So to today's (where I am), yesterday's (where you are) sad events. Which are complicated, to put it mildly.

Let's get one thing straight to begin with. Neither Rebecca Long-Bailey nor Maxine Peake have an antisemitic bone in their bodies.

Let's get a second thing straight too. There is no question that antisemitism was weaponised for political purposes against Jeremy Corbyn: bringing down many good people in the process. That was just awful.

What I found most awful was how a narrative was employed to terrify my fellow British Jews into voting against Labour. How politics was played with as sensitive an issue as is imaginable; in some cases, played by people who in practice, couldn't care less about British Jews.

That narrative - as with so many others in British politics over the last decade - worked. With appalling consequences for everyone.

But - you surely knew there was a 'but' coming - that's not to say there isn't antisemitism on the left. There is; as there is everywhere else.

When it occurs on the left, very often, it's completely unwitting: done so by people who care a great deal, but are horribly ignorant of history or context. Such people need to be educated about that history and context: very urgently.

There is no other form of racism in which the response of some on the left is too often to deny it's taken place at all. Even that denial is, almost always, well intentioned: because people know how cynically the issue has been weaponised. Isn't this just another example?

No, it's not.

The comment in question - which Maxine Peake has since withdrawn and apologised for - was about the Israeli secret service. Not the Israeli police; the Israeli secret service. Mossad.

And the context here is of racist conspiracy theorists having long blamed Mossad for horrors such as 9/11 or Isis. You'll find such nonsense all over the place. It's just the latest example of a 2000-year-long tradition: when in doubt, blame the Jews.

Confused by world events? Blame the Jews. Mossad's orchestrating it all, know what I mean?

That's not to say that Mossad are 'nice people', by the way. What secret service in the world is? Secret services do horrible things all the time.

It's just that, for some strange reason, no-one talks about MI5 or MI6 in the same way. Or the secret services of any other country except the US. Just like no-one talks about the 'British lobby', the 'French lobby' or the 'Russian lobby' - only the 'Israeli lobby'.

While the Israeli government commits atrocities on a horribly regular basis and is a disgrace, Israel isn't some evil, sinister creation. It's the embodiment of the Jewish people's right to a state.

Yet to judge by attitudes to it, you'd think it was the most evil thing on Earth

Which, again, seems awfully like the continuation of 2000 years of the Jewish people being treated as uniquely awful, uniquely evil. It's just that now, those doing so have replaced 'the Jews' with 'Israel' or 'Mossad' or 'the Israeli lobby'.

And - sometimes - by 'Zionism' or 'the Zionists' or 'the Zionist lobby' too. But only sometimes. As I've said many times before, anti-Zionism is not in and of itself anti-semitism in any way; it *can* be though, depending on the intent and words of the speaker.

People really do need to ask themselves though. Why, in a world of so much horror, so much pain, so much cruelty, is Israel and Mossad constantly singled out in a way no other state or secret service is? As I said, it's unwitting - but far too many people do it.

And no: acknowledging all that context doesn't mean opposing the Palestinians in any way.

I believe in Israel's right to exist and I always will. I believe in the Palestinians' right to a state of their own and will always support them in that.

See? It's not difficult.

There's also something of a blind spot on the left when it comes to antisemitism. It recognises hatred and abuse instantly - and offers solidarity and support to the victims of it. But what's so little understood about antisemitism is the stereotypes which surround it.

A lot of people have an inbuilt assumption that most Jews are white and wealthy (or at least middle class). And with the Holocaust now 75 years in the past, there's also a general attitude of "what do they have to complain about?"

Those stereotypes - which as with all stereotypes, are wrong - then lead at least some on the left to, consciously or otherwise, dismiss smaller cases of antisemitism... because they think it's a case of punching up, not down.

There isn't a chance in the world that any case of racism towards any other group would be dismissed by some on the left in the way some tried to do so yesterday. That dismissal stems from a) sympathy for RLB; b) fury at Starmer; c) general obliviousness; and d) ignorance.

Because you see folks: very many Jews are neither white, nor wealthy, nor middle class. Many Jews live lives of persecution in various parts of the world. Corbyn, for his part, was never oblivious to that: hence his support, for example, for Yemeni Jews.

And you might also like to ask yourselves: why are places throughout the Middle East and Muslim world, which once had huge Jewish populations, now host to so incredibly few Jews. Who didn't all move to Israel out of positive choice; but in practice, were driven out.

In significant parts of the world, Jews aren't welcome. This isn't even mentioned on here at any point. I find that strange and sad.

Further obliviousness stems, I think, from how many Jews 'blend in' easily to their environments. So ask yourselves why they feel the need to.

