Time to get real: Jews in Britain are not oppressed
JVL Introduction
In this polemic, Harold Immanuel throws down the gauntlet with a challenge to certain strands of thinking on the Jewish left, viz those which see Jews today as an oppressed people, marginalised in our society like other oppressed groups.
For Immanuel this is “dangerous territory”, and he is puzzled to see some in a younger Jewish left, committed to an open debate about progressive politics, mimicking the fundamental premise of the Jewish establishment that antisemitism is all around us.
It simply is not the case, argues Immanuel. This is not the Jewish experience in Britain today.
Comments welcome!
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Harold Immanuel founded his own law firm and now operates a human rights grant giving fund.
Time to get real: Jews in Britain are not oppressed
Harold Immanuel
When Liz Truss was successfully campaigning to become Prime Minister, she identified what she regarded as the Jewish “community” as a key ally and supporter. Indeed, she went so far as to make the silly claim that starting your own business is a Jewish value. In response, several Jewish leftists went on social media stating that, on the contrary, human rights are a Jewish value.
Are human rights a Jewish value? Indeed, what are the “universal” values that Judaism gave to the world according to many Jewish leftists? Contrary to what many apologists put about, human rights are nowhere to be found in the Bible. Inalienable human rights are rights with or without religion. That’s why the religious establishment in Israel has no interest in the universal values of inalienable human rights standards. You could claim, with more conviction, that jihad is a Jewish value given that, almost immediately after the foundation myth of the 10 commandments (in Exodus 20.1-14) the massacre of the 3,000 takes place (Exodus 32.26-35) because they declined to accept Yahweh as their God.
More pointedly, on the matter of antisemitism, there is a disappointing similarity between too many self-styled Jewish leftists and what they deride as the Jewish establishment. A very popular approach to understanding antisemitism in the US, and one which has gained surprising currency in Britain, is what its proponents call “middle agent theory” of anti-Jewish “oppression”. Jewish Currents, the leading US online magazine of the Jewish left, describes it in an editorial titled “How Not to Fight Antisemitism” as “the contemporary Jewish left’s working analysis of antisemitism” and points out that it “remains a fixture of left Jewish activist trainings” in the US. Ben Lorber, one of its proponents, explains, “antisemitism functions by locking Jews into middle agent roles: once some Jews have climbed to the middle rungs of society’s ladder… then, during times of … social instability, Jews as a group can be perceived as the ones in charge by other oppressed groups.” Jews are supposedly permitted if not encouraged to become “middle agents”, defined as including doctors, teachers and social workers, but also somehow manipulated into remaining in these positions so that, when the time comes, they can be blamed for e.g. economic disaster.
In short, it’s a conspiracy theory. And like many conspiracy theories, it’s also deterministic in the sense that it is presented as inevitable. But that doesn’t matter for its effect is, as Lorber explains, to give Jews their own equal “stake in the struggle” making them just as oppressed and marginalised as any other group. As a founder of the Jewish anti-occupation group in the US, IfNotNow wrote, “we must also acknowledge that we are an oppressed people” in an essay that, as Jewish Currents points out in its editorial, became “a kind of rallying cry for a Jewish left that could claim oppression and privilege together… White Jews could now show up in anti-racist organizing spaces on their own behalf, as partners instead of just ‘allies’”.
Health warning: it gets worse. The real enthusiasts add a large dose of what they like to call “Christian hegemony”, arguing that antisemitism is “rooted in … white supremacy and Christian hegemony”. This is not simply phrase-mongering. On the contrary, these notions are essentially at one with “the lachrymose version” of Jewish history. Since it’s allegedly been going on for so long, it fits conveniently with the belief that antisemitism is the oldest prejudice. As one Jewish leftist recently put it in a +972 webinar (on 14 September 2022), the British state has been “institutionally antisemitic forever”. By making clear that they’re second to none in alleging antisemitism, they help to entrench a worldview of Jewish exceptionalism that “positions Jews as humanity’s ultimate and unrivalled victims”.
The fantasy of Jews being as oppressed and marginalised as other groups has the opposite effect to that intended. As Jewish Currents points out, in practice it “poses a substantial obstacle to meaningful … work with those facing much greater marginalisation and violence …”.
