Is it antisemitism? A talk by Brian Klug

JVL Introduction

We publish here the text of a talk by Brian Klug to a National Education Union (NEU) Educators Conference on Palestine held at Hamilton House, London on 23 March 2024.

In a clear, dialogical way Klug teases out the issues at stake when his 7-year-old granddaughter was upset by three remarks made to her by fellow kids at school in the context of the war on Gaza.

Were these remarks antisemitic? This is one of Klug’s two questions and his exposition is a model of how to think about this issue.

But his second question is perhaps even more important: How can people live together in difference? And here his discussion shows that how things are heard matters enormously, that words that are not racist in themselves can nonetheless be experienced as othering and upsetting.

RK

Every day brings fresh news about the growing catastrophe in Gaza. At the same time, the ordeal for the people who were taken hostage on 7 October continues. All of this has a knock-on effect on children here. Against this background, my brief is to talk specifically about antisemitism in the school setting. I shall not let my political views about Palestine- Israel intrude. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have them.

I have spoken about antisemitism on countless occasions, but I confess that doing so today, here in this hall, makes me a tad nervous. I might not look 11, but, addressing an audience of mainly teachers, that’s roughly the emotional age to which I have regressed. Looking out at you all, I can’t help feeling as though this were some kind of test or exam, and if I fail then you will give me extra homework to do for Monday, which means I won’t be able to play in the park tomorrow with my friends. All I can say is: please don’t be too strict.

In all seriousness, I am only too conscious of the fact that you are the professional educators in the classroom, I’m not. You are on the frontline in schools, not me. You know the ins and outs of dealing with children of different ages, from 5 to 18. In short, you’re the experts. All I can do is hope that my brief comments, along with the perspective that I shall offer at the end, will be useful to you in your work as educators.

I’ll start with an anecdote about a young Jewish girl who recently was on the receiving end of three remarks made by classmates at her school. She found all three remarks upsetting. Were the remarks antisemitic or not? This is the first of the two main questions I’ll raise. The answer, of course, depends on what the word ‘antisemitism’ means. So, I’ll try to bring the word into focus, after which I’ll give my verdict. I’ll go on to suggest, however, that the question ‘Were the remarks antisemitic?’ might not get to the bottom of what matters to the girl who was upset by the remarks, and what should matter to us too. This last point will segue to the second of my two main questions, which I take from the late and great cultural theorist Stuart Hall: How can people live together in difference?.[1] That’s a lot of ground to cover, and I’ve got 15 minutes in which to cover it. Which means I won’t! All I can do is set out my stall.

Let me lay my cards on the table: the girl whose experience I am about to describe is my grand-daughter. Call her Miriam. (That’s not her real name.) Miriam is 7. As a Jewish child, she is in a tiny minority at her school. I speak as someone totally objective when I say that she is the brightest and most empathetic little girl on the planet. She is strongly affected by the suffering in Gaza. But she is also upset by the way that some of her friends at school, friends who are not Jewish, speak to her about it. These are the remarks that I’ll discuss:

1. “I hate Jewish people.”
2. “I want to blow up Israel.”
3. “The Christians wrote the Old Testament and the Jews stole it.”

Were these remarks antisemitic or not? This is my first main question.

What is antisemitism? Here is a clear, concise definition: “Antisemitism is racism against Jewish people.” You might recognize this definition. It’s from ’Tackling antisemitism’, a document that the NEU has produced and posted on the web (along with other first-rate material on related subjects). Here’s another definition: “Antisemitism is discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish).” It’s part of the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA). Put the NEU and JDA definitions together and what do we get? A useful guide to what the concept means; and with complex concepts like antisemitism (or racism or Islamophobia), a definition can do no more.

