Naz Shah, parlamentsledamot för brittiska Labour, stängdes av från partiet på grund av antisemitiska inlägg på sociala medier. Hon har bett om ursäkt och medgivit att inläggen var antijudiska. Avstängningen har nu hävts.

I Haaretz 18/7 skriver Shah om sin okunskap om antisemitism och om hur hon nu försöker lära sig mer om problemet. Ett utdrag (för att läsa artikeln krävs prenumeration ):

”And after saying sorry, must come learning. I was blessed to be invited to a local Synagogue to be challenged – compassionately challenged. I came out understanding more about what I had done. We didn’t agree on everything – but that wasn’t the point.

Skärmklipp Shah Haaretz

I was attacked by some for bowing down to the ‘Zionist lobby’ – a reminder of the opaque language modern anti-Semitism hides behind. I realized that if my dream of seeing the end of the occupation is to be realized, we need more conversations – not less. And we need to absolutely remove any trace of the poison of anti-Semitism from these conversations.

Nobody in the Jewish community has asked me to completely refrain from criticizing Israel. Anti-Semitism isn’t about Palestine/Israel but it often appears in discourse around it. As Baroness Royall and Shami Chakrabarti have made clear – Zionism must not be used as a term of abuse. I will never shy away from speaking out against unacceptable acts of the Israeli government. I want those criticisms to improve the situation, not to evoke deep existential fear.

My understanding of anti-Semitism was lacking. I didn’t get it. I don’t believe in hierarchies of oppression but I’d never before understood that anti-Semitism is different – and perhaps more dangerous – than other forms of discrimination, because instead of painting the victim as inferior, anti-Semitism paints the victim as, in a way, superior and controlling. Many parts of British society must also understand this – especially as parts of the political class enable the Islamophobic far-right in this post-Brexit world.

But this isn’t just a far-right problem. I find it tragic – as an ethnic minority Member of the British Parliament who is Labour to the core – that some Jewish people now tell me that the UK Labour party is no longer their natural political home. This is understandable. But if there is one party where every minority community in Britain belongs, it has to be the Labour Party. After the Party’s anti-Semitism inquiry, there is hope that this will be restored.

For me you don’t have to be black to get racism, you don’t have to be a woman to get feminism, and you don’t have to be a Muslim or a Jew to get Islamophobia or Anti-Semitism.”

Läs mer om Labour och antisemitismen här  och här.