Britain's Jewish community so deeply concerned by the prospect of Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn winning the next general election that community leaders have launched a campaign to undermine his premiership candidacy.
A recent poll by the Jewish Leadership Council, a British-Jewish advocacy group, found that 47% of British Jews would "seriously consider" emigrating if Corbyn is elected prime minister.
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Some 87% of British Jews believed Corbyn to be anti-Semitic, and 90% said they will not vote for Labour, the poll found.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson called the general elections, set for Dec. 12, following his failure to push the Brexit deal through Parliament. Johnson's promise to have the UK leave the European Union by Oct. 31 had been a key element in the Conservatives' leadership bid, which brought him to power in July.
Corbyn has been repeatedly lambasted for his failure to tackle anti-Semitism within Labour. In 2018, the party received 863 complaints of anti-Semitism but took action in only 101 of those cases. Worse, Labour members who have publicly made statements such as "Jews are the problem" have remained in the party despite complaints against them.
All three of Britain's leading Jewish newspapers made an appearance on #Marr this morning, as @johnmcdonnellMP fails to make any kind of hard line on #LabourAntisemitism.
Says he's "saddened" by it. pic.twitter.com/j0STRAhAEy
— Jewish Telegraph (@JewishTelegraph) November 3, 2019
According to the Jewish Chronicle, prominent British Rabbi Jonathan Romain has even taken the unprecedented step of urging congregants to vote against Labour, warning that a Corbyn-led government "would pose a danger to Jewish life as we know it."
"I should stress that the problem is not the Labour Party itself, which has a long record of fighting discrimination and prejudice, but the problem is Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn-led Labour, has at best, let antisemitism arise within its ranks, or at worst, has encouraged it," Romain wrote in a letter to the 823 families who are members of his Berkshire shul.
"This has never happened under any previous Labour leader … so the finger of responsibility really does seem to point to Jeremy Corbyn. I am therefore suggesting we should each put aside all other considerations and vote for whichever party is most likely to defeat Labour in whatever constituency we are in – even if we would never normally vote for that party."
The Jewish Telegraph echoed the sentiment, tweeting, "The Jewish Telegraph the and most right-minded British Jews believe that Jeremy Corbyn poses an existential threat to the community."
The daily quoted chairman of the Conservative Party James Spencer Cleverly warning that some British Jews "are so fearful" about a future in which Corbyn would be prime minister that they would leave the UK if he "got anywhere near the levers of power."
Corbyn said Sunday that British Jews "have nothing to fear" if his party wins the December elections.
"Anti-Semitism and racism is an evil within our society. I've done everything to confront it throughout my life, and will always do so," Corbyn told the Guardian newspaper.
"We want this country to be safe for all people. An attack on a synagogue, an attack on a mosque, an attack on a church – an attack on a person walking down the street because they're perceived to be different from the rest of us – we simply can't tolerate it," he said.