But it can do less. A poor definition can be confusing. A very poor definition can mislead us. At worst, it is politically loaded. Whether this applies to a certain definition of extremism announced last week by the Communities Secretary, I really couldn’t say. But I won’t mince my words when speaking about the famous (or notorious) IHRA Definition of antisemitism. (IHRA is an acronym for International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.) It is not useful – except to people who use it to try to clamp down on free speech, suppressing support for the Palestinian cause or branding legitimate criticism of Israel as antisemitic.[2] It’s not that the definition overtly takes this political position, but, because of its many flaws, it lends itself to this. How? Well, where shall I begin? I’d better not begin! I hope to be at the two workshops on antisemitism later, when I could go into it further, if that’s what people want. Suffice for now to say that if a definition is a form of words that clarifies a concept, then, by definition, the IHRA definition is not a definition.

None of this has stopped it from spreading around the globe, like a definitional pandemic. Here in the UK, numerous bodies have adopted it, such as the Government and the Church of Scotland. Also the Football Association and Premier League! It’s as if the IHRA definition has been written into the rules of the beautiful game.[3] It’s a bit weird; and worse than weird.

I understand that the IHRA Definition is liable to become an issue in schools (which is why I mention it). If so, if it becomes an issue in your school, do bear in mind that it is not the only game in town. There is the JDA, as well as other alternatives. Actually, when a number of us got together to write the JDA, it was precisely with a view to stopping (or slowing down) the runaway IHRA train.

Of course, criticism of Israel can be antisemitic. It’s important to know when. We devoted quite a bit of the JDA to drawing the line between political speech about Israel and Zionism that should be protected, and speech that is antisemitic. (If anyone is interested, you can find it on the web, with supporting material, at jerusalemdeclaration.org.)

Getting back to Miriam: the question is whether the three remarks that she found upsetting are antisemitic or not. To help us consider this question, let’s do as I suggested earlier and combine the NEU and JDA definitions. This is what we get:

Antisemitism is racism against Jewish people; that is to say, discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish).

Call this ‘the Joint definition’. Using it as a resource, let’s consider, in turn, the three remarks that upset Miriam. (To be clear: the question is about the remarks, not the children who made them.)

1. “I hate Jewish people.” I take it that this expresses hatred of Jewish people as Jewish, based on the fact that the people who are bombarding Gaza, killing and maiming tens of thousands of people, destroying homes, hospitals and schools, are Jewish. The remark lumps all Jews together, tarring them with the same brush. If this is not racist, then the word has no meaning. And if antisemitism is racism against Jewish people, as the Joint definition says, then the remark is antisemitic, full-stop.
2. “I want to blow up Israel.” Why? Because it’s a Jewish state? Or because of what Israel, as a state, is doing to Gaza? Without further evidence, I think it is reasonable to assume that it’s the latter: the reason why this child says she wants to blow up Israel is because Israel is blowing up Gaza. That might be a terrible thing to want and to say, but it’s not antisemitic: it doesn’t target Jews as Jews. Yes, Israel defines itself as Jewish, and the world sees it as Jewish, but the anger expressed by the remark is not directed at the state because the state is Jewish but because of what the state is doing. To repeat: this doesn’t mean that the remark, and the sentiment behind it, is not reprehensible. But a remark doesn’t have to be racist to be reprehensible.
3. “The Christians wrote the Old Testament and the Jews stole it.” This child is a little confused about ancient chronology. She might not pass her Religious Studies exam, but is there more to it than that? Is the remark merely ignorant? Or is it antisemitic? There is a long history of anti-Judaism in Christianity, in which Jews, collectively, have been portrayed as villains and evil-doers. Down the centuries, religious anti-Judaism morphed into antisemitism (which is essentially a secular concept). So, this smells like antisemitism. On top of that, the only connection between the two crimes – the (alleged) theft of the Old Testament and the atrocities against the Palestinians – is that the culprits, in both cases, are Jewish. This strongly implies that this is what ‘the Jews’ are like: they steal and they kill, they’re merciless – which is an old antisemitic trope. (It’s also an old Islamophobic or anti-Muslim trope.) This sounds like hostility against Jews as Jews to me, which, according to the Joint definition, is antisemitism.

