, Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Peterborough, saying “undermining the Labour candidate enhanced the chances of the Brexit party, led by an extreme right winger who has connections with the antisemitic racist right in Europe. Would you have preferred the Brexit candidate to be elected?”
The letter failed to include the information that the Labour candidate, Lisa Forbes, had been found to have endorsed a social media post claiming that Theresa May had a “Zionist slave master’s agenda” and approved another message stating that Isis had been created by the CIA and Mossad.
The leaflet also claimed that the undercover Al Jazeera documentary, The Lobby, had “revealed that leading members of the JLM were working with an Israeli agent” and asked it to explain its affiliation to the Zionist Federation of the UK and the Board of Deputies of British Jews, accusing both organisations of having defended “the organised murder and maiming of unarmed civilians.”
It also asked whether “since you consider the Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn institutionally antisemitic and therefore claim he is ‘unfit’ to govern, are we right to assume you stay in the Labour Party to prevent it becoming the government?”
Those credited with drafting the questions included a number of representatives of the “International Jewish anti-Zionist Network”, who achieved publicity in May after arranging a demonstration outside the JW3 Jewish community centre after it hosted an event associated with the Israeli film festival in May. At least two other drafters, Sara Callaway and Pete Firmin, are officers in the Hampstead and Kilburn CLP.
The letter itself had been published on Wednesday on the website of Jewish Voice for Labour, the far-left fringe group whose members have repeatedly denied or downplayed antisemitism within the Labour party.
The letter also asked the JLM how they could attack JVL, “a Jewish organisation”, at the same time as referring “to the ‘Jewish community’, as if Jewish people are of one mind”.
Last month, Jon Lansman, head of the far-left Momentum group, was found to have responded to an attack by the JVL by saying “neither the vast majority of individual members of JVL nor the organisation itself can really be said to be part of the Jewish community.
“JVL behaves as if it speaks for Jewish socialists. It does not. And too many of its members self-define as 'Jews' only to attack other Jews."
Mike Katz, national chair of JLM, responded to news of the letter by tweeting: “The reaction of grassroots members whilst #Panorama airs: attack the Party’s sole Jewish affiliate, @JewishLabour, affiliated for 99 years.
“Nothing institutional to see here. Oh no”, he continued sarcastically, in reference to the charge, put forward by the JLM and others, that the Labour Party is now institutionally antisemitic.
Georgia Gould, the Labour leader of Camden Council, said she was “deeply concerned that this kind of persecutory material is circulating at a time when so many Jewish members are saying they don’t feel safe in Labour.
“As leader of Camden Council I am a proud member of Jewish Labour and the authors of this don’t speak for Camden Labour.”
But, as one member pointed out in response, “surely a major part of the problem is that they regularly do speak on behalf of my CLP? At least three of them are currently elected officers and have been sent as our delegates to National Conference.”