It was a 2007 pamphlet “The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere” which originally promoted the middle agent theory. Its “core assertion” is that “antisemitism remains a real, active force in our society”. In reality this amounts to a claim that Jews are marginalised and oppressed, just like Black people. Except that it isn’t true. It’s based on a confused desire for a Jewish “identity” which they find in antisemitism. And in the exceptionalism of the Holocaust.
This is dangerous territory for what is, largely speaking, a younger Jewish left. One might expect them to be more in tune with the words of the late Chief Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits (from 1966-91) who, in the 1980s, urged young Jews not to make the Holocaust and antisemitism the major marker of their identity. Indeed, in 1979, Jakobovits warned against “breeding a Holocaust mentality”. “Would it not be a catastrophic perversion of the Jewish spirit” he asked “if the anxiety to prevent another Holocaust were to be relied upon as an essential incentive to Jewish activity?” And in a symposium in 1997 on the place of the Holocaust in the twenty-first century, under the auspices of the Institute of Jewish Policy Research and the Imperial War Museum, Jakobovits pointed out that “there is now no country officially committed to the destruction of Judaism. Yet no one has noticed this.” Antony Lerman who, as Director of the Institute chaired the symposium, recalls Jakobovits repeating his warning about antisemitism and Jewish identity. Unfortunately, too many young Jewish leftists seem closer to the approach of his successors, Jonathan Sacks (1991-2013) and the present incumbent, Ephraim Mirvis. Sacks was instrumental in shamelessly promoting the idea that antisemitism today has posed an existential threat to Jews in Britain and around the world, and Mirvis has doubled down on Sacks’s approach. Amongst Sacks’s many deliberate exaggerations was the extraordinary claim in a speech to the European Parliament in 2016 that: “In every single country of Europe, without exception, Jews are fearful for their or their children’s future.” Sacks attributed this to what he perceived as the anti-Jewish culture of universal human rights values and the rise of so-called “new antisemitism” which “takes the form of anti-Zionism”
I can understand why the unapologetically Zionist left, the misleadingly named Jewish Labour Movement, would give credence to Sacks’s approach. After all, they also promote the idea that antisemitism is all around us and getting worse. How could they not approve of Sacks’s successful promotion of an Israel and Zionism-centred, Jewish communal “renewal”? But I’m puzzled to see some in a younger Jewish left, genuinely committed to being a space open to a broader, less-exclusive approach to what it means to be progressive, unwittingly fall into the trap of promoting the fundamental premise of Sacks and others that antisemitism is indeed all around us.
A focus on largely imagined Jewish oppression and suffering, where antisemitism is always with us and from which we suffer as we struggle against it, can become a sort of comfort zone for some Jewish progressives. In important respects it is almost the mirror image of what they dismiss as the Jewish establishment which equally finds it politically expedient to find antisemitism everywhere and for all time. Except not quite everywhere. Boris Johnson’s “72 Virgins”, for example, where he describes Jews as controlling the media, was given a free pass. The only antisemitism it really worries about is found by them on the “left” – which means anyone (including Jews) who questions the Zionist narrative. Especially in the Labour Party.
How the right’s allegations of antisemitism have resonated with some Jewish leftists is shown in their willingness to promote the allegation that Jeremy Corbyn is an antisemite. Some Jewish leftists have no difficulty in referring to “Jeremy Corbyn’s antisemitism” as essentially a statement of the obvious. Now, if Jeremy Corbyn is indeed antisemitic – or, what amounts to the same thing, if the antisemitism allegations against the Labour Party were not exaggerated –the Jewish Chronicle, Jewish News, Jewish Telegraph and the Chief Rabbi would clearly have been right to warn that Jews faced an existential threat if the Labour Party, under the leadership of Corbyn and his leading lieutenants including Keir Starmer, had won the 2019 general election.
Much of this confusion emanates from people who have identity issues. It’s perhaps no surprise that many of those with an identity crisis receive “Re-Evaluation Counselling”, described by Lorber as a “therapeutic process” which has “spearheaded Jewish identity work”! It may be uncomfortable for some self-styled Jewish leftists to recognise but, if being Jewish is not simply part of your identity but is the fundamental part, you need to take care to avoid having more in common than not with others for whom being Jewish is the fundamental part of their identity too. Squabbling over what Jewishness is and alleging that Rosa Luxemburg’s worldview was as Jewish as the Baal Shem Tov’s doesn’t wash.
