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Monday Moan: what did Momentum's Jackie Walker do wrong in comments about anti-semitism

00:00, 03 October 2016

updated: 09:24, 03 October 2016

Of course anti-Semitism must be stamped on. All forms of racism are evil and wrong.
But was Jackie Walker, the vice-chairman of left-wing campaign group Momentum, being racist in the comments that brought about calls for her suspension from the Labour Party? I think not.

Let’s look at what she said. First, she said Jewish financiers funded West Indian sugar plantations on which African slaves worked.

I don’t know on what evidence she based this assertion but I assume she has done her research. If it’s true, why should it not be stated?

Momentum vice-chairman Jackie Walker
Momentum vice-chairman Jackie Walker

At an anti-Semitism training day she said she had never found a definition of anti-Semitism she could work with, and questioned whether Holocaust Memorial Day should be widened to include other genocides.

Well it’s a point of view, and as far as I can see is not particularly anti-Jewish.
The call for Ms Walker’s dismissal is unwarranted, and puts in danger our rights to free speech. To accede to such demands, in a sense, collaborates with the very people who ran the Nazi death camps for whom free speech was an abomination.

'It’s a sensitive subject, but sensitivity shouldn’t mean it can’t be discussed'

Ms Walker and her husband are Jewish, which certainly qualifies her to talk about the subject. Of course it’s a sensitive subject, but sensitivity shouldn’t mean it can’t be discussed.

I should have thought that in a world where women and children are being blown to pieces by despots, causing the biggest mass movement of refugees in living history, there would be more important things to excite people’s delicate susceptibilities.

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