10 May 2018
Letter to the Editor
Fed up with anti-semitism?
Dear Sir
I flicked over and caught 5 minutes of Simon Scharma’s ‘Story of the Jews’ when he said, and I paraphrase…. that the justification for Israel is not what Hitler tried to do, but what the rest of the world failed to do in the face of the Holocaust…. This does not give Israel a carte blanche when squashing the human rights of any of its citizens or neighbours, for which there can be no justification. Criticism of Israel’s actions is not anti-Semitic.
Likewise if it is indeed true that Ken Livingstone did say “Let’s remember when Hitler won his election in 1932, his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel” this is also not an anti-Semitic remark. It does not make Ken Livingstone an anti-semite.
What does concern me is when members of the Tribe of Jeremy, admit to being ‘now fed up with the subject. [of anti-Semitism within the Labour Party]’. Again this is not anti-Semitic, but it is the type of indifference that encourages anti-Semites (yes they do exist) to spread their particular brand of poison. To quote Abraham Lincoln: ‘All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing’.
Would your correspondent become ‘fed up with Windrush’ if that wrong was not adequately addressed?
Yours faithfully
Anthony Silver
