Letters: Anti-Semitism claims are diverting our attention

First the issue. I too refuse to accept the full International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition and full examples of anti-Semitism as it stands because it deliberately conflates being Jewish, which I empathise with, and the actions of the Israeli state, whose policies concerning the Palestinians are abhorrent.

Those who apply the full range of examples, like the Scottish Government and other institutions, do not do so in my name or with my support and I defend my supposed “right” of free speech to criticise the Israeli state’s government wherever and whenever I disagree with it. If this deems me to be anti-Semite then that is disappointing, but I’ll live with it.

Conflating the two merely serves to give carte blanche to the Israeli state to perpetuate the misery of their shabby treatment of the Palestinians in the Middle East; on pain of individuals criticising and striving to hold them to account being labelled anti-Semite and ostracised.

Second, use of the issue. It is clear that this faux issue is being deliberately cranked up as a diversion from the real issues today; Trump and the US, Brexit, Scottish independence, the widening wealth gap and the food banks and poverty that requires them.

Detractors outwith and within the Labour party are playing politics which can only result in a continuing Tory administration and the havoc their agenda wreaks on pensioners, the working class and the poor.

Isn’t this as abhorrent as any form of racism, anti-Jewish or otherwise? And doesn’t the IHRA definition and examples need to be revised to separate Jewish people and their religion from the State of Israel where others who are not Jews also live?

Jim Taylor
Edinburgh

READ MORE: ‘Oddly quiet’ Richard Leonard told to speak up over anti-Semitism

THERESA May is in a corner, in three corners to be more precise. Michel Barnier, in the one corner, has rejected Chequers leading to the humorously absurd response from Jacob Rees-Mogg, in the second corner, that he agrees with Michel Barnier or vice-versa. In the third corner are the pro-Remain Tories who feel Chequers does not go far enough.

As the arch-Tory European Research Group are going to put an even more extreme proposal to their conference, a proposal more in the no-deal direction, it is obvious that the Tory cudgels are out for May from two sides.

It is also a real Westminster-centric crisis. Labour are, well, somewhere around, but on what we cannot tell as its leader is not so much in a corner but up the creek. The LibDems are just off the radar. The SNP have maintained consistently that we must still be part of the single market and customs union to avoid chaos. But it is a party outwith the maelstrom of Westminster for obvious reasons, looking at the whole end game from the inside-outside. It will be the “end game” for Westminster whatever the outcome. A final denouement.

It is drawing up the bridge and regressing into a remorphed and trumpeted “splendid isolation”, trying somehow to go back to a scenario which was neither splendid nor isolation in terms of its position worldwide. This constant harking back to a golden era is the problem the UK duopoly parties suffer from. Labour to the early 50s and 60s and the Tories to Victoriana.

The EU is, on the contrary, reaching out to the wider world as the so-called post-war Atlanticism is being blitzed by the increasingly erratic and isolationist Donald Trump. We are mesmerised trying to understand his contradictory one-liner tweets expressed in an infantile register, and puzzle what is likely to become of US domestic and foreign policy.

The Westminster tack of aiming for bilateralism all round is a damp squib in terms of scale and influence. It is a two-bit player compared to the EU!

The only “reassuring” word from the PM about a no-deal Brexit was a tired and jejune “it won’t be the end of the world”. Is that all she can muster as an encouragement?

John Edgar
Kilmaurs

LAST year Theresa May, in a speech during the election she had called to try to increase her slim majority, said: “It is never a mistake to give people the opportunity to vote”. I wrote it down at the time.

Presumably she was acting on the belief that voters have a right to change their mind, and that since Cameron had only achieved a small majority the people had a right to change their mind and give her a bigger majority.

Now we are told that to give people the right to change their mind is a “gross betrayal of our democracy”. Little wonder that there is so much cynicism in politics.

Nick Dekker
Cumbernauld

I CAN appreciate where Carolyn Leckie is coming from when she worries about “mass loyalty without facts” (We should trust the FM to navigate this storm, September 3). However, I take exception to her inference that people who contributed to Alex Salmond’s crowdfunding regarded Nicola as being “invisible”.

Most people involved probably take the view that both Nicola and Alex are right – the former in her determination that no-one is put off from coming forward in the context of abuse, and the latter to ensure all parties to a charge should be dealt with fairly. It is obvious to many commentators, professional and otherwise, that fairness has not prevailed in this case.

The simple truth is this. I, and many others, who supported Alex do not trust the Scottish Office – especially in light of the Carmichael debacle – and want to know who leaked the story to the press because it appears to have been done with independence targets in mind.

Dennis White
Lanark

READ MORE: We should trust Nicola Sturgeon to navigate this storm