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'Enough is enough': MPs rip leader Jeremy Corbyn for rise in anti-Semitism in U.K. Labour Party

'I have never felt as nervous and frightened as I feel today at being a Jew. It feels that my party has given permission for anti-Semitism to go unchallenged'

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LONDON — Members of the Labour Party in the U.K. Tuesday turned on leader Jeremy Corbyn over his “betrayal” of Jews as they described rape and death threats they had received for speaking out against anti-Semitism in their party.

Corbyn sat in the Commons in silence as his MPs read out hate mail they had received from his supporters. Others received standing ovations for calling out the “bullying and intimidation” in the party as the Labour leader was told: “Enough is enough.”

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One Labour MP was moved to tears as colleague Luciana Berger detailed the “torrent” of abuse she faced for being Jewish in a party in which Corbyn has allowed anti-Semitism to become “more commonplace, more conspicuous and more corrosive.”

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The extraordinary scene erupted after months of discontent over his handling of anti-Semitism in Labour, which many MPs claim has been tolerated or even encouraged by sections of the party sympathetic to the leader.

John Mann, the Labour MP, said members of the Corbyn-supporting Momentum group had targeted him for showing solidarity with Jewish Labour members. He said his wife had been sent a dead bird in the mail and received rape threats and his son and daughter had had contact with the bomb squad and “special branch” after death threats to his family.

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Dame Margaret Hodge, whose family were caught up in the Holocaust, was applauded as she said: “I have never felt as nervous and frightened as I feel today at being a Jew. It feels that my party has given permission for anti-Semitism to go unchallenged. Anti-Semitism is making me an outsider in my Labour Party. To that, I simply say, ‘enough is enough.’”

The outpouring of despair at Corbyn’s lack of “leadership” on anti-Semitism came during a near three-hour debate on the issue called by the government.

Berger fought back tears as she said: “I have no words for the people who purport to be both members and supporters of our party, who use that hashtag, JC4PM, who attacked me in recent weeks for speaking at the rally… who said I should be deselected.”

Detailing other examples of anti-Semitic abuse she said, voice shaking: “They have called me Judas, a Zio-Nazi, and told me to go back to Israel.”
Body: She had also been called a “paid-up Israeli operative,” a traitor and an “absolute parasite.”

She added: “We have a duty to the next generation. Denial is not an option. Prevarication is not an option. Being a bystander who turns the other way is not an option. The time for action is now. Enough really is enough.”

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Labour’s Ian Austin said the current anti-Semitism crisis was prompted by the “shocking discovery” that Corbyn had “defended a grotesque, racist” mural depicting caricatures of Jewish stereotypes.

Protestors gather for a demonstration organized by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism outside the head office of the British opposition Labour Party in London on April 8, 2018.
Protestors gather for a demonstration organized by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism outside the head office of the British opposition Labour Party in London on April 8, 2018. Photo by Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images

Austin said: “He spent decades defending these people. Hamas’s charter is anti-Semitic, Hizbollah’s is too, yet your leader described them as friends and invited them to Parliament.

“The problem on the hard Left is some of them believe they are so virtuous… Why is it they get angry at people complaining about racism instead of the people responsible for it?”

He was cheered after calling on the party to “boot out” Ken Livingstone, the former London mayor under investigation for much of the last two years after claiming Hitler was a Zionist.

Mann, who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on anti-Semitism, said: “I didn’t expect, when I took on this voluntary cross-party role, for my wife to be sent by a Labour Marxist anti-Semite a dead bird through the post. I didn’t expect my son after an Islamist death threat to open the door in the house on his own as a schoolboy to the bomb squad.

“I didn’t expect my wife, in the last few weeks, from a Leftist anti-Semite, in response to the demonstration, to be threatened with rape. I didn’t expect my daughter, similarly, and have to be rung up in the last few weeks by special branch to check out her movements in this country.”

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