Jon Lansman faces sceptical audience at Limmud

But Luke Akehurst, secretary of the moderate Labour group Labour First and director of We Believe in Israel, argued the party’s failure to deal with antisemitism stemmed from the leader and some of those in his office. He was “sadly pessimistic” about the possibility of sorting it out on Mr Corbyn’s watch.

Mr Lansman disappointed many in the audience when he did not echo calls for the whip to be removed from Labour MP Chris Williamson following a tweet supporting a petition against Islington Council’s ban on a performance by the antisemitic Israeli musician Gilad Atzmon.

He doubted significant action would be taken since Mr Williamson had deleted the tweet and apparently apologised.

But he added, “we can’t tolerate this continuing” and believed  it was matter of time before the Derby North MP “ does something which results in a complaint being made which will then have to be investigated”.

Mr Akehurst said there was a case for proscribing the organisation Jewish Voice for Labour, which served “no useful purpose” and had been set up to delegitimise the Jewish Labour Movement.

While Mr Lansman did not support closing down JVL, he was dismissive of it. “It is an organisation which is not just tiny but has no real connection with the Jewish community at all,” he said. “It doesn’t  represent the Jewish community in a way that JLM clearly does represent the Labour wing of the Jewish community.”

Mr Lansman is due to return to Limmud later in the week to interview Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry, while other Labour politicians taking part in the programme are MP Wes Streeting and former Shadow International Development Secretary Mary Creagh.