{"id":13875,"date":"2018-09-04T21:24:03","date_gmt":"2018-09-04T21:24:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=13875"},"modified":"2018-09-04T21:24:03","modified_gmt":"2018-09-04T21:24:03","slug":"uk-labour-party-adopts-ihra-anti-semitism-code-in-full","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=13875","title":{"rendered":"UK: Labour Party adopts IHRA anti-Semitism code in full"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Britain’s<\/a>\u00a0main opposition Labour Party has announced it will fully adopt an internationally recognised definition of anti-Semitism as it tries to end a long-running internal debate that engulfed senior members and its leader, Jeremy Corbyn<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The party’s National Executive Committee (NEC), its governing body, decided at a meeting in London on Tuesday to endorse the\u00a0International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA)\u00a0<\/span>definition<\/a>\u00a0of anti-Semitism, as well as its list of 11 examples.<\/span><\/p>\n

A party spokesperson said that the NEC had also adopted\u00a0“a statement which ensures this will not in any way undermine freedom of expression on Israel or the rights of Palestinians”.<\/span><\/p>\n

“The NEC welcomed Jeremy Corbyn’s statement to the meeting about action against anti-Semitism, solidarity with the Jewish community and protection of Palestinian rights, as an important contribution to the consultation on Labour’s code of conduct,” the statement added.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Tuesday’s announcement came two months after Labour endorsed a code of conduct that left out four of IHRA’s 11 examples, including one that cautions against “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour”.<\/p>\n

Corbyn has previously\u00a0<\/span>expressed<\/a>\u00a0concern that aspects of the IHRA definition – signed by 31 countries including the UK and US – could restrict criticism of\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>Israel\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0that is not anti-Semitic in nature.<\/span><\/p>\n

The debate fed into a months-long row over alleged anti-Semitism in the party, in which MPs and Jewish groups repeatedly accused Corbyn of failing to act.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

But C<\/span><\/span>orbyn supporters said the controversy was stirred up by his enemies within and outside of the party to discredit the politician, who has long campaigned for political justice for Palestinians.<\/p>\n

Before the hours-long meeting, protesters from both sides of the debate gathered outside the party’s headquarters.<\/span><\/p>\n

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UK’s Labour Party embroiled in row over anti-Semitism<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

Al Jazeera’s Laurence Lee, reporting from London, said the pressure on Corbyn and his leadership team had become “enormous” in recent weeks.<\/p>\n

“There has been so much criticism of him and his supporters that they have eventually climbed down [on adopting the full IHRA definition],” Lee said.<\/p>\n

“But there is a caveat; they have\u00a0accepted all the examples of anti-semitism [in the IHRA code] but have said this does not in any way undermine freedom of expression on Israel or the rights of Palestinians,” he added.<\/p>\n

Critics, however, said the NEC’s decision to caveat its adoption of the code with an accompanying\u00a0statement was an “unnecessary qualification”.<\/p>\n

Margaret Hodge, a veteran Labour Party parliamentarian, described the move as “two steps forward and one step back” in a post on Twitter on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Glyn Secker, a member of Jewish Voice of Labour, said the decision was “ludicrous”, however.<\/p>\n

“This is a party that could become the party of government and we can’t discuss matters of foreign policy, the rights of the Palestinians to their own self-determination, the suffering that the Palestinians are experiencing at the hands of Israel, we can’t discuss that in the Labour Party because it would be defined as anti-Semitic,” Secker told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

The Jewish Voice of Labour, an organisation comprised of Jewish members of the Labour Party, has described<\/a> the IHRA’s code as a “threat to freedom of expression and debate” and said it offers an inaccurate definition of anti-Semitism.<\/p>\n

“A definition of antisemitism which needs to rely on ‘examples’, which may or may not be anti-Semitic depending on context, fails that test,” the organisation said in its submission to a Labour Party Consultation on Definition of Antisemitism.<\/p>\n

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Jeremy Corbyn apologises for ‘hurt’ caused to Jewish community<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

Corbyn, meanwhile, has repeatedly stated that anti-Semitism, racism and prejudice of all kinds have no place within Labour, but in\u00a0<\/span><\/span>an August 3 article<\/a> for The Guardian, he added: “It is unfortunately the case that this particular example, dealing with Israel and racism, has sometimes been used by those wanting to restrict criticism of Israel that is not anti-Semitic”.<\/p>\n

In the same article, he also admitted that the party had been “too slow” in dealing with “cases of anti-Semitic abuse” committed by members.<\/p>\n

The parliamentary wing of the\u00a0<\/span>Labour Party<\/a>\u00a0is expected to meet on Wednesday to vote on the NEC’s decision.<\/span><\/p>\n

The controversy followed earlier debates over his role in a 2014 ceremony in Tunis at which a perpetrator of the 1972 Munich Olympics attack – during which 11 Israelis were killed – was honoured and his hosting of a 2010 event at which a\u00a0Holocaust survivor compared Israel to Nazism.<\/span><\/p>\n

Corbyn said he attended the event in Tunis as part of a wider event focused on peace and, separately, that he did not condone\u00a0<\/span><\/span>all views expressed at the event in 2010.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Britain’s\u00a0main opposition Labour Party has announced it will fully adopt an internationally recognised definition of anti-Semitism as it tries to end a long-running internal debate that engulfed senior members and its leader, Jeremy Corbyn. The party’s National Executive Committee (NEC), its governing body, decided at a meeting in London on Tuesday to endorse the\u00a0International Holocaust…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":13876,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}