This week Bradford West MP Naz Shah and former Labour Mayor of London Ken Livingstone were suspended from the party after being accused of making anti-Semitic remarks. As the political fallout continues we ask a panel of writers, including former Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind and Prospect Editor-at-Large David Goodhart, what exactly is anti-Semitism? Can it be distinguished from anti-Zionism? And at what point does legitimate criticism of the Israeli government turn into unfair singling out of the country—and of Jewish people generally?
Inadequacy and immaturity
Malcolm Rifkind, former Foreign SecretaryIn the early 1970s I was on the short list to be the Conservative candidate for the Scottish Borders seat then held by the Liberal David Steel. At a drinks meeting with some of the local party worthies in Melrose, an elderly lady asked me if I was Jewish. When I confirmed that I was her only remark was to say “I don’t think there are many synagogues in the Borders.”
When I became Foreign Secretary in 1995 my Jewish background was of little or no interest to the British public and media, though of great interest to the Israeli Press. Anti-Semitism of the kind that flourished in Britain and most of Europe before the Second World War is not significant in Britain today. The Jewish community lives and breathes by British values and is well integrated.
What has changed is the deep controversy about Israel and the Palestinians. Jews in Britain share in that controversy. I, like many British Jews, have been deeply critical of the Israeli West Bank settlements policy while remaining a strong supporter of the State of Israel.
Those, like Ken Livingstone, who deliberately, or through ignorance, allow their distaste of the Israeli Government to lead them to hold Jews in general as deserving of insult or opprobrium should be ashamed of themselves. They demonstrate their own inadequacy and immaturity.
It appears across the political spectrum
Abi Wilkinson, freelance journalistDespite recent attempts to associate it exclusively with the left, anti-Semitism manifests in many ways and is present across the political spectrum. A particularly pernicious aspect of it, at least in my experience, is the idea that it’s not really like other forms of bigotry because it involves kicking upwards. Anti-Semites frequently claim that Jewish people form a shadowy, all-powerful cabal which is responsible for a wide range of different ills. Additionally, the actions of the Israeli state are sometimes offered as a justification for hatred of Jewish people by people who, apparently, can’t distinguish between legitimate criticism of a government and racial and religious hatred. It’s terrifying that so many anti-Semites seem genuinely unable to recognise their own prejudice.
There is only one question
David Goodhart, Prospect's Editor-at-LargeThe only interesting question in the renewed debate about anti-Semitism is how to think about the difference between historic Christian anti-Semitism in Europe and the hostility to Jews arising from the continuing conflict over territory in Israel-Palestine. The first form of anti-Semitism helped to make the Holocaust possible and became the template, at least in Europe, for all forms of hostility to the other or outsider, and in particular for hostility to dominant and/or successful minorities. Only a tiny number of cranks openly profess such hostility to Jews today—at least in the English-speaking world.
The second form of hostility to Jews arising from conflict over territory is widely held in the Muslim world and among Muslim minorities in the west (including in Britain as the ICM poll for Trevor Phillips’s recent Channel 4 programme confirms). This hostility can take a “normal” form similar to other historic ethnic conflicts—Greeks vs Turks, Sinhalese vs Tamils and so on. The trouble is that it invariably gets intertwined with the first form of hostility, both in the arguments that are used about Jewish power and the implacability of the hostility—with the typical rhetoric of driving the Jews into the sea or eliminating them. The fate of Naz Shah illustrates this slippage. I have met Shah a couple of times and believe her to be an intelligent, liberal person and like many on the left and in the Muslim community she holds perfectly legitimate pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli government views. But by lazily recycling language all too common among Muslims (and parts of the left)—"transport the Jews to America!"—she connects herself to one of the most deadly ideologies of the modern era.
Of course the accusation of anti-Semitism is sometimes used by Jews and Israelis to try to close down debate. And of course opposition to Zionism is not the same as anti-Semitism (though we should not forget that Zionism exists mainly because of anti-Semitism). But Muslim radicals and parts of the fundamentalist, "identity politics" left are transfixed by the capitalism-US-Israel nexus in a manner that defies rational explanation. To someone like Ken Livingstone Jews are fine, admirable even, until they refuse victimhood and pick up a gun to defend themselves—then they become particularly hateful white colonialists in Muslim lands. Thus has anti-Semitism evolved into the one acceptable prejudice for parts of the modern left.
An ahistorical bind
Martin Bright, Professor of Journalism at Anglia Ruskin University and former Political Editor of the Jewish ChronicleThe Z-word has become poisonous for the Labour Party and the wider campaigning left. Long before Ken Livingstone’s rambling interviews about Hitler’s support for a Jewish homeland, the idea that Israel is synonymous with the Third Reich, (or apartheid South Africa) had become a mainstay of “anti-Zionist” campaigners. Such simplistic comparisons are comforting for those who believe they are on the side of good and their opponents pure evil. But how many of those people who turn up at demonstrations holding placards showing the Star of David juxtaposed with the Swastika are anti-Semites? Is it possible to be an anti-Zionist without being a Jew hater?
The question itself is anachronistic and the Labour Party finds itself in an ahistorical bind. Israel was established after the second world war as a nation for the Jews. It is a Zionist state. If you support its right to exist, as Jeremy Corbyn and Ken Livingstone claim to do, I suppose that makes you a Zionist. When left-wing students tell me they don’t hate Jews, they just hate Zionists, I ask them whether it might be possible to be a Socialist Zionist and whether they are aware of the role played by the Israeli Labour Party and the trade union movement in the founding of the Israeli nation. Life is sometimes a little more complicated than the Z-word would suggest.
The worst atmosphere since the 1940s
David Herman, freelance writerAnti-Semitism is Jew hatred. It takes various forms: verbal and physical violence but also recourse to familiar tropes and images, mostly from the heyday of European anti-Semitism, between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries. As Luciana Berger's recent tweets have shown, these vile images and stereotypes are still going strong.
Why the revival now and why on the Left? Two main reasons:. Firstly, for forty years the Left has seen Israel as the last vestige, after South Africa, of white, western colonialism. It sees Israel's alleged crimes as much worse than the actions of any other state. It is not surprising that this demonisation has come to a head in the Labour Party under a passionate anti-Zionist and anti-colonialist like Jeremy Corbyn. He is not anti-Semitic but his leadership has been crucial in the deteriorating situation within Labour.
Secondly, some Muslims also see Israel as a brutal occupying power, guilty of alleged war crimes against Palestinians, and they seem to find it hard to distinguish between the actions of a Jewish state and the beliefs and values of Jewish people everywhere. For them the distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism has become strangely blurred.
The coming together of these two strands—the Left and some Muslim voices—has created a new anti-Semitism in the UK. This and the continuing violence between Israel and Palestinians and in other parts of the Muslim world has created the worst atmosphere for British and West European Jews since the 1940s.
