On Monday, seven Members of Parliament (MPs) from Britain’s Labour Party — one of the Western world’s most iconic Left-of-center political parties for the duration of the past century — decided to bolt. In what The Times of Israel reports as “the biggest split in the party since four senior members quit in 1981 to form the Social Democratic Party,” the MPs cited the “institutionally anti-Semitic” nature of the modern Labour Party as a leading reason for their parting ways. The move was led by MP Luciana Berger, who earlier this month had faced a possible no-confidence vote within Labour due to her serial criticisms of notorious Jew-hater and Labour Party chieftain, Jeremy Corbyn.
From The Times of Israel:
Seven MPs from Britain’s opposition Labour Party on Monday announced they were breaking away and forming an independent group in protest of the party’s failure to stamp out anti-Semitism and its support for Brexit.
“This has been a very difficult, painful but necessary decision,” one of the MPs, Luciana Berger, said at a hastily arranged press conference in London, calling the party “institutionally anti-Semitic.”
“I am leaving behind a culture of bullying, bigotry and intimidation,” she added.
Labour has been persistently roiled in anti-Semitic controversies for the past few years. Although the controversies run deep throughout Labour’s institutional apparatus and reach many of its grassroots MPs, commentators often cite Corbyn’s virulent Israel hatred and full-on jihadist apologia as opening up the floodgates. Last August, British Jew and formerly proud Labour supporter Josh Glancy penned the following at The New York Times:
…for the past several months, as scandal upon Jew-hating scandal has washed up at Jeremy Corbyn’s door, our parents and aunts and uncles have insisted that we were being loyal to a party that no longer wanted anything to do with us. Some friends began to leave Labour.
Consider the evidence, they told me. Mr. Corbyn has described the constitutionally genocidal Hamas as his “friends.” He’s appeared on stage with inveterate anti-Semites. He’s defended a mural that depicted hooknosed bankers running the world. He’s attended a wreath-laying ceremony that celebrated the perpetrators of the Munich Olympics massacre. …
While bemoaning the activities of a group of Zionists, [Corbyn recently] identified two problems. “One is that they don’t want to study history, and secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, they don’t understand English irony either,” he said. “I think they need two lessons, which we can help them with.” …
Here’s what I do know: My fellow British Jews were right. I was wrong. From now on, Jeremy Corbyn has my loud and implacable opposition.
As The Daily Wire has reported, anti-Semitism has recently spiked throughout Britain:
On Wednesday [February 6], the United Kingdom’s Community Security Trust (CST) released its survey on nationwide anti-Semitic incidents for the year 2018. …
In total, the CST found a whopping 173 anti-Semitic incidents in 2018 that were motivated by anti-Israel sentiment; by contrast, the year 2017 featured only 70 such incidents.
Contrary to what many in the mainstream media would perhaps portray, recent reports of anti-Semitism in Western Europe greatly exceed recent reports of anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe.