Blog by Dr. Shimon Samuels published in The Times of Israel
22 August 2018
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-corbyn-factor-as-an-international-danger/
Simon Wiesenthal and the organization that bears his name have drawn on the lessons of the Holocaust as an international early warning system for Jews and other victims, for the defence of democracy and human rights.
The degree of antisemitism is a guide to those threats.
The “Corbyn factor ” is not limited to the United Kingdom, though domestically, it can become a threat to public order.
Its seeds set a tripwire, able to infect the global system and personified by Corbyn as a possible Prime Minister and, as such, a ‘world leader’ – a threat that must be confronted globally.
The “Corbyn factor” is a composite that has emerged through the following stages:
-The 1945 opening of the Nazi death camps was to act as a short-term teflon, thought to protect Jews and cast antisemitism as a crime.
-The Cold War reconciliation with Nazi war criminals, on both sides of the “Iron Curtain”, eroded the teflon as antisemitism reemerged in Stalin’s Soviet Union and “Jewish conspiracy theories” returned rampant in the West.
-The Arab war on the minuscule Jewish State and the victory of little Israel resulted in new European pro-Arab consortiums, that adopted pre-WWII anti-Jewish discourse, accelerated by the consequences of the 1967 Six Day War.
-In the 1980s, antisemitic terrorism came to Europe paralleled by a new language in media, expropriating the Holocaust, for example: the 1982 Lebanon War had journalists dubbing “West Beirut” as “the Warsaw Ghetto”, Israeli planes as “Luftwaffe”, as the Jewish Holocaust was stolen and used against its victims.
-A so-called new antisemitism, driven by the extreme left, in alliance with Palestinian terrorists, targeting Jews across Western Europe.
-The Internet and then social media gave a worldwide vector to conspiracy theories and the fomenting of hate.
-The 2001 Durban threshold “UN Conference Against Racism” which brought together a whole array from the spectrum of antisemitic NGOs and UN member-states.
Throughout this trajectory, there emerged publicly identifiable antisemitic leaders worldwide, as in the case of currently returned Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia in his 90s, of President Ahmedinejad of Iran or of President Chavez of Venezuela.
In most cases, they were laudably met with revulsion in Western Europe. This has changed, due to demographics and radicalization.
As the moderate left moves to the far left, to embrace their future ranks of Islamist voters, so also young “first-time voters” are radicalized by social media in the cause of “Palestine.”
The driver of this campaign in Britain is the “Corbyn Factor”. Jeremy Corbyn is not a Hitler, but his retinue are using the antisemitism lever as a campaign issue.
A background of reported support and solidarity statements for Jew-killers, such as the Munich Israeli athletes murderers, Hizbollah and Hamas, or Iranians of genocidal intent, leading to protection of Labour Party Judeophobes and attacks on Jewish Labourites These steps have moulded the “Corbyn factor”.
This is how Hitlerism began. The late Simon Wiesenthal would often remark: “What begins with the Jews never ends with them, as the hate fomented infects the body politic and becomes a scourge of general society”.
The “Corbyn Factor” is already active in international organizations and Non-Governmental Organizations, in the media and the university campuses.
It has been depicted by UK Jewish leaders as “an existential” threat.
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre considers the “Corbyn Factor” as an international danger which must be treated accordingly.