• THE Labour Party has invited members to anti-Semitism training run by the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM).

To be a member of the JLM you don’t have to be Jewish or in the Labour Party. But you must support apartheid Israel.

This “training” is a slap in the face to people of colour, first of all, Palestinians.

In 2019 we helped draft a document entitled “Critical Questions for the JLM” because the JLM had denounced the leadership of the Labour Party and the Labour Party itself; we asked: “Would the JLM tell people not to vote Labour, allowing the possibility of a racist, anti-immigrant, homophobic, pro-austerity, extremist right-wing Tory prime minister?”.

The JLM did refuse to campaign for many Labour candidates in the last general election, including our own candidate, Tulip Siddiq.

The party leadership did not critically question the JLM but we were put under investigation.

We were invited to accuse ourselves of anti-Semitism. We declined. We left the party.

Some of us who left are Jewish, all of us anti-racist campaigners, and pro-Palestinian. That is our “crime”.

Many committed anti-racists stayed, and have been viciously witch-hunted ever since.

Last week the JLM welcomed Isaac Herzog “a former chairman of our Israeli sister party on being elected Israel’s 11th President”.

This is the same Isaac Herzog whose apartheid view is to: “separate from as many Palestinians as possible, as quickly as possible.

“We want to… complete the barrier that separates us.”

He stated that intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews is a “plague”.

With friends like these, only white Jewish supremacists need apply for training by the JLM.

SARA CALLAWAY
MICHAEL KALMANOVITZ