“The masks are falling: inviting and displaying the support of Jeremy Corbyn, dismissed from the Labor Party and the group for complacency with anti-Semitism in England, after 1000 complaints registered by this party, is a shame of which Danielle Simonnet is proud.” On TwitterSaturday, June 4, the outgoing socialist deputy of the 15th district of Paris (XXth arrondissement), Lamia El Aaraje, attacked her main rival in the legislative elections in this very left-wing district.
In question, the support given Friday June 3 by the former leader of the Labor Party Jeremy Corbyn – at the head of the Labor Party from September 2015 to April 2020 – to two Insoumise candidates in Paris, the outgoing MP Danièle Obono (17th constituency) and the councilor of Paris Danielle Simonnet (15th district), in the running with the alliance on the left Nupes.
Socialist executives, like Bernard Cazeneuve, took up this criticism, in the midst of the war of the lefts in this 20th arrondissement of Paris, where Lamia El Aaraje maintained his candidacy with the endorsement of the PS despite the agreement on the left behind Jean-Luc Mélenchon .
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Shaken for years by repeated incidents and a host of resignations, Labor has been the subject of an investigation by an independent body, the Equality and Human Rights Committee (EHRC). This investigation had been launched as early as May 2019 “following serious public concerns about allegations of anti-Semitism and a number of formal complaints to the EHRC.
A “lack of will to tackle anti-Semitism”
In its 130-page report, the Committee concluded at the end of October 2020 that “inexcusable” failures resulted from a “lack of will to tackle anti-Semitism”. He considered that the Labor Party had “committed unlawful acts”. “We discovered examples of harassment, discrimination and political interference” during the investigation, underlined the committee, tackling the shortcomings of the party leadership. The report “highlights a culture within the Party that, at best, has not done enough to prevent anti-Semitism and, at worst, could be seen as accepting of it.”
The survey also revealed that a “significant number of complaints relating to anti-Semitism have not been investigated at all”, particularly on social media. As the journal K reports, the EHRC concluded that there were serious shortcomings in the handling of complaints of anti-Semitism. She considered the responses given by the party to these complaints as generally inconsistent and opaque. It indicated that neither the plaintiffs nor the defendants were properly informed of the treatment and the results of the complaints and noted, among other things, a casualness in the treatment of these complaints. While the EHRC admitted that progress had been made in dealing with complaints of anti-Semitism from 2019, these multiple shortcomings made Labour, according to the EHRC, liable for indirect discrimination.
A lively controversy erupted in particular in March 2018, when a position by Jeremy Corbyn resurfaced on Facebook, dated 2012, in which he opposed the removal of a mural in east London, representing Jewish bankers, and taking up anti-Semitic tropes. A position on which he ended up returning in 2018, explaining that he had not examined “carefully enough” this “deeply anti-Semitic” fresco, recalls The world.
Mélenchon’s support for Corbyn in 2019
Jeremy Corbyn, 73, was suspended from the party on October 29, 2020 for questioning some of the report’s findings, including accusing internal critics and the media of exaggerating existing anti-Semitism under his leadership. Then he announced his reinstatement on November 17, 2020, after a favorable decision by the party’s Disputes Committee. But Labor had expelled him from the parliamentary group the following day.
Jeremy Corbyn’s response to the report “undermined and delayed our work to restore confidence in Labor’s ability to tackle anti-Semitism,” centrist and Europhile Labor leader Keir Starmer tweeted at the time to justify his decision to exclude him from the parliamentary group. This decision had satisfied the Jewish associations, very upset against the former party leader, but angered the left wing of the party, represented by Jeremy Corbyn.
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The Insoumis have always defended the leader of the left wing of Labour. Thus, in December 2019, Jean-Luc Mélenchon had estimated on BFMTV that “this man is no more anti-Semitic than I don’t know what”, as reported by AFP. “Corbyn spent his time being insulted and shot in the back by a handful of Blairite MPs. Instead of fighting back, he dialed. England and the various networks of influence of the Likud (Netanyahu’s far-right party in Israel). Instead of retaliating, he spent his time apologizing and giving pledges”, estimated on his blog the former presidential candidate on December 13, 2019.
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