You realize its quite possible for a politician to be a good local candidate but represent a party with shitty policies?

So its quite reasonable that you would have second thoughts about rewarding a politician who has done your area well, but represents a party who's policies you vehemently disagree with.

And when the other candidates seem no better, abstaining is actually a fairly reasonable thing to do.

Not all of us base our vote purely on how friendly said politician is to the israeli cause...

FTFY.

Tom

Your choice is intriguing - why didn't you vote for the candidate you think is best ?

HTHs

Often but not all. And the reverse is true as well. Plenty of evangelical christians and atheists are staunch zionists but could not be considered jewish.

Depending on where you are and the nature of the local jewish community, you may well find that zionism is not representative of all jewry at all.

Its like saying there are more blacks in prison, therefore blacks are criminals. Correlation is not causation.

If Corbyn wanted to refer to jews, he would have said jews. When the comment was made, he wasnt that bothered about offending people because he was fairly invisible. Most people hadnt heard of him until 2 years later, so he probably wasnt as vigilant as he should have been about his wording. He's campaigned his whole political life in this arena, so it would require some impressive mental gymnastics to believe he didnt know the difference.

Consider that earlier this year, Corbyn had a passover seder (meal) with a jewish group in his own constituency (ie, people he represents). Everyone bar him and his posse was jewish, but nobody was a zionist. The deep irony of this seder was that other jews lambasted corbyn for having dinner with these particular jews, because they werent the right kind of jews - they werent zionists.

The whole jews =/= zionists discussion is very polarised, and you're right that some people do use the terms interchangeably. Corbyn, however, clearly doesnt.

With respect to the mural, this referred to a comment dragged up from 2012, 3 years before he was a leader and 6 years before it was reported. Corbyn came out afterwards and admitted it had been a stupid comment to add, and that he wholeheartedly supported its removal. As other people have said, it seems more naive and silly, rather then premeditated and antisemitic.

The explosive comment in question?

“You are in good company, Rockerfeller [sic] destroyed Diego Rivera’s mural because it includes a picture of Lenin"

Which policies do the Tories have which impact you so much so you couldn't bring yourself to vote for their candidate ?

Some background to the comment.

At a meeting convened by The Palestinian Return Centre in 2013, Corbyn gave a speech. In that speech he talked about how important it was for people to understand the origins of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

He then referenced a speech by the Palestinian ambassador to the UK, Manuel Hassassian, in Parliament, in which the ambassador gave an account of the history of Palestine.

after the reference Corbyn said [about Manuel's speech]:

“This was dutifully recorded by the, thankfully silent, Zionists who were in the audience on that occasion, and then came up and berated him afterwards for what he had said.

They clearly have two problems. One is that they don’t want to study history, and secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, don’t understand English irony either.

Manuel does understand English irony, and uses it very effectively. So I think they needed two lessons, which we can perhaps help them with.”

Now, draw your own conclusions, but that doesn't scream 'antisemitic, jew hating, Hitler-loving, genocide-encouraging monster' to me.

Sometimes, and i know this seems crazy, but people have strong feelings for policies which do not directly impact them. Sometimes, they feel for the people who are affected by said policies.

What a crazy world we live in, where people consider the impact of government policy on other people.

A hidden rhetorical question, eh? How interesting..

Thank you.

I don't know who the bloody Corbyn is, but he seems like a cult to me.

Right, I'll switch to the Trump thread...

Not a rhetorical questio, you made a decision which is interesting - accroding to J2488 you voted against your own interest so the general public would benefit.

It is very altruistic. Most people vote for their own interests.

According to research, most people vote the same (more or less) as their immediate circle (family & friends). Did you ever vote Tory ?

What can I say? He has his own agenda. His own concept of what is important to people. His own set of priorities.

Yes, for Cameron. E. Miliband made me want to howl.. (David was the better choice for labour then)

Unfortunately, Cameron came with snake in the grass Osbourne, Gove, et al and the rest is history. Sadly.

No, I agree that it doesn't, but people don't always display their prejudices blatantly. I just can't believe that a party leader would be such a bumbler that he'd continually say or do things suggesting prejudice towards one section of the community purely by accident.

Comparing Germans/Nazis with Jews/Zionists doesn't work as most Germans aren't Nazis (or weren't; according to Wikipedia Nazi party membership in Germany peaked at 10% of the population).

Poll: British Jews Are pro-Israel but Critical of Its Government

Why Anti-Zionist Jews Are a Minority

What made the current conservatives so bad you couldn't bring yourself to vote for their candidate ?

You make it sound uncommon. People vote for all sorts of reasons, not always for their own interests. How do you define that anyway? If you vote for the good of your own kids, is that your own interest or theirs?

If you vote for your own community, is that still your own interest or the interest of all?


Nah. Whereas it might be like that in some circles, there's also a large element where the generational gap / differences in education, etc., cause offspring to vote completely opposite to their parents.

There was an Op-Ed piece not so long ago in the Telegraph (?) by one of their journos lamenting the fact that his feckless kids were all voting Labour when he'd been a staunch Tory all his privileged life.

"Kids today don't know what they're talking about!!"

Do you have a link to a research backing your claim ?

Zionism, is a tricky word because it means subtly different things to different people. People like the Antifa like to bandy the term freely and with inflationary results.

In its earliest sense, Zionism was the movement that aimed to establish a homeland for Jews. Not even necessarily in Palestine but somewhere in the world. Herzl for example. An anti-zionist would thus by extension be a person who thinks there shouldn't be a country for Jews, in any form or any place. In other words, Israel needs to be wiped off the map.

Somewhere along the road and thanks to inflationary usage, a Zionist has become some sort of a nazi-esue racist Jewish supremacist.

For starters:

May sold out the JAMs to concentrate on making a dog's dinner out of Brexit. She also surreptitiously kept all Osbourne's devastating policies up and running after firing him - 'tis the reason he hates her so much.

Can't find the exact article I referred to in my post but this one's kind of in the same vein...