And by that, I don't just mean: "Why did my great-grandfather feel the need to change his surname from Lazowski to Lawson when he arrived in England early last century?"

I mean: why do Jews feel a need to blend in easily now?

You'll get your answer from Orthodox Jews - who regularly suffer appalling abuse. And who feel especially protective of Israel because it's the only country on Earth in which Jews are in the majority.

Christians don't face that reality. Nor do Muslims, or Hindus, or Buddhists.

Stop for a moment and think. Most people reading this will never have experienced that reality: of only being the majority in one country on Earth - a country which, with the possible exception of the right and Iran, is demonised more than any other.

But to return, at (even greater than usual) length, to what happened yesterday. Maxine Peake has already apologised. Yes, Israeli defence forces and police do train their US counterparts: training which does not include chokeholds, as Amnesty have acknowledged too.

And at the risk of stating the bleedin' obvious: there's zero evidence that the Israeli secret services are involved, BECAUSE NO-ONE KNOWS WHAT THE SECRET SERVICES ANYWHERE DO. The clue lies in the word 'secret'.

Given this, what should RLB have done? Deleted the tweet, and apologised immediately. But... she didn't.

In failing to do so, did she commit some awful crime? No, not at all. Her biggest problem in all this is she just doesn't know enough about it.

And in failing to do so, she allowed that awful narrative - a narrative believed by large numbers of Britons, Jews and non-Jews alike - to rear its head again. Oops.

Had she shared an article containing an antisemitic conspiracy theory? Yes, she had.

Did she mean any harm by it? Absolutely not. Is she a fundamentally good human being? Hell yes. But... she blundered, and her failure to see this is what caused her dismissal.

Is it sad? Yes. Corbyn would certainly have handled things very differently.

But here's the thing. Labour are in the business of winning elections. Not losing them through indecisiveness and rank bad judgement. The narrative cut through and helped the Tories win - and I don't know about you, but I don't want the Tories to keep winning.

So when I see Labour and Starmer rising in the polls, I'm pleased. It gives me hope. It gives millions hope.

Labour, though, have two fundamental problems with the electorate:

1. Our brand's been trashed (including by many on our own side)

2. The ex-leader was viewed as weak

When seeking a different outcome, it is not a good idea to do the same thing as before. Starmer took decisive action - which will have won him support in the country at large, and among Jewish people we need to vote for us, at the same time as infuriated very many on the left.

Can I understand why they are infuriated? Yes, absolutely. As I said, Rebecca didn't commit some crime or something. She just blundered - on the one issue above all which nobody on the Labour frontbench can afford to blunder on.

To those in full battle cry and denouncing Starmer, I have a question.

"Are you seriously saying that you're going to leave the Labour Party and/or demand a new leader because he sacked a member of his team for sharing a racist conspiracy theory?"

That, in the end, is the reality. Observing too many on here trying to claim there was nothing antisemitic in the article was embarrassing, quite frankly. It shows how much further we all have to go.

Which, incidentally, was something I'd already concluded after watching Long-Bailey's performance at the Jewish Labour Movement's hustings in February.

If you have the chance over the weekend, I really recommend you watch the whole thing.

Not least because of something Starmer says about Zionism which will REALLY surprise his many incandescent critics on here.

In that hustings - a hugely important one given events of the past couple of years - I was bewildered at RLB. Whose responses were horribly weak.

She sat with her chair turned away from the audience for most of it; and demonstrated a degree of cluelessness over the whole issue which worried me, hugely.

Not because she's a bad person. She's not! But because she just didn't know enough about it. Or anything like enough

Rebecca Long-Bailey is a profound force for good who I hope will be back in the Shadow Cabinet before too long. But her political judgement lets her down. It did when taking far too long to announce her leadership candidacy; it did over "ten out of ten"; it has so again now.

So - is Starmer now preparing 'war against the left'? No, he's not. But he is a decisive leader who will not tolerate bad judgement and blunders such as this. That's the reality of politics: especially in the face of a disastrous Prime Minister.

Next up in this saga will, of course, be the EHRC report: another part of the context behind Starmer's decision. That context cannot be ignored. We cannot wish it away. And if we are to win, we need the votes of several million who didn't vote for us last year.

It is, I'm afraid, wildly apparent to me that those fulminating against Starmer's leadership have no alternative which would win. A lot of them are simply advocating the same old thing, in the wake of Labour's worst defeat since 1935.

The same old thing won't work, people.

But for my part, I'll be watching the response to the EHRC report - and even more so, to the Labour Leaks investigation - with great interest. Justice must be done and *be seen* to be done.

Has it been so in RLB's case? Given all the context I've set out, it has, yes.