The distinguished human rights lawyer Geoffrey Bindman has described how, in the early 1950s, he was the victim of antisemitism when seeking to train as a solicitor. Bindman’s point is that it doesn’t happen today. What does happen today are regular meetings of the Jewish Leadership Council with the Prime Minister as the photos of the JLC with David Cameron (in the Cabinet Room) in 2015 and Theresa May in 2018 – at the top of this article – illustrate. It’s worlds apart from oppression and marginalisation.
Compare it with what a distinguished British black woman, prominent in the world of classical music, has to say about experiencing racism today. She’s Chi-Chi Nwanoku, the Founder and Artistic & Executive Director of the Chineke! Orchestra, the first professional orchestra in Europe to be made up of majority Black and ethnically diverse musicians. When discussing Beethoven at the BBC Proms on BBC TV in September she said: “We Black people … experience [othering] every day of our lives, as soon as you walk out of your front door…”. But of course, they wish they didn’t. Jews in Britain today experience no such othering. The JLC et al pretend they do to exaggerate antisemitism so as to bolster support for the Zionist project and to “other” Jews who disagree with them. There is surely no place for Jewish leftists to join in this delusion, claiming to be marginalised and oppressed to feel on an equal footing with Black people and others struggling against racism. It’s time for them to get real about their own experience.
Oh so agreed. I can only recall ever meeting one anti-semite in my life so far – and he wasn’t aware of it and to my shame I didn’t pick him up on it.
I refuse, REFUSE to equate criticism of the government of Israel and the current direction of zionism with anti-semitism. It’s preposterous, nonsense and surely another kind of fascism we should not tolerate?
We in no way experience any kind of racism to equal that experienced by Britons without white skins. In no way comparable.
I wish they would stop this and address the real problems in our society today with the same vigour.
A splendid polemic and one which I and my partner certainly agree with as to the present day. But surely Harold Immanuel is not trying to deride the concept of Christian hegemony? Actually imo the said hegemony is exactly the reason that J Sacks kept banging on about ‘Judeo-Christian heritage’ as a way of securing a place on the life raft. But Harold’s essential point is sound. The ridiculous book by Kahn-Harris ‘What does a Jew look like?’ was justified to me by a radical bookshop on the grounds that K-H’s view of all Jews being indissolubly linked had value. BTW universal human rights ARE a value that Jews have helped to embed since the time of Emancipation and that IS something to be proud of, even if there’s been such a falling off recently. The torah and bible writings are a jumble of different visions and it is possible to read them oppositionally , but the main official history as Harold says contains a recipe for genocide. However there has been evolution, from human to animal sacrifice and then to not making killing the centre of the religious rite. Something one could argue that the Christian mass (if anyone still literally believes in it) has not managed on a symbolic plane. Anyway well done JVL for publishing this broadside, and I bet there will be lots of opposing views!
An excellent article, if this non-Jew may say so. Of course some Jewish stereotyping still exists: I was brought up in postwar, downtown Leeds, and grew up with some people around me unpleasantly mimicking what they thought of as ‘Jewish characteristics.’ Yet we also were glad to live in a community with many Jews, to take advantage of Sunday opening to shop at a Jewish run bakers, to have an oriental-looking synagogue as a local landmark, to have Jewish friends at school, to see kosher products in the local grocery. We knew there were ‘differences’ but we lived alongside each other and respected each other. This, in general, is the story of my home city. It was not until the attacks on Jeremy Corbyn that the idea of an existential threat was raised.
Of course there has long been antisemitism. I’m a Christian minister and (sort of) theologian. The tragedy of the separation of our two faiths coming as a result of the Roman destruction of the Temple had the nasty effect of early Christianity and rabbinic Judaism feeling obliged to identify themselves in opposition to each other. Christian scriptures giving negative attitudes were a response to the contemporary divisions but were never intended to fix hostility for all time. Tragically the nuances got lost in the fight for growth and survival, and the Church became institutionally antisemitic. We have a lot to answer for. We helped to keep the pot of antisemitism boiling. Ironically, though, the massive shock of the Holocaust finally made it clear to very many Christians just how wrong we had been. Reconciliation was slowly under way – but then came Zionism with its just dream but also its victim complex. Once again we have caught each other going in opposite directions. What many portray now as antisemitism is not that at all; it is antiZionism, anti-Israeli atrocity.
