Margaret Hodge, Tom Watson and other Labour MPs are using this as yet another stick with which to beat Jeremy Corbyn and any others who want the Labour Party to adopt socialist policies.

They insist that the full IHRA definition should be adopted, without amendments or qualifications.

 

The IHRA definition and its attached examples would label me anti-Semitic for making the following statement.

 

The Knesset, the Israeli Parliament recently confirmed the “Basic Law” that “Israel is the Nation-State of the Jewish People”.

 

What about the one-and-a half million Palestinians, Arabs, who live there?  These Palestinians have no other homeland.

Netanyahu would have us think the Palestinians are recent interlopers, that the land of Israel was a vacant plot until Israel was established in 1948. In fact, Arabs have lived here for centuries.

 

Netanyahu’s government pursues a policy of intimidation and violence against the Palestinians in the hope that they will be driven out and he can spread out within the ancient borders of Israel/Palestine, gobbling up Gaza, the West Bank of the Jordan and the whole of Jerusalem.  Meanwhile, he and Trump do not admit to having abandoned a two-state solution, although their every move makes it more and more impossible.

 

There is constant expansion of Jewish settlements into Palestinian territory, in contravention of UN resolutions and in violation of international law.

The Arab states surrounding Israel stand by mute and useless, bought off by American dollars, or unsympathetic with these fellow Arabs because they are the wrong sort of Muslim.

Israel’s domestic policies treat the Palestinians as second-class citizens.  I consider this to be a version of Apartheid as operated in South Africa.

 

When Palestinians seek to defend their homes and protest against their persecution, they are described as terrorists and meet with violence at the hands of the so-called Israeli Defence Force.

Just as the oppressed people of Apartheid South Africa eventually resorted to violence, so do the Palestinians.

 

Netanyahu’s Israel is sowing the wind and may reap the whirlwind.