By JEREMY SHARONLabour MP Luciana Berger(photo credit: REUTERS)
Luciana Berger is a prominent member of the UK Labour Party who was elected as an MP at the age of just 29, has served in two shadow cabinet roles and has spoken out forcefully and acted against the phenomenon of antisemitism that has grown within her party in recent years.Berger, who represents a constituency in the north-west city of Liverpool, is currently the parliamentary chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, a formal affiliate of the Labour Party which campaigns within the party and the UK for labor values in the UK and Israel.Berger has been subjected to vitriolic outbursts of antisemitism during her stint as an MP, and she has spoken out in particular against Labour members who have engaged in such rhetoric.In 2016, she reproached former mayor of London Ken Livingstone for his comments saying that Hitler supported Zionism, and more recently called for the suspension of a senior ally of Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn for comments he made saying that the allegations of antisemitism against Labour were being invented by the Jewish community.Berger also backed a motion by the Parliamentary Labour Party, comprised of its members of parliament, calling on the party’s National Executive Committee to adopt in full the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism with all its examples, which was passed by the MPs but rejected by the committee.With UK politics in turmoil over the Brexit negotiations to extricate itself from the EU, the ruling Conservative Party is weak, divided and unstable.Despite the numerous revelations of Corbyn’s personal associations with terrorists, anti-Zionists and antisemites – and the many other incidents of antisemitism involving Labour members – the party is polling either tied or ahead of the Conservatives.As a prominent member of the Jewish community in the UK and a vocal opponent of antisemitism in her party, Berger’s role in combating the resurgence of various forms of this scourge could become even greater should Labour take the reins of power in the country.
