UK: Church of England says Labour’s anti-Semitism is a right-wing plot

Archbishop Cranmer reports:

“Best wait for the vitriolic onslaught,” tweeted Fr Simon Rundell, when he was asked politely and courteously if he would like to add anything or clarify his assertion that Labour’s anti-Semitism is a fiction of the right-wing press, and that Conservatives are racist. “I never read your blog anymore, but you have the followers & the indignation,” he explained, seemingly preferring terse vitriol with a hint of indignation to the sort of measured civility one might expect from a Christian minister and curer of souls. So, one treads carefully with this post. Fr Simon’s preference is to block those who question him (no matter how courteously), and then to whip up his Twitter followers in… well, vitriol and indignation. But perhaps it is vitriol and indignation merely to point this out? Perhaps one ought simply to convey the facts, if it is possible to do so without indignation.

Fr Simon Rundell is a “Progressive, radical Anglocatholic Parish iPriest” (that is how he describes himself: presumably it isn’t vitriolic to point this out). Yesterday, he tweeted this:

Please note that he didn’t merely RT a comment: he explicitly endorsed this extract as “perceptive comment”, and expressed admiration for the author’s “insight”. The author says the Conservative Party is racist, and adduces as evidence for this a quotation from campaign literature used in the constituency of Smethwick in the 1964 General Election. The author also believes that Labour’s current problem with anti-Semitism isn’t a problem at all: those who believe it is are being “taken for a ride by our right-wing press”: it is, in short, a right-wing plot to smear the Labour Party. The evidence adduced for this is a reference to Palestinian children as “cockroaches” after “Israel bombed their school”, and a reluctance to comment on “the atrocities carried out in the name of Zionism”.

Setting aside the rather abundant evidence that Jeremy Corbyn appears to grasp the oppression of every minority except Jews; and the burgeoning dossier of anti-Semitism within the Labour Party, could someone please source which right-wing British newspaper referred to Palestinian schoolchildren as “cockroaches” after Israel bombed their school? Do, please, feel free to tell us in the comment thread: it would be an appalling dehumanisation if one did, but it isn’t immediately searchable on Google. Didn’t the right-wing British press report Israel’s bombardment of Gaza?

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