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Would Prime Minister Jeremy Corbyn make you leave the country?

After warning Jeremy Corbyn's Labour presented an 'existential threat' to the Jewish community, the JC asks British Jews what they would do if he came to power

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It is unusually quiet in Yummies Deli, Mill Hill, North-West London, and the handful of customers present are sharing a single topic of conversation.

Robert Shipton, 66, is sitting with friends. He tells me he is “sad and worried for the Labour Party”.

A member of Alyth Synagogue in Golders Green, Mr Shipton is not a Labour voter but nevertheless is worried about “what Jeremy Corbyn has done to the party”.

He does not agree with the view that the Labour leader would pose an existential threat to Jewish life in the UK if he ever became prime minister and certainly wouldn’t consider leaving the UK : “Firstly, I think you need to be here to be able to fight him [Corbyn] and, secondly, I couldn’t afford it!”

Mr Shipton argues that Labour’s antisemitism problem is not “as bad as most Jews make out. Sometimes, I think we get too caught up in the antisemitism war that is going on.”

And he believes that, if there was a genuine threat to Jewish life, the community would be strong enough to “stand up and be counted”.

But Robert Shipton’s friend Nikki Benezra, from Totteridge, disagrees and has already taken steps to leave the UK and move to Israel if Labour were to be elected.

“I am ready to go if I need to,” she says.

“If Corbyn was to get in, I would leave the country. He is a nasty piece of work. [Some of his closest associates] compare us to Nazis. Hamas are his friends.”

Ms Benezra says she has always been a Conservative voter, “but was never scared under Labour before”.

She adds: “Children at Jewish schools have to go through drills to prepare them for a terrorist attack. This is the life we are living and Jeremy Corbyn isn’t making this any easier.

“The more people listen to him, the more frightening it is for Jewish people.”

Yvonne Lasky agrees and says a lot of her friends would also consider leaving the UK.

“He is completely anti-Jewish and anti-Israel. For us, Israel is our protection, so for him to be anti-Israel is not good for us.

“I have a business that I have had here for 45 years. If this all carries on I’ll be moving it and my family out of here.”

Normally, Ms Lasky does not vote Labour, but says she would “vote for someone reasonable like Tony Blair”.

Jack Lubner is a Labour activist, even though, at 17, he is not yet old enough to vote.

But he says he would have voted Labour in the council elections, even though it is “undeniable” that Mr Corbyn has made “Labour a far more hostile place for Jews”.

The Alyth Synagogue member says Jewish Labour supporters should stay and fight to change the party from the inside.

“If a Labour victory under Corbyn does lead to increased antisemitism across Britain as a whole, I’ll still be here fighting,” he says.

“I will not be made to feel a stranger in my party, nor in my own country.”

Jack is campaigns and membership officer at Barnet Young Labour, and says he understands why “so many” in the community cannot bring themselves to vote Labour.

“Even though I didn’t agree with every word of the United We Stand editorial, the fact that three rival Jewish newspapers took the unprecedented step of printing the same front page shows the degree of justified anxiety and fear in our community.

“We should be doing all we can, from within Labour as well as from the outside, to make sure the leadership understand these fears and actually acts.”

David Cohen is doing his shopping in Golders Green. He says he has always been a Labour voter but because of Corbyn he has “no choice but to vote Tory”.

He says: “There used to be a lot of support from Jews for the Labour party and now it has flipped the other way.”

Mr Cohen does not agree with the existential-threat view and feels there would be no need to leave the country.

“I think he would screw the country up so much he wouldn’t last long enough to do any damage. He might get a few things through, but there won’t be the need to pack bags and leave for Israel.”

His wife Ruth is fed up with seeing stories about Jeremy Corbyn and antisemitism everywhere in the media, she says.

“I think it is saturating the market and it doesn’t work in our favour as a community.

“It makes people hate us more because it looks like this is all we go on about.” And she adds that, however bad Jeremy Corbyn may seem, “it is not enough to make me leave the country.”

In Hendon, Zack Epstein, 32, feels the same. He believes Mr Corbyn is much more “a disaster for the economy.

“I am more concerned about that than what it means for the Jewish community. A lot of business would leave the UK if he got in and we would be in a huge mess.”

While he and his wife, Zipporah, would not consider leaving they do have friends who say they would “seriously consider the upheaval of moving their family to Israel,” says Mrs Epstein.

Linda Sharp, has been a Labour voter for more than 40 years, and says she cannot believe how the party has become engulfed in an antisemitism row.

“My dad was a staunch Labour voter; it is part of who we are. We came from the East End. But I won’t vote for Corbyn,” she says.

“He is a throwback to the ’60s. I don’t think he will look at me and say ‘I don’t like you because you are Jewish’ but he has allowed antisemitism to spread among the party membership unchallenged.”

“Labour used to care about people and equality. That is what I knew it to stand for.”

 

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