Do Jews count?
JVL Introduction
Leah Levane, like many other critical commentators, finds David Baddiel stunningly unself-aware.
While agreeing with him that antisemitism is real, it is racism, many Jewish people are genuinely afraid, she is astounded by his many blind spots.
To claim that “Jews don’t count”, especially on the left, when the narrative since 2016 has been dominated by grotesquely exaggerated accounts of how much of a threat antisemitism has been and remains on the left is both bizarre and dangerous.
Its argument that Jews are uniquely discriminated against (“don’t count”) reinforces the idea of a hierarchy of racism. It has the effect of belittling the overt, well-documented and often embedded anti-black racism and Islamophobia (among other racisms), that are widespread in our society, including within the Labour Party.
Jews must not try to go it alone: they need to stand with others if they are to be effective in fighting antisemitism.
Photo of David Baddiel reproduced by permission of Chris Boland
This article was originally published by Counterfire on Sun 27 Nov 2022. Read the original here.
Do Jews count?
David Baddiel’s Channel 4 film focusing on antisemitism and the progressive left promotes a hierarchy of racism that only benefits the right argues Leah Levane
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The section in a Jewish school, where they prepared the kids for an attack, was that in this country
If so, its wrong on so many levels
Safest country in Europe for the Jewish Community thanks to JC and the Labour Movement
Why would you do that to the bairns, put that fear into them when there is no justification for it
“Non-Jewish victims of Nazism included Slavs (e.g. Russians, Belarusians, Poles, Ukrainians and Serbs), Romanis (gypsies), homosexual men; the mentally or physically disabled, mentally ill; Soviet POWs, Roman Catholics, Protestants, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Spanish Republicans, Freemasons,’black people (especially the Afro-German Mischlinge, called “Rhineland Bastards” by Hitler and the Nazi regime), and other minorities not considered Aryan (Herrenvolk, or part of the “master race”); leftists, communists, trade unionists, capitalists, social democrats, socialists, anarchists, and other dissidents who disagreed with the Nazi regime.”
Wikipedia
DB polices every mention of bigotry against minorities to make sure Jews are given pride of place. Do he object every time the Holocaust is mentioned and no reference is made to the persecution of groups he is not a member of?
He has no interest in solidarity with the wider group of the oppressed, which is why he has no understanding of and no liking for the left. He criticized Corbyn on Frankie Boyle’s nasty comedy show for always making a point of including other groups in his condemnation of antisemitism, as if this indicated a moral failing. ‘Why can’t he just say it was the Jews?’ he complained.
He doesn’t get it. This is not just a lack of imagination, it is a lack of humanity.
Leah Levane is generous to Baddiel, whose threadbare arguments and transparent disingenuousness would hardly merit attention were it not for the large state and corporate media resources available to him and the adulation of organised apartheid lobby groups with whom the comedian would presumably disclaim any affinity. As Jonathan Cook points out, the political vacuity of Baddiel’s tirade against “progressives” is unmasked both by his own account of his personal experiences of antisemitism and by Jason Lee’s question to him in Lee’s podcast of their encounter: who did Baddiel think of as allies in the fight against racism? Cook notes that this was the one moment – more so even than when he had to apologise to Lee – that Baddiel looked genuinely flummoxed.
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2022-11-24/david-baddiel-apology-jason-lee/
If Baddiel’s thesis that “Jews don’t count” in British society were correct, one might wonder why certain elected UK politicians noted more for their political opportunism than for their moral courage or dedication to truth are so keen to advertise a tenuous Jewish connection by highlighting the existence of some remote Jewish ancestor.
I was astonished to discover that the former MP John Mann, now “antisemitism tsar” and Baron Mann, is listed in Wikipedia as a “Jewish politician” despite, according to the Jewish Chronicle and other sources, having no Jewish antecedence. Of course it is entirely possible that the noble Baron is unaware of this unsourced error on the part of Wikipedia, in which case he will doubtless seek to have the entry removed as soon as he has been informed.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_Jewish_politicians
David Baddiel’s claim that Israel doesn’t concern him and that he is not a Zionist should be treated with scepticism. When Corbyn suggested meeting openly with JVL and other Jewish groups such as Jewdas, Baddiel was at the forefront of objecting.
When Baddiel wrote his book, he took it round to Starmer’s house. Why would that be? Did he feel some kind of affinity with Starmer and his determination to ‘root out antisemitism.’ i.e. critics of Zionism. Given Badiel’s long record of racism his profession of concern about antisemitism should be treated with derision.
At a meeting 2 nights ago on the Labour Files one of the speakers exclaimed that she was sick of hearing about antisemitism. I understand that because the whole ‘antisemitism’ narrative in the Labour Party has been about denying Palestinian rights. Who would believe that the Board, which has never once in its 240 year history organised a demonstration against antisemitism, be so concerned about it under Corbyn?
For the first time in its history the Board of Deputies held a demonstration against ‘antisemitism’ in March 2018. Its target Corbyn and among attendees were those well known anti-racists Norman Tebbit and Ian Paisley jnr. Prominent amongst the demonstrators were well known Jewish supporters of Tommy Robinson such as Jonathan Hoffman. Yet no one, certainly not Baddiel called them out for their misuse of the term antisemitism.
This was the same Board who in 1942, when news was received of the Slovakian deportations were approached by the Federation of Czechoslovakian Jews who asked for the BOD’s co-operation in organising a demonstration. They refused. The Federation went ahead and held a public demonstration and rally. The Bishop of London, two Christian MPs and the Czech Interior and Rehabilitation Ministers spoke, but not the Board. Both the Secretary, Abraham Brotman, and the President, Selig Brodetsky, refused to attend.
This is the Board’s history yet Baddiel has worked in tandem with them throughout the attacks on Corbyn, including making a few of his own. This hypocrite should be denounced not entertained or flattered.
Baddiel is a licensed critic of the Jewish Establishment in this country. His singling out of ‘antisemitism’ is a continuation of Zionism’s exclusivism.
Can we not question Jewish ‘power & control’ in Government & MSM? Can we not wonder what mechanism was used to promote & guarantee the acceptance of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism throughout Britain, Europe & USA. Israel has powerful friends, may some of them be Jewish? We cannot because it is a trope & banned by the IHRA definition. You dare not think it, because if you do, you are an anti-Semite by definition.
David Baddiel’s claim that Jews don’t count does make good sense in the context of the Stalinist purges by the Labour Party, attempting to silence Jews who campaign for justice and human rights in Israel. That being said, there undoubtedly is antisemitic racism about but it is important to differentiate two things: historic racism can’t faithfully represent contemporary practices; and anger provoked by Israeli injustices cannot be subsumed in a general accusation of antisemitism.
Leah Levane’s commentary is spot on. I find Baddiel’s views on Jewish identity and anti-Semitism both myopic and self serving, for he ignores how principled anti-racists within and outside the Labour Party have been smeared as being self-hating Jews for standing up for Palestinian equality and justice. He also ignores the powerful tradition of Jewish internationalism which was expressed in opposition to South African Apartheid and more recently in support of Palestinian rights.