I agree with Harold Immanuel. It is a part of the Zionist catechism to pretend that anti-semitism is everywhere because all non-Jews carry the ‘virus’ of anti-Semitism. And if anti-Semitism is inevitable in non-Jewish society then the only solution is to create a Jewish State.
Fundamental to Zionist ideology is the idea that anti-Semitism cannot be fought because it isn’t the product of society. It belongs to all of history. Jews are perpetual victims, the ‘lachrymose’ version of history that Salo Baron criticised.
Any serious analysis of anti-Semitism today cannot help but show that anti-Semitism is a marginal prejudice. State anti-Semitism disappeared in the 1950s. Jews were included in the White population. It was Black people, Muslims, Bengalis who replaced us in the East End as Jews climbed the socio-economic reality.
But for Israel and Zionism there is and was a need to a redefined ‘anti-Semitism’. Redefined as anti-Zionism. That is why, as Tony Lerman has documented, he was pushed out of the role of documenting anti-Semitism in the Antisemitism World Report by Mossad. [see Antisemitism Redefined in On Antisemitism – JVP].
Now why would the equivalent of MI6 be interested in collating statistics on anti-Semitism? Clearly because Israel saw it as an opportunity to not merely weaponise but to change the conversation from genuine anti-Semitism to anti-Zionism.
Yet people aren’t stupid. They know the real thing whatever the IHRA may say. It’s hostility to or prejudice against Jews as Jews (OED). The fact is today there is very little of it compared to other forms of racism.
Jews don’t suffer police violence, deaths in custody, being Jewish in charge of a car, Windrush scandals or economic discrimination.
This is a timely essay
There is a lot to consider in this thoughtful piece by Harold Immanuel. Not least the notion that are the ‘left wing Jews’ to whom he refers, actually left wing, or are they posing as being on the left in order to promote antisemitism, to give Zionism a legitimacy with a ‘left’ veneer? Although not Jewish, Kier Starmer springs to mind.
A pretty good piece but I really don’t think you can be a ‘Jewish progressive’ and buy into pervasive antisemitism. Again, the ‘unapologetically Zionist left’ in the JLM are not what I call the left, for two reasons – Zionism is incompatible with socialism, certainly, and the ‘left’ here are wedded to the centrist Starmer project, which if anything is veering to centre-right.
‘Jewish oppression’ is as we’ve seen the strategy to defeat the left domestically and our support for the Palestinians. It’s also bizarrely used by David Baddiel, who does nothing Jewish from what I can see. He certainly couldn’t care less about Israel. All he’s done is the opposite of what he intended – highlighting the widespread success of Jews particularly in the arts.
An important caveat is that Haredi communities are targeted with everyday racism. But they are mostly ignored by the ‘Jewish progressives’ – or derided by Baddiel as ‘stupid f-ing frummers’.
Just one point of disagreement, with these comments:
“what are the ‘universal’ values that Judaism gave to the world according to many Jewish leftists? Contrary to what many apologists put about, human rights are nowhere to be found in the Bible. ”
Why, if there are no universal values in the Bible, did Martin Luther King quote Amos 5: 24 in his “I have a dream” speech?: “let judgment run down as waters and righteousness as a mighty stream”? Or what about the universal vision of peace in Micah 4: 3 and Isaiah 2: 3-4 “and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more”? And surely this is human rights — Isaiah 3: 13-15 (addressed to the elders and princes of the Israelites): “What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces and grind the faces of the poor?” or 10: 1-3: “Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees…. To turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take away the right from the poor of my people, that widows may be their prey and that they may rob the fatherless!” Just a few examples out of very, very many.
The very way in which this debate has been framed means that it has to be debated. Corbyn’s mistake was to try and debate it rationally instead of denouncing the IHRA definition of antisemitism as nonsense and loudly combatting the accusations made against him. In over 60 years involved in and on the edges of the LP I came across racism against people of colour but never antisemitism.
As a guest on this site I must be mindful of my responsibilities – I am not Jewish and not Labour – but I do have a voice.
This is a tremendous piece; “polemic” is a fair enough descriptor, but it’s full of a lively energy that’s far from bellicose and makes some obvious points that seem to be commonly ignored, with wit and style.
