Past time to put a stop to indoctrinating schoolchildren into anti-Israel falsehoods - by Melanie Phillips

This poisonous tide will only begin to be turned if those who think themselves to be custodians of the center-ground realize the extent to which they too have drunk the Middle Eastern Kool-Aid.

Melanie Phillips..
JNS.org..
17 October '19..

Concern about resurgent anti-Semitism has been at fever-pitch among Diaspora Jews for years.

In Britain, the veteran Jewish Labour MP Dame Louise Ellman resigned this week from the party to which she has belonged for more than half a century.

A leaked Labour headquarters report on her Liverpool Wavertree constituency party showed that in 2017, there was a “worrying amount of anti-Semitism” and a “toxic atmosphere” with members fearing for their physical safety.

If the far-left party leader Jeremy Corbyn became prime minister, says Ellman, he would be a danger to both the Jewish community and the country.

Labour’s Jew-baiting and Israel-bashing have become mainstream in the party. This is blamed largely on Corbyn’s open hostility to Israel, his support for Palestinian terrorists and his refusal to acknowledge the scale of his party’s bigotry against Israel and the Jewish people.

In America, a similar phenomenon surfaced with “The Squad” of four Democratic congresswomen who are also virulently hostile towards Israel, two of whom have made prejudiced remarks about Jews.

These views are generally ascribed to the far-left, with more than a dash of Muslim anti-Jewish attitudes fermenting the mix to reach toxic levels. Beyond the political class, they are associated principally with higher education.

On both sides of the pond, anxious Jews have been agonizing for years over how to combat the appalling levels of anti-Israel, anti-Jewish discourse on university campuses with their “Israel apartheid” weeks, harassment of Jewish students and the platforms they provide for virulent Israel-bashers while depriving Israel supporters of a platform.

All this is bad enough. Yet in both Britain and America, what’s been largely overlooked is the even more devastating indoctrination of schoolchildren into these murderous falsehoods.

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Melanie Phillips, a British journalist, broadcaster and author, writes a weekly column for JNS. Currently a columnist for “The Times of London,” her personal and political memoir, “Guardian Angel,” has been published by Bombardier, which also published her first novel, “The Legacy,” in 2018. Her work can be found at: www.melaniephillips.com