Of the fighting faiths that flourished during the ideologically drunk 20th century, anti-Semitism has been uniquely durable. It survives by mutating, even migrating across the political spectrum from the right to the left. Although most frequently found in European semi-fascist parties, anti-Semitism is growing in the fetid Petri dish of American academia, and is staining Britain's Labour Party.
In 2014, before Naseem "Naz" Shah became a Labour member of Parliament, she shared a graphic on her Facebook page suggesting that all Israelis should be "relocated" to the United States. She seemed to endorse the idea that the "transportation cost" would be less than "three years of defense spending." When this was recently publicized, "Red Ken" Livingstone, former Labour mayor of London, offered on the BBC what he considered a defense of her as not anti-Semitic because "a real anti-Semite doesn't just hate the Jews in Israel." Besides, Livingstone said, Hitler was a Zionist (for supposedly considering sending Europe's Jews to Palestine) "before he went mad." As mayor, Livingstone praised as a "progressive voice" an Egyptian cleric who called the Holocaust "divine punishment."
Labour's leader, Jeremy Corbyn, says he wants to cleanse Labour of such thinking. But Corbyn hopes to host at the House of Commons a Palestinian sheikh who calls Jews "bacteria" and "monkeys" and has been accused of repeating the "blood libel" that Jews make matzo using the blood of gentile children.
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