If it were the case that antisemitism is, indeed, rampant and damaging the life opportunities of Jewish people, sociologists have relatively straightforward ways of assessing that. They would measure access to employment, educational attainment, housing patterns, levels of disposable income, life expectancy etc. etc.
I know of no such research that shows that being Jewish in the UK acts as a variable that damages one’s life chances in these categories. As Tony Greenstein has pointed out, it may be the case that the Jewish population in Britain has become the first to shed its proletariat.
From my years spent in tertiary education on the fringes of Manchester, I grew to understand that in educational achievement the group that showed up as the most disadvantaged and least successful was the white, working-class, male. There are many reasons for this, prominent among them social class, but no one ever suggested that whiteness or male identity were damaging factors. (The most successful group in my college were Bangladeshi girls, whose determination to get into university was such that their dedication to study made them every teacher’s dream.)
In Scotland, the insistence of one Zionist group to assert their right to bear the Israeli flag in an anti-racist demonstration – as an emblem of a persecuted people – led to the withdrawal of other more obviously disadvantaged groups.
The roll of victim has always been powerful; when a victim hits back, who can blame them? Who has the right to judge?
Well done, Mr. Immanuel. There was never a more pithy bull in the china shop.
Good article. I won’t repeat comments already made, most of which I agree with. But I have often thought that stating ‘human rights are a Jewish tradition’, or a core part of ancient beliefs, is as selective and unrepresentative as any fundamentalist picking out the holy book verses they interpret as supporting their views and beliefs, whether bigoted and hateful, or living and positive.
thanks for this…much good sense
Conflate wherever possible to ‘muddy the water’. Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism; is anti-Capitalism; is anti-Western (see HUAC/NATO/US/EU) & is therefore anti-Socialist; anti-Russian; anti-Muslim etc…………..simples. Discrimination or the lack of ability to discriminate rationally as one concept becomes another on the same side of the coin. Non-specific generalisations, un-critical thinking.
I agree with some of this. But the attempt to divide the world into a binary of oppressed and non-oppressed is reductive and misleading. A group can experience differential oppression in different places and different members of the group can have wildly different experiences of racism. In this case you must at least mention the regular physical assaults suffered by ultraorthdox (ie visibly Jewish) in Britain today. And the total absence of Synagogue shootings such as Pittsburgh makes the argument look seriously incomplete. There are clearly some contexts in which some Jews suffer violent and even lethal attacks in the contemporary world.
Isn’t it time JVL stopped posting comments that fraudulently discredit Jeremy Corbyn for not refuting the A/S claims – or ‘loudly combatting them’ as JW puts it in THIS particular thread – when it’s glaringly obvious from all that’s happened during the past seven years that to do so is just to invite yet more (faux) attacks and condemnation and vilification and demonisation. And faux outrage, of course!
But perhaps JW could tell us exactly what he or she would have had Jeremy say. But I doubt it somehow! I have now asked this question of more than a few people on this and other sites – including Skwawkbox and the Electronic Intifada – during the past five years or so, and not ONCE has anyone responded…. And for the obvious reason!
Back in April 2016 when the A/S black op first really took off with the Naz Shah/Ken Livingstine episode, Jeremy was hammered for refuting the claim that the LP had an A/S crisis. And John Mann – who undoubtedly knew that Ken was alluding to The Haavara Agreement when he said that Hitler was supporting Zionism – waited for him to arrive at the studios to appear on The Daily Politics so that he could fraudulently verbally attack him and, knowing full well that Ken had alluded to the HA, call Ken a Nazi apologist.
And you have to be really REALLY evil to plan and execute a stunt like that! And the WHOLE of the MSM played along with it, and have continued to play along with the A/S scam/deceit ever since. And THAT is why it is fraudulent to assert that Jeremy could have combatted and refuted the (phony) A/S claims. He couldn’t, because he was in a No-Win situation.
