• AS a Jewish member of the Labour Party I can confirm that I have never experienced anti-semitism within the party which, it should be remembered, elected a Jewish leader between 2010 and 2015.

I find it difficult to understand the current virulent criticism of anti-semitism levelled against Jeremy Corbyn, based on Labour’s code of conduct in respect of the IHRA examples of anti-semitism relating to Israel.

Israel is a sovereign state and member of the United Nations, subject to international law, whose rights and responsibilities are no different from those of any other state.

Article 1 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” This was preceded by the UN Charter of 1945, to which all member countries are bound and of which Article 1 refers to equality before the law. Then came the 1969 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which Israel ratified in 1979.

So, why should it be considered anti-semitic to criticise Israel’s Zionist ideology with its racist laws (land, housing, cultural, education, ethnic cleansing in the occupied West Bank) and, of course, the recent Nation State Law?

One can add the different classes of citizenship on account of which Palestinians, Bedouins and Druze nationals have been discriminated against since that country’s inception?

Or to claim that people are requiring behaviour from Israel not expected from other countries? Which countries, past and present, founded on racist principles have not received fierce criticism and often sanctions?

In 1950, as a refugee from Nazi Germany and having turned down an offer to be president of Israel, Albert Einstein published a statement about Zionism in which he wrote: “I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state… I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain – especially from the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks…”

Were he alive today, no doubt Einstein would be considered an anti-semite.

J KASSMAN
N7