In 2011, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell called for Holocaust Memorial Day to be renamed to remove the word Holocaust, and tabled the motion on Holocaust Memorial Day.
Mr McDonnell presented a motion in the House of Commons to suggest it should be renamed “Genocide Memorial Day – Never Again For Anyone”.
Mr Corbyn, along with three other Labour MPs and Tory MP Peter Bottomley, co-sponsored the motion.
Early Day Motions are the Commons equivalent of a petition, a chance for MPs to put on record how they feel about issues of the day.
Shockingly, the motion was tabled on January 27 2011, Holocaust Memorial Day.
Raising awareness for other genocides is of course good, however, the way in which this motion was worded, the fact it looked to erase Holocaust Memorial Day and the fact it was tabled on the day that Jews remember the genocide against their people, shows the anti-Semitic attitudes that persist within the Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn.
Even more shocking to this, however, is that the wording of the motion references a campaign promoted by the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN).
This group accuses pro-Israel Jews of “zionist exploitation” of the Holocaust “to justify colonization, displacement and apartheid in Palestine”, which they say is a “dishonor to those who survived and those who did not.”
That is one of the highest insults that could be levelled at the Jewish people. And based on the fact Corbyn hosted a member of the IJAN in Parliament the year before, and then tried to do this, Corbyn is likely someone who believes this to be true.
A spokesperson for Labour has defended both Corbyn and McDonnel saying, “This was a cross-party initiative, jointly sponsored by a senior Conservative MP, to emphasise the already broader character of Holocaust Memorial Day.”
“It is not our policy to seek a name change for this important commemoration.”
You will note that there is no apology here and the spokesperson instead tries to difuse the situation by saying it was “cross-party”.
The reality is that all the MPs who supported that abhorent motion, both Labour and Conservative, are wrong. All of them should be apologising to the Jewish community. With Corbyn, however, he is once again associated with an anti-Israel, and downright anti-Semitic action that once again is an insult to the Jewish community.