Of course there are appalling aspects of the Bible – on the one hand, monotheism means the brotherhood of all men under one God; on the other hand it can lead to fanaticism, intolerance and even to the stories about genocide that we find in the Book of Joshua and in the part of Exodus quoted here — though there is actually no archaeological evidence that these mass killings ever actually took place; they are stories arising from fanaticism on the part of some Biblical authors about the evils of idolatry. But surely we shouldn’t see this as the message of the Bible and ignore its universalist and human aspects. To say “human rights are nowhere to be found in the Bible” is just plain wrong; as wrong as to say that fanaticism, tribalism and genocide are nowhere to be found in the Bible. And it seems to me that in the prophetic books universalism predominates over fanaticism, tribalism and intolerance. To quote H. G. Wells in A Short History of the World: he writes that the prophetic books
“carried the common man past priest and temple, past court and king and brought him face to face with the Rule of Righteousness. This is their supreme importance in the history of mankind. In the great utterances of Isaiah the prophetic voice rises to a pitch of splendid anticipation and foreshadows the whole Earth united and at peace under one God…. All the prophets did not speak in this fashion and the intelligent reader of the prophetic books will find much hate in them, much prejudice and much that will remind him of that evil stuff, the propaganda literature of the present time. Nevertheless it is the Hebrew prophets of the period round and about the Babylonian captivity who mark the appearance of a new power in the world, the power of individual moral appeal, of an appeal to the free conscience of mankind against the fetish sacrifices and slavish loyalties that had hitherto bridled and harnessed our race”. (1922: London, 2006), p.101.
In answer to Deborah Maccoby, believers, whether Christian or Jewish, can and will find whatever they want in the Bible/Torah: it’s all there – poetic vision, great wisdom, genocide and monstrous inhumanity.
To prove my point consider H.G.Wells’s interpretation which Deborah cites in support of her thesis. Below is a utopian vision of “God’s purpose” for a united world from the very same prominent eugenicist:
“And how will the new republic treat the inferior races? How will it deal with the black? how will it deal with the yellow man? how will it tackle that alleged termite in the civilized woodwork, the Jew? Certainly not as races at all. It will aim to establish, and it will at last, though probably only after a second century has passed, establish a world state with a common language and a common rule. It will … make the multiplication of those who fall behind a certain standard of social efficiency unpleasant and difficult… The Jew will probably lose much of his particularism, intermarry with Gentiles, and cease to be a physically distinct element in human affairs in a century or so. But much of his moral tradition will, I hope, never die. … And for the rest, those swarms of black, and brown, and dirty-white, and yellow people, who do not come into the new needs of efficiency?
Well, the world is a world, not a charitable institution, and I take it they will have to go. …So far as they fail to develop sane, vigorous, and distinctive personalities for the great world of the future, it is their portion to die out and disappear. The world has a greater purpose than happiness; our lives are to serve God’s purpose, and that purpose aims not at man as an end, but works through him to greater issues”
I’m an associate member of JVL but I see the issue of anti-semitism and anti-zionsm differently to the other respondents. Jews are not oppressed in the same way that people of colour are – that’s true. Modern Anti-semitism is a very different thing to racism. Anti-semites see Jews as the personification of the hated effects of capitalism-not as inferior and sub-human, but, rather as a powerful and evil conspiracy. Much naive anti-capitalism easily slides into anti-semitism. In my opinion Jeremy needs to understand Moishe Postone’s analysis of left anti-semitism and make a complete and full apology for his unconscious anti-semitism. I am happy that the Jewish respondents are no longer experiencing much overt anti-semitism, but on the left we have a responsibility to Jews and our own movement to understand A/S with greater clarity. I have only recently seen an article in the New Statesman that I wish I had seen at the time (2018)
To combat left anti-semitism, Corbynism must change the way it sees the world: The Labour left’s personalised critique of capitalism as conspiracy encourages anti-semitic tropes. https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2018/03/combat-left-anti-semitism-corbynism-must-change-way-it-sees-world
David Hawkins is just recycling the myth of ‘left antisemitism’ which is talked up by the likes of David Hirsh, Matt Bolton etc. not on the basis of reality but to defend Zionism. Another David, Dave Rich, has been clear in his attack on the left that it is largely older Jewish anti-Zionists – such as the JVL – to blame for ‘left antisemitism’, thus stripping away any pretence that it’s anything to do with conventional antisemitism such as tropes about rich Jews.
