Labour: When is it right to vandalize a Holocaust memorial?

When is it right to vandalize a Holocaust memorial? Having debated the meaning of anti-semitism and if calling Jews ‘Nazis’ is righteous, Labour Party delegates will most likely be debating Jews and the Holocaust when Ewa Jasiewicz, 40, addresses a meeting of pro-Corbyn group Momentum at this year’s Labour Party conference. She’s earmarked to speak about the future of trade unions at a festival organised alongside Labour’s AGM.

Jasiewicz is the Times‘ “Warsaw ghetto vandal”, a British anti-Israel activist who decorated the site where 92,000 Jews were corralled and killed and from where a further 300,000 were sent to death camps. In 2010 Jasiewicz and Yonatan Shapira thought it wise, considerate and fair to daub the words “Liberate all ghettos” and “Free Gaza and Palestine” on one of the Warsaw ghetto’s original walls. They are quoted as having said Israel had “co-opted” the Holocaust to serve “agendas of colonisation and repression”. Yad Vashem, the Holocaust remembrance centre, said the graffiti was “tainted with anti-semitism”. More condemnation follows. It is a “new low”. “This is exactly the kind of obsessive anti-Israel hatred and abuse of the Holocaust that is central to Labour’s problem of anti-semitism,” we read. A survivor of the ghetto, tells readers: “I too am critical of my government. Gaza is certainly not a likeable place. But to compare it to the Warsaw ghetto is the height of folly. I know .. I was there.” No word of support and praise for the graffiti is given. But Momentum clearly has no problem with it.

One day on and the Times has more Ewa Jasiewicz news: ‘In 2002 she called for “activists” to “do” the Israeli parliament or “a sophisticated politician bump-off” rather than targeting Israeli civilians. At the time Ms Jasiewicz was living in Jenin, in the West Bank.”

In a 2,700-word dispatch at the height of the second intifada, Ms Jasiewicz wrote that the son of the family she was staying with “went and opened fire on some Israeli civilians in a market somewhere a few months ago”, adding: “I don’t get why activists can’t go and do the Knesset [Israeli parliament] or something, or do a sophisticated politician bump-off like the PFLP?”

Ms Jasiewicz says her remarks were made “in a private email which ended up being published on the PalSolidarity website in 2002 as was the case at times with emailed reports on Israeli occupation activity back then”. Private emails are private. She calls her remarks “flippant”. And that’s an important thing: if you can’t say stupid, ugly things in private, when can you say them? She adds: “I do not and never have, advocated the harming of anybody and this was definitely not the intention of the comment in the email. I apologise for any harm or upset this has caused and I ask people to understand it in the context that it was written, both as a flippant comment in a private email and under conditions of a violent occupation.”

So how did the other big newspapers cover this story? The Guardian: not a word. Daily Telegraph: zippo. Daily Mail: nada. Is it because Ewa Jasiewicz doesn’t matter, her being just another social justice warrior with a media profile? One Times columnist offers a reason:

Where Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour differs from almost all other major parties is that it now has supporters instead of spokesmen. The latter are diminishing, shrinking, dissolving away… The trouble, at least for Labour, is that their rise coincides with the near absolute evaporation of anybody else who might appear in public and make a coherent, Corbyn-friendly case about almost anything.

Which reminds me: anyone seen Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary? What is her view on Israel? Or is she just hoping nobody will have time to ask her if enough cheap to hire, mouthy and monocular pundits who aren’t standing to election can fill the media with their to-deadline chatter? that question to you, Owen Jonezzzzzzz…

Anorak

Posted: 11th, September 2018 | In: News, Politicians Comment | TrackBack | Permalink