For the first time in my life, I’m frightened to be Jewish
JVL Introduction
In a world where racism is being normalised David Graeber, Prof of Anthropology at LSE, is very worried about being Jewish.
In a passionate essay, he explains what is particularly upsetting him: the weaponisation of antisemitism accusations against the current Labour leadership, a campaign sustained primarily by people who are not themselves Jewish.
It is, argues Graeber, exploiting “Jewish issues in ways guaranteed to create rancour, panic, and resentment”… “so cynical and irresponsible that I genuinely believe it to be a form of antisemitism in itself. And it is a clear and present danger to Jewish people.”
Thanks to David Graeber for permission to repost.
This article was originally published by openDemocracy on Fri 6 Sep 2019. Read the original here.
For the first time in my life, I'm frightened to be Jewish
And non-Jews attacking the Labour party aren’t helping
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This piece really hits home at the central danger of the ‘antisemitism’ scam.
“so cynical and irresponsible that I genuinely believe it to be a form of antisemitism in itself.”
Precisely – its manipulation of the facts is entirely cynical and dangerous, in terms of its alignment of the (supposed) leadership of the ‘Jewish community’ with reactionary politics.
As many before have said – for decades whether a member of the Labour Party was an irrelevance, and the majority of us have not seen any evidence of antisemitism in our lengthy experience.
Now, manipulated by cynical anti-Corbynism backed by the Israel lobby, there is a fictional distinction made between Jewish and other members of a Party deceptively called ‘institutionally racist’.
Dangerous indeed.
Excellent reminder of what’s been happening over the past four years and the importance of this being understood. The current febrile atmosphere and the worsening situation we are entering makes the need to recognise this even more crucial.
Add John Mann, Tom Watson and Ian Austin to the list of Labour MPs stirring up false charges of anti-Semitism in Labour Party.
Excellent read and so relevant today.
I would add that the dangers associated with the political antisemitism smear extend to all other ethnic minorities. The distraction from the largely far right perpetrators of hate crime assaults puts them all at increased risk.
One recent survey shows that compared with Jews, communities of immigrants, Gypsy/Travellers and Muslims have up to 5 times the risk for future violent hate crimes post brexit.
The Conservative Party has done much to incite racial intolerance yet are spared scrutiny, almost all media attention is directed at the political campaign of alleged antisemitism in Labour.
So this article will be very welcome for all those who are genuinely concerned about the security and well-being of minorities, including all Jews of course.
While this essay makes some powerful points about the campaign against “anti-Semitism” in the labour party and its role is fostering real anti-Semitism and fear amongst Jews – and it is good to have David Graeber’s support against the witch hunters – it actually misses the point. The main losers in this campaign will be the Palestinian people, who could eventually be deprived of any active support or even advocacy in Europe and North America if it achieves its objectives. Only by ignoring this aspect of the campaign could fail to see that the main forces behind the campaign are in fact Jewish. There is ample evidence that the Israeli ministry of strategic affairs, the establishment Jewish organisations in the west and their Zionist supporters initiated this whole thing. David Graeber also does not mention the fact that the majority of the “instances of anti-Semitism” in the LP cited by the media have been nothing of the sort, just trenchant opposition to Israel and its policies, while some others seem to be trolls in social media posing as LP members in order to discredit it. Yet others are misguided people who muddle up their opposition to Israel and support for the Palestinians with generalisations about Jews. This group, probably politically naive, is the one that could grow in number as a result of this Zionist witch-hunt and is an illustration of why it is so dangerous, a fact David Graeber helpfully emphasises. Lastly, a tual Jew-hating anti-Semites in the labour party are likely to be very few in number and probably non-existent in its far left, as David points out.
Brilliant piece of writing. As the politics swing to the right and antisemitism gathers pace under Trump, Netanyahu, and Johnson the jewish community has more to fear from them and their followers than they do from the left.
Scapegoating is a route to fascism, and fascism feeds on racist views – throughout history these have fostered anti-semitism.
The failure of the BBC and other MSM to do due diligence on the accusations and allow Watson, Hodge and co to make their accusations unchallenged, and allow the Board Of Deputies similar Lea way whilst granting them prime news airtime has been a major contributory factor,
People like Netanyahu want people like David Graeberto be frightened.
It is part and parcel of a policy of encouraging aliyah to Israel.
After the Paris murders, Netanyahu flew over to appeal to French Jews to migrate out of France and into Israel.
Netanyahu is not alone in pursuing such a policy, which is designed to boost the numbers of Israelis so that the numbers of boots on the ground can be deployed to boost the numbers residing in illegal settlements.
As we know, true Christian zionists heavily support this policy too.
Like Balfour before them, they are the real Judeophobes, who want to cleanse their lands of Jewish blood.
Today’s Tories – with their deliberate “hostile environment” – are also engaged in a post-Brexit feeding frenzy, in which anyone not like them is to be “encouraged” to move somewhere else in the world.
Watching the current BBC series “Rise of the Nazis” shows just how easy it is for a fringe party headed by a charismatic leader to end up becoming the most powerful person in the country by sheer accident.
Is it speculative to imagine a general election outcome in which a possible Leader of the Brexit Party becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom?
David Graeber has every right to feel frightened.
And so do all the rest of us.
PS: Philip Ward is right: this phoney alt-right campaign is obscuring the concerns many of us have for the poor Palestinian people too.
I noticed in the Campaign Against Anti Semitism demo in Parliament Square there seemed to be a lot of people dressed as Orthodox Jews. Since the CAA seems to represent secular Jews and certainly Haredi Jews are anti-Zionist & often Labour supporters, were these people just dressing up? Is this not a gross example of literal cultural appropriation & thus a new anti- Semitic trope as well?
Mark
I think it is highly unlikely that people were ‘dressing up’ and it is quite wrong to leap to this conclusion. Some Haredi Jews are strong supporters of Corbyn, others are much less favourably inclined. No community is homogenous in its outlook and indeed there are different communities of Haredim with widely differing outlooks, not all of which are anti-Zionist. It is also, of course, possible to be anti-Zionist and desperately concerned about antisemitism. Almost all Jews are concerned about antisemitism, where we differ is where we see the threat coming from and whether criticism of Israel is driven by antisemitism. So it is quite possible to be anti-Zionist and also believe, although quite wrongly in our opinion, that the Labour Party is a major repository of antisemitism.
An interesting article. I must say I’m not frightened to be Jewish, particularly as a member of the Labour party. Antisemitism is a very minor issue in the party. Two of the main influences on creating this image for the Labour party are (1) the attacks on Jeremy Corbyn and the leadership together with (2) the pro-zionist elements among Jews, including the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Labour Movement, who regard criticism of the Government of Israel and support for Palestinians as antisemitic.