Flora Gill

Is Labour trying to troll the Jewish community?

On religious holidays it’s customary for politicians and parties to send out well-wishing notes to the celebrating group. An ‘Eid Mubarak’ to Muslims, a ‘Merry Christmas’ to Christians. The practice has become so assumed that to not do so is often viewed as a slight or offence.

Yesterday, on the first day of the Jewish festival of Passover, the official Labour Twitter account sent out a message of support. As we all know, accusations of the party’s institutional anti-Semitism has been a contentions debate for the last three years under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. You would expect Labour then to be making every effort to prove this label unfit and unfair. However, the group’s Passover message, while captioned with pleasant greetings wishing Jewish people a ‘Chag Sameach’, included a graphic of the Star of David, (fine), a glass of wine (appropriate) and a loaf of bread (not OK).

The post that appeared on Labour’s Twitter feed

If you don’t know much about Passover you may not be aware that one of the cardinal rules of the period is not eating leavened bread; it’s pretty integral to the whole period. Instead Jews eat things like Matzo crackers in remembrance of the Israelites who, when escaping Egypt and slavery, didn’t have time to wait for their bread to rise. This weekend I was up in Manchester to celebrate Passover with my boyfriend’s family. When the tweet came out everyone was shocked yet unsurprised. Initially we assumed it was a product of Photoshop. ‘It’s like celebrating Ramadan with bottles of wine’ my boyfriend’s brother tells me, or ‘Chanukah with a bacon sandwich,’ his mother ads. So, is it intentionally anti-Semitic? Some people seem to think so. David Hirsh, author of the 2017 book ‘Contemporary Left Antisemitism’ wrote on Facebook: “The Labour Party is trolling the Jewish community now”.

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