LONDON—“It is astonishing that the Labour Party presumes that it is more qualified than all of the above and, in particular, the Jewish community, to define anti-Semitism,” said the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom in a reaction to the adoption by the party’s leadership of a softened version of the anti-Semitism definition.
The Labour Party, which has been dogged by allegations of anti-Semitism in recent years centered around party leader Jeremy Corbyn, formally adopted an amended version of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism that left out some examples of anti-Semitism that relate to support for Israel.
The amended version dropped anti-Semitic language related to Israel such as “accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel than their own nations, claiming that the existence of the state of Israel is a racist endeavour and comparing Israeli actions to the Nazis.”
The definition features mostly examples of anti-Semitic behaviors that do not concern Israel, such as calling to harm Jews or denying the Holocaust or the Jewish people’s right to self-determination.
The move to adopt the amended version came despite an outcry of opposition from dozens of Jewish leaders, British Jewish organizations and even Labour Party politicians.
A day earlier, members of the Parliamentary Labour Party voted to adopt the full definition.
“The Labour Party has acted in a deliberate and offensive, reckless manner in believing it understands the needs of a minority community better than the community itself,’’ said a spokesman for the Jewish Labour Movement.
Sixty-eight British rabbis also had called on Labour to adopt the full, unamended definition of anti-Semitism.
In a letter to the Labour Party’s governing body, Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis wrote : “By claiming to know what’s good for our community, the Labour party’s leadership have chosen to act in the most insulting and arrogant way.”
In an op-ed published in The Jewish Chronicle, Mark Gardner, Director Communications of the Community Security Trust (CST), a charity which deals with security for the UK Jewish community, said: ”Labour wants to strip Israel from the definition of antisemitism, but the IHRA definition includes it because anti-Israel hatred is so important to contemporary antisemitism. This is not theoretical. It is exactly what drove the need for the definition in 2005. Since then, the need has worsened.”
He continues: ”Thousands of Jews have fled France, Belgium and other countries. They have faced suspicion, blame, exclusion, hatred, attack and murder on the supposed basis of anti-Israel hatred. In Britain, the situation is slightly better, but the European experience drives our security and defence efforts.”