In decades of activism in Labour and trade unions I’ve never heard anyone using such tropes. About the one thing that is true is people on social media using ‘Rothschild’ as shorthand for bad capitalism but I don’t think many but a hardcore few do so because the family is Jewish. And in any case genuine antisemites disqualify from being on the left… ‘left antisemitism’ is an oxymoron, and as Rob Ferguson has written, socialism is the antidote to antisemitism: “…socialist, anti-racist and anti-imperialist politics are not part of the problem: they are the necessary antidote.”
https://jewishvoiceforliberation.org.uk/article/labours-antisemitism-crisis-false-lessons-for-the-left
And much seems to depend on the one example of the infamous mural, which was not outwardly antisemitic but had coded antisemitism of David Icke behind it. You couldn’t tell that from looking at it as Bob Pitt has explained:
https://medium.com/@pitt_bob/antisemitism-and-the-brick-lane-mural-a-retrospective-assessment-8a4e6b67f259#c6bc
Re H. G. Wells: Sadly, quite a number of great writers at that time supported eugenics — Aldous Huxley was another one, despite the brilliant satire on eugenics in his early and best novel Brave New World. But this surely doesn’t vitiate the best writings of these authors — and Wells’s dystopia of an “efficient” World State surely doesn’t vitiate Isaiah’s wonderful vision of a united world at peace — nor, in my view, does Wells’s dystopia vitiate his assessment of the prophetic books.
David J Hawkins: I have yet to hear a reasonable definition of what ‘unconscious anti-semitism’ is, and even if I did,I would be hard put to work out what Jeremy Corbyn could have done that would require him to apologise for it. I am reminded of when I was teaching in the East End and I had cause to tell off a child for his misbehaviour in class. At the end of my tirade, he remarked, in a broad cockney accent, ‘it’s because I’m black, innit sir?’ I then gave him absolutely no doubt that his racial origins has nothing to do with my complaint,and I never heard that accusation again. Also, I was once attacked by a small mob of Asian teens because, as it turned out when I finally was able to to talk to them, an aggrieved boy in my class whom I had admonished for some wrongdoing avenged himself by telling his friends I was an anti-Muslim racist. I was quickly able to convince them that I wasn’t, and they apologised to me for taking their friend’s word for it. I remember these occasions because now I am led to understand that we have Jews who seem to make the assumption, whether they really believe it or not,that any problem with their own personal positions in life must have been provoked by the fact of them being Jewish; the corollary to this being that any setback they meet because they are Jews must be due, not to the malice of particular individuals who are personally anti-semitic, but due to the general tendency for society to be anti-semitic and therefore predisposed to confronting all Jews with their Jewishness. This is paranoia, and the concept of ‘unconscious anti-semitism’ is I suspect an expression of that paranoia. I am a Jew who has had to confront anti-semitism on certain occasions; but the plain fact is that the great majority of people I have met who know I’m Jewish don’t really care. They judge me for who I am as a person, and I am as sure as I can be that that is the experience of most Jews. Many also know that I am a Jew who opposes Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians, and I have yet to meet a non-Jew who doesn’t respect my view on this. I guess it is the people demanding apologies from Jews like me who should be apologising.
In response to David Hawkins: see my piece on a pamphlet called AntiPostone. Unfortunately, Anti-Postone was almost as incomprehensible as Postone, but I did my best to make what sense I could out of them both::
https://jewishvoiceforliberation.org.uk/article/how-attacks-on-left-antisemitism-end-up-defending-capitalism/
Further to my Postone post: the clearest part of the pamphlet– in fact, the only clear part — is the Translator’s Preface, which I strongly recommend:
https://cosmonautmag.com/2022/01/anti-postone-translators-preface/
I am sorry that David Hawkins has gone down with the Postone virus and wish him a full and speedy recovery — the Translator’s Preface may help a bit.
I very much agree but – why don’t we stop intellectualling about this and point out some simple, obvious and easily digestible truths? The people in power in the UK that are utterly wedded to financialised capitalism are far from being all Jewish. Far from it. Nadhim Zahrawi, Rishi Sunak, and the credit default flop himself, Sajid. The uber estate agent, Mr Hunt. Cameron . Anyone Bozo is hovering around. It goes on and on. N
Very few if any of them sound Jewish to me. All of them in real terms, unproductive. And interestingly, their ilk are not above comparing objections to their “wizarding” of wealth out of thin air to anti-Semitism. I wonder if they would stick to that if the pitchforks really did appear…. Who does get the blame when this parasitic nonsense really hits the fan, when the obfuscations no longer fool anyone? Another simple truth to mention – the ANC’s Jewish members, incarcerated with Nelson Mandela.
