Jenny Rathbone, a Labour member of the Welsh Assembly who was suspended from her party last November after she had suggested that the Cardiff Jewish community’s fears about its safety were “in their own heads,” has been “readmitted to the group at the start of the spring term,” The Jewish Chronicle reported Wednesday.
On November 13, Rathbone was asked about Cardiff United Synagogue and the rising hate crime, and replied: “The fact that the Jewish synagogue in Cyncoed has become one of these, you know, fortresses, is really uncomfortable,” then wondered “how much of it is for real and how much of it is in their own heads is really hard for an outsider to judge – but I think siege mentalities are also part of this.”
As in the big siege of 1939-1945, perhaps?
According to the JC, Rathbone is a loyal supporter of party chief Jeremy Corbyn, and has been known to say that wave of anti-Semitism in the UK resulted from “the failure to come to a peace settlement around Palestine and Israel,” and that Israel “drives peoples to be hostile to the Jewish community in this country,” adding: “I think the Jewish community has a responsibility to try and promote peace in the Middle East.”
But today all is forgiven, apparently, and Rathbone, who may or may not be facing a Labour party investigation of her clearly Jew-hating and Israel-hating statements, has been rehabilitated.
The JC was instrumental in getting the anti-Semitic pol in hot water by publishing a recording of her (very polite) diatribe. But no amount of exposed vile recordings, apparently, can stop the Labour party train from transforming into the John Birch Society.