Mea Culpa. by Les May

WHEN I wrote the recent piece ‘Blackmailers Always Want More’ I described Margaret Hodge’s attempts to avoid the potential consequences, for her, of calling Jeremy Corbyn a ‘fucking racist and antisemite’ I wrote; ‘This must surely be one of the most preposterous exaggerations that any politician has ever uttered’.

I failed to recognise that not all Jewish people would automatically accept her comments at face value. This was a mistake on my part. Below I give the transcript of a response by the historian Michael Finkelstein.

“Dame Hodge hasn’t a clue what it means to talk about deportations, having a suitcase and being prepared to flee. My parents, both of them, were in the Warsaw Ghetto from 1940s until the repression by the Nazis of the uprising in 1943. They were deported at the Umschlagplatz. If you go there now there’s a monument to the deportees, and my mother’s name Maryla and my father’s name Zacharias; they’re on that monument.

“You haven’t a clue, Ms Hodge, Dame Hodge, you haven’t a clue what you’re talking about. You know the suffering? You know the death? My mother used to talk about how she walked the streets of the ghetto and there were dead bodies all around her. She lost both of her parents, all of her family: her sisters, her brother were deported. But unlike you Dame Hodge they weren’t deported to a summer home, they were deported to a death camp. My parents ended up in Auschwitz and Majdenek, and slave labour camps. Where are you going Ms Hodge? To Switzerland? To your chalet? And you have the gall, the brass, the audacity to compare your life with what my parents endured.

“You felt it was like 1930s, when you got a letter from the disciplinary committee. I wonder Dame Hodge when you were in sixth grade and your principal called you down to his office, did it bring back memories of the Holocaust? Or maybe you got a letter from the tax office, and they called you down, did that remind you of the Holocaust? What’s the point… What’s the relevance… What’s the pertinence of dragging in the suffering, the death, the martyrdom of what Jews endured during World War II in this context, except to cheapen and exploit the memory of Jewish suffering, as you carry on a blackmail and extortion racket against Jeremy Corbyn.

“It’s disgusting, it’s revolting, and if any of the rules that are now being implemented in the Labour Party have any meaning whatsoever, if they have any content whatsoever, the first person who should be booted out of the Labour Party is Dame Hodge, for trivialising the memory the Nazi Holocaust and for making wretched, disgusting, repulsive comparisons between herself and what Jews endured during World War II.

“Speaking of bags and suitcases, Dame Hodge, it’s time now to pack your bags, pack your suitcase, and get the hell out of the Labour Party.”

The transcript is taken from; https://wallofcontroversy.wordpress.com/2018/08/23/norman-finkelstein-calls-out-dame-hodge-and-speaks-to-the-crucifixion-of-corbyn/

The original video can be found on YouTube and at; http://normanfinkelstein.com/2018/08/16/norman-finkelstein-to-dame-margaret-hodge-you-havent-a-clue-what-youre-talking-about/

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