Answering Allan Howard re what should Corbyn have done. Firstly NOT apologise. What for? This set the tone of kowtowing to his critics and the Zionist attacks. He should have hit back by going over the history of Zionism and explained why first Britain and then the USA had geo-political reasons to have a white pro-capitalist presence in the oil rich and significantly transport Suez area of the Middle East. Middle East only for western eyes.
In answer to Allan Howard’s proposed censorship by JVL of comments which “fraudulently discredit” Corbyn for “not refuting A/S claims” and his challenge to Corbyn’s critics to say “what he should have done differently”, here is my brief reply.
I have great respect for Corbyn as a fine individual and lifelong antiracist who could never have expected to be put the horrific situation in which he found himself as a political scapegoat venomously defamed by the entire ruling class. However Corbyn is no superhuman and to require JVL to ban criticism of his political weakness in ceding ground to political enemies, is unworthy of someone who presumably believes in freedom of expression. Moreover no man is an island and the capitulations attributed to Corbyn are also equally the responsibility of the team of his close advisors, some of whom obstinately persist with their absurdly naïve illusions.
What should Corbyn have done differently? As far as the conflation of antisemitism with antizionism is concerned here are my answers in a nutshell: (1) Stick to the truth – don’t make ideological concessions to a class enemy who will only use them to exploit your weakness and to redouble the attacks. (2) Don’t betray your comrades by making yourself complicit with defamation of the innocent in the vain hope of appeasing your enemies. You will only feed the enemy while demoralising and confusing your supporters (3) Don’t pay obeisance to reactionary communalist politics: there is no single Jewish community any more than there is a single English community or Christian community.
Corbyn understood this last point but he failed to uphold its truth. By late 2018 for example there were many prominent Jewish intellectuals who had torn to shreds the IHRA definition and its political misuse, yet Corbyn and his entourage did not listen to them, capitulating instead to rightwing ethnonationalist Jews whose only aim was to use this capitulation to silence criticism of Israeli apartheid.
As far as (2) above is concerned, there are all too many amongst JVL and its supporters, including myself, who know from personal experience the true meaning of Allan’s phrase “fraudulently discredit”. The author of the leaked LP report boasted that by the end of July 2019 the LP disciplinary process was entirely in the hands of those sympathetic to LOTO. Yet the principal effect of this was to accelerate the processing of disciplinary accusations of “antisemitism”, and certainly not to improve the fairness or legitimacy of the judgements. Indeed in the following months the disgraceful and absurd injustices just multiplied.
I believe the three answers I have given above are essentially the same answers that were being given clearly right from the beginning by those Jewish socialists such as Moshe Machover or Tony Greenstein with a profound knowledge both of British politics and of the history of Israeli hasbara, who understood better than anyone in Corbyn’s inner circle the intentions of the motley coalition of forces arrayed against the Corbyn project. This is not to claim that, had Corbyn and his circle adopted a more principled line on this single issue, the 2019 defeat could have been avoided. While the attacks would have been just as vicious, both politically and intellectually Corbyn’s defence would have been far stronger, though this in itself probably would not have sufficed for electoral victory. However Corbyn’s political legacy would have been incomparably greater and recordings of his (sadly nonexistent) speeches exposing the true nature of Israeli apartheid would by now be as viral as those of Mandela.
In fairness to H. G. Wells, it should be pointed out that the passage about “the inferior races” was written in 1901; he clearly had very different views in later years. Of course his change of attitude to sterilization — he supported it in 1904 but came out against it in 1940 — must have been influenced by the policies of the Nazis. But even in 1906 he “praised the ‘heroic’ resolve of African Americans”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_views_of_H._G._Wells
In the privileged secondary school I attended in the 1960s there was an awareness of Jewish identity among the students. For one example, we had our own assembly to be excused Christian prayer time. Jewish boys were well represented in the upper streams, and some went on to become senior prefects and even head boy (not me). There may have been undercurrents of resentment but this never surfaced as antisemitism. Many of these boys went on to become high achievers in business, academe, politics or the professions. It amazes me that people such as these have subscribed to, or not condemned, the myth that Jews in Britain are at daily risk of antisemitism.