Antisemitism is real – but…
Published
by
Mike Cushman
JVL Introduction
Janet Parker draws on experience in Australia and elsewhere. She shows how stunts to produce alarm by provoking an antisemitic response distract from real problems of antisemitism and do Jews a disservice.
This campaign to exaggerate antisemitism allocates responsibility to opponents of genocide rather than on the radical right where it belongs. The aim is to suppress legitimate criticism of Israel and has resulted in the unjust punishment of students and many others.
MC
This article was originally published by Green Left on Wed 19 Feb 2025. Read the original here.
Antisemitism is real. We don’t need to invent shit
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Most Zionists are CHRISTIANS AND NOT EVERY JEW IS A ZIONIST. “Kick” anyone who tries to conflate the two.
In an article from August 2019 on the nature of the complaints of ‘anti-semitism’ made against the Labour party I wrote:
“Many of the complaints seem to be about what people say or have said. An otherwise excellent 85 page report from the Institute for Jewish Policy Research with the title ‘Antisemitism in contemporary Great Britain: A study of attitudes towards Jews and Israel’ by L. Daniel Staetsky says on pages 63 and 64 ‘However, what Jews are exposed to far more frequently are people who hold, and from time to time may express, views that make Jews feel uncomfortable or offended. A person expressing such a view (e.g. ‘Jews think that they are better than other people’) may hold this view in isolation and may indeed hold a weak version of it, but when it is casually voiced in front of a Jewish individual, it can cause considerable upset and concern.”
“Taken at its face value this means that one section of the population is demanding the right never to be offended and the right to tell us what we should think about them. This is a demand for exceptionalism.”
Note that Daniel Staetsky does not say that Jews are exposed to such expressions more frequently than other religious or secular groups. My wife is a Roman Catholic and has heard similar comments about her faith since childhood. No doubt some adherents of other faith groups have had similar experiences.
The quoted sections were taken from:
https://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-privatisation-of-totalitarianism.html
Labour “sold the pass” when – under extreme pressure – the party accepted the IHRA definition. Corbyn was right to resist this for as long as he could – words are sometimes the most damaging weapons self-interested humanity has.
I’ve often wondered why so few have pointed out the basic flaw in the IHRA example of antisemitism: “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination e.g. by claiming that the existence of the State of Israel is a racist endeavour.” Acceptance of that definition is racist and Islamophobic because it entails “Denying Palestinians their rights to self-determination by claiming that their resistance to occupation is antisemitic”.
Hopefully one day soon the Jerusalem Definition will replace the IHRA formulation …