‘The choice is one between anti-racism and Zionism as such’

JVL Introduction

In a highly critical essay, Eli Machover takes the authors of The Runnymede Report on antisemitism in the UK to task.

They had an opportunity to confront issues surrounding Jew-hatred and “Jewish safety” within the context of ethnonationalism, and the alliance we have seen between Israel in its genocidal war on Gaza and the British state.

In Machover’s assessment they missed it.

The contradiction the Report’s authors see between a “thoroughgoing anti-racist politics in the UK”, and “the current regime in Israel”, contends Machover, is an incorrect formulation: it should be the contradiction between being Zionist and anti-racist.

Following Joseph Finlay, Machover finds the authors’ use of  their theory of antisemitism as a “reservoir” – “a repertoire of stereotypes and stories embedded in our common culture that is drawn on in moments of crisis and tension” – flawed. As he does its use to explain Labour’s (manufactured) “crisis of antisemitism” under Jeremy Corbyn.

“Only by repudiating ethnonationalist misconceptions of Jews and antisemitism,” argues Machover, “will Jewish people be in a position to disengage from a ‘vertical alliance’ with the British state and enter into [the] ‘horizontal’ anti-racist movement” which the authors are keen to advocate.

RK

This article was originally published by Vashti on Fri 23 May 2025. Read the original here.