Ken Loach hits back against accusations of anti-Semitism

Prominent British filmmaker Ken Loach has hit back against allegations of holocaust denial by accusing his critics of double standards for failing to denounce Israel’s ongoing violations of human rights and international law.

Loach wrote a response earlier this week to an article by the Guardian columnist, Jonathan Freedland. The director and long-time Labour Party member penned his refutation in an opinion piece -“Guardian’s one-eyed view of Labour politics ignores the Palestinians”- for the publication’s ironically labelled “Comment is Free” section. However, Editors of the paper – a role assumed by Freedland himself until 2016 – refused to carry his refutation.

Loach accused Freedland of resorting to “hints”, “innuendos” and “cynical journalism” in his article which claimed that pro-Palestinian activists, like him, have pushed the British Labour Party towards a “dark place” for “denying” anti-Semitism within their ranks.

Responding to the serious accusations made against him and two other prominent leaders in the left of British politics; Len McCluskey and Ken Livingstone, Loach said that the “taint of anti-Semitism” was “toxic” while explaining that the “exaggerated or false claims of anti-Semitism can create a climate of fear in which legitimate discussion about the state of Israel and its actions are stifled”.

Freedland made the controversial claims last week, during the Labour Party conference. Many pro-Israeli commentators used the occasion to undermine the party’s leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who has been a staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause. Before Corbyn’s rise to prominence, Freedland himself lent support to a campaign through his influential position in the Guardian to malign and vilify the Labour leader. He later admitted he was “wrong” while others pointed out that the author was trying to “claw-back” his credibility through his half-hearted apology for rallying against the popular labour leader.

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Critics of Freedland have pointed out that the Guardian columnist has a blind spot when it comes to Israel despite professing to be a liberal. One commentator said: “His support for Israel is unbalanced, violates the Guardian’s commitment to liberalism and is rooted in an ethnocentricity that enables him to alternatively ignore Palestinians and justify their forced transfer out of Palestine.” The writer goes as far as to say that Freedland “justifies the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians”.

In his latest piece, which some say demonstrates Freedland’s deep hostility towards critics of Israel, the author said that Loach and others on the British left were denying anti-Semitism “for sinister, nefarious purposes”. He then offers what he believes is evidence of anti-Semitism within the ranks of Labour, including a BBC interview given by Loach, which Freedland purports “ends up lending a spurious legitimacy to Holocaust denial”.

Loach pointed out that accusation of anti-Semitism against the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn was “led by his political opponents inside and outside the Labour Party, seeming in part to be aimed at undermining Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters and therefore his leadership”. Citing the Jewish Socialists’ Group (JSG) he said that the “accusations of anti-Semitism are being weaponised to attack the Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour Party”.

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Denouncing the serious allegation that he had given “spurious legitimacy” to Holocaust denial Loach said: “The Holocaust is as real a historical event as the World War itself and not to be challenged,” and admitted that “those who deny Auschwitz would be ready to remake it.”

Pointing out that Freedland writes frequently about Israel, Loach explained that “it is the Palestinians who are marginalised or ignored”. He accused Freedland, who professes to support human rights and liberal values, of putting the universal rights of Palestinians in second place to Israel’s colonial interest.

Loach’s article published by the Jewish Voice for Labour following the Guardian’s refusal, challenged Freedland to acknowledge that “land stolen from the Palestinians should be returned to them and all illegal settlements removed, as UN Resolutions demand; that Israel is breaking the Fourth Geneva Convention by transporting Palestinian children to Israeli prisons without access to lawyers or their families; and that the deliberate destruction of civilian life, hospitals and medical facilities in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge were war crimes.”