Jon Lansman, the founder of the pro-Corbyn Labour group Momentum, said the biggest problem in dealing with antisemitism in the party was those who were “in denial” about it.
He told the Limmud Festival on Monday that it was important to draw party members away from those who denied antisemitism but that “the most influential antisemitism-deniers, unfortunately, are Jewish anti-Zionists”.
The Momentum leader, appearing at Limmud for the third year in succession, attempted to convince a largely sceptical audience that Labour was trying to tackle its antisemitism problem. While it was trying to speed up disciplinary investigations, he conceded the pace had been to slow.
He said Mr Corbyn had been “very hurt by accusations that he is an antisemite, which I do not believe are true” and rejected suggestions the Labour leader was obsessed with the issue of Palestine.
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.