So, here’s my verdict. The first remark is obviously antisemitic. The second clearly is not. The third is less clearcut, but I’d say, yes, it is. What does this exercise show? I’m tempted to say what I used to say when, as a tutor, I set an essay question for students: Discuss. And there’s an enormous amount to discuss.

Now, it’s important, of course, to educate school students about antisemitism and other kinds of racism. With this in mind, the differences between the three remarks matter. But to a young child like Miriam, is it the differences that matter? Or is it something the remarks have in common? Well, it might depend on the personality of the individual child. Age might also be a factor. Again, you’re better placed to make these judgements than I am. But I want, in closing, to offer a perspective, with the seven-year-old Miriam as a case in point.

All three remarks were upsetting to Miriam. But why? I shouldn’t and can’t speak for her, but I’ll try to reflect how I think she was affected. With the first remark, “I hate Jewish people”, it’s obvious. She’s Jewish. The girl who said this to her is not Jewish. In effect, she was saying to Miriam: “I hate you.” Moreover, the Jewish children are a tiny minority at the school. So, because of her difference, Miriam was being, in some fundamental sense, rejected from the community of the class; or, in a word, othered. Whether Miriam could put this into words, it’s what I think she felt – with good reason. The second remark, “I want to blow up Israel”, troubled her because she has family in Israel, including young cousins, with whom she feels close. You can’t blow up a country without killing its people (as we see horrifically in Gaza every day). So, what Miriam would have heard was this: “I want to kill your cousins” – not because of anything they have done but purely because they are Israelis. Miriam feels for her cousins as cousins, not as Israelis. But as Israelis, they are pariahs. Once again, then, though indirectly, she feels personally the effect of othering: that’s, roughly, how I read it. The impact of the third remark on Miriam, “The Christians wrote the Old Testament and the Jews stole it”, hardly needs elucidating. Miriam, as one of ‘the Jews’, will have felt that the larger group to which she belongs is being maligned and, moreover, othered in relation to ‘the Christians’. In short, all three remarks were upsetting because, one way or another, they were othering. This, at any rate, is how I see it.

Seeing it this way, I want to close with my second main question, the question that the late Stuart Hall coined: “How can people live together in difference?” Hall was born in Jamaica but lived in the UK all his adult life. He was thus well-versed in diversity, the subject of much of his work. I see his question, “How can people live together in difference?”, as one of the definitive political questions of our times. It is a gauntlet that he throws down to us all: given our diverse identities – for example, Muslim and Jewish – how do we make room for each other? How do we share the same space, whether it’s the country or the classroom? The question I hear him ask is this: How do we say ‘we’? How can we say ‘we’, such that the word is inclusive: a ‘we’ without a ‘Them’ – without ‘the Other’? This question probably matters more to the seven-year-old Miriam, and perhaps to school children of all ages, than the question of what label to attach to which remark.

Which prompts one final question: What is the best way to raise this issue in the classroom? Don’t ask me. You’re the experts.

Brian Klug

References

1 Video conversation with Nira Yuval-Davis. See Nira Yuval-Davis, ‘Belonging and the Politics of Belonging’, Patterns of Prejudice, vol 40, no 3 (2006), p. 213.

2 Kenneth Stern, the lead author of the IHRA Definition, has pointed out that it “has been primarily used (and I argue, grossly abused) to suppress and chill pro-Palestinian speech …” (Kenneth Stern, “Biden’s Pick for Antisemitism Envoy Will Need to Answer These Tough Questions,”, Forward, July 27, 2021. See also ‘Written Testimony of Kenneth S. Stern’ before the US House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary, 7 November 2017, p. 7, available on the House.Gov website.)

3 This information is included in my essay ‘Defining Antisemitism What Is the Point?’, chap. 9 in Antisemitism, Islamophobia and the Politics of Definition, ed. David Feldman and Marc Volovici, Palgrave Macmillan, 2023.