Last month, London’s Labour Party mayoral-candidate Ken Livingstone, speaking before (irony alert) an audience of Labour-supporting Jews, proclaimed that Jews won’t vote for him because they’re rich. The Anglo-Jewish community leadership was finally able to relay its disgust in an anticipated meeting with Labour Party leader Ed Miliband last night.
Previously, Miliband had defended Ken, maintaining that there was not a prejudiced bone in the former mayor’s body – which may be true, given the tongue, brain, and heart aren’t technically ‘‘bones.’’ In any case, Miliband, recognizing his party’s reclamation of the London mayoralty to be a critical boon to his leadership, pushed the usually recalcitrant ‘‘Red Ken’’ to apologize. The candidate agreed, though it seems not so readily: Haaretz reports the precise wording of the apology was the ‘‘subject of lengthy negotiations.’’
Well, that wording was published today in the Jewish Chronicle, and, despite having backed up his claim that Jews are rich and won’t vote for him by insisting that ‘‘Every psychological study I’ve seen in the 40 years I’ve been following politics shows the main factor that determines how people how vote is their income level…And it’s not anti-Semitic to say that,’’ he now acknowledges that ‘‘Jewish voters are not one homogeneous bloc. A 2010 report for the Institute for Jewish Policy Research shows the range of Jewish voting preference. In North London Labour was the preferred party, for example.’’
So what does all this mean? It means that a meeting called to dispel Jewish reservations about voting for Ken Livingstone because of his history of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel positions ended in controversy about a new anti-Semitic position – a position now retracted. And so London’s Jews find themselves where they were a month ago: looking to Livingstone to dispel reservations about voting for him in May’s election. Now, though, there may not be enough time for another meeting – but maybe that’s good for Livingstone.
What do you expect form the Labour Party especially when the head, Milliband, is a self-hating anti-Israel Jew?
Livingston is part of the British legendary antisemitism. Jews should stay away from this guy. The Guardian must be his favorite news-garbage. He must belong to the orientalists.
Oh I think it goes deeper than that. Red Ken is at the intersection of the far left and Islamic terrorism. And while he openly hates Jews and doesn't bother to pretend otherwise it runs deeper than political opportunism. He is the king of his own cult of personality that worships the nuclear incineration of the whole world.
What is most dispiriting about this news is that it manifests that a large number of Britain's rapidly shrinking Jewish population (intermarriage is above 70%) have so little pride in themselves or even the vaguest idea about their fundamental interests that they actually are concerned whether anti-Semite Ken retracts his hurtful words so they can vote for him with a good conscience. Maybe these Jewish Brits would do much better if they just looked at themselves in the mirror and asked whether they want to be British at any cost or whether it is time for them to start learning what it means to be Jewish.
By the way, yesterday's massive by-election parliamentary victory of George Galloway, the far-leftist Sadaam Hussein supporter and open anti-Semite, over a Muslim Labor Party candidate in Bradford – a constituency with a huge Muslim population – demonstrates that Red Ken's extremist positions have enormous support among Labor's base. And this too should be of great concern. Ed Milliband, whose father was a an academic Marxist and self-hating Jew, will not feel terribly constrained to chase after these radicals.