Most of the time I think that Unitarians, Free Christians and other liberal Christians spend too much time talking about politics instead of religion and spirituality. But this issue has preoccupied me since 2015, and now, on the day that the EHRC report is finally published, I find I can’t stay quiet on this issue any more. Warning, this post is longer and angrier than usual. Normal service will be resumed on the first Friday in November.
Of course, this report shames Corbyn. He has been shaming himself for years, and no one expects him or his supporters to own up to it now. But it needs saying anyway: this is a day of utter shame for the several million people who persisted in supporting Corbyn despite repeated, overwhelming evidence that he is an ethical disgrace.
It’s shaming for everyone who has spoken with such feeling over the past few months about anti-black racism, yet looked the other way throughout Labour’s antisemitism crisis. Given how much they have had to say about the need to examine unconscious racism with respect to BLM, why have they never considered the possibility that something similar might be going on with their defensiveness over accusations of left-wing antisemitism? How do you urge deep self-examination on attitudes to race but not with the Corbynite Jewish problem?
In my own, generally futile, efforts to persuade Corbyn supporters that there really was a problem, one approach touched a nerve over and over. How come, I asked, over 80% of UK Jews believe Corbyn has an antisemitism problem, and why are they afraid of him becoming Prime Minister? Would you ignore that sort of feeling in any other ethnic or religious minority?
There were usually two main responses, both antisemitic. One was that ‘they’ have been duped by fabrications from the Jewish press. The other was that ‘they’ are somehow in on it, imperialist, Zionist, tories, desperate to stop a true socialist from becoming Prime Minister.
Sometimes there was a third response: it’s fake news. This is one of many similarities between Corbynism and Trumpism, a clear demonstration of the horseshoe effect, in which the far left and far right begin to resemble each other.
Antisemitism has a long history and it has taken on different forms over the centuries. Corbynism’s non-racist credentials depend on limiting antisemitism to racial antisemitism. Corbyn isn’t a Nazi, ergo he doesn’t have a racist bone in his body. But his problems with antisemitism are ideological, not racial. This means that Jews can come inside the tent, but only if they are anti-Israel Jews. Inconveniently, a majority of the UK Jewish population feels some attachment to Israel, especially its right - it’s need - to exist, but there you go. Jews are fine, but only if they’re good Jews.
Corbyn is driven by anti-Western ideology, which subsumes everything to the need to attack what is characterised as Western Imperialism. If that means enabling antisemitism, hanging out with anti-Semites, not noticing antisemitism, occasionally being antisemitic, well so be it. The anti-imperialist cause is all.
Modern day ideological antisemitism descends from the Christian antisemitism that drove the antisemitic narrative throughout Europe from the foundation of the Church up until the twentieth century. Ethnic Jews were perfectly acceptable as long as they stopped being Jews - by converting to Christianity. In the same way, Corbyn has the truth, and is a friend to the Jews - as long as they will rid themselves of their attachment to a national homeland that will guarantee them sanctuary the next time antisemitism gets too much for them.
Does he really want an end to Israel? When asked directly, he trotted out Labour policy, support for a two-state solution. But he was always very careful with his words. Once his tribe was in charge, and in the majority, he was happy to submit himself to the discipline of Party policy. But he never personally endorsed the existence of a Jewish state; he declined repeated invitations to do so, and his whole career is anti-Zionist. Clearly, he looked forward to a change in party policy on Middle-East issues.
For the most part anti-Semites don’t consider themselves antisemitic. They rarely ever have. From the Blood Libel to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, they believed they were bravely speaking out and were dealing in facts. In the same way, Corbyn and his supporters feel like weary martyrs, smeared for speaking truth to power. It’s about Israel and the Palestinians, they say. But so many of their so-called facts about Israel and the Palestinians are simply wrong, incomplete or skewed.
Anti-Zionism is not Antisemitism they insist. They are wrong. Zionism means supporting the existence of a Jewish state. It doesn’t mean you think the Palestinians should not have a state. It doesn’t mean you are happy about the miserable existence of most Palestinians. It doesn’t mean that you approve of everything the Israeli government does. It simply means you do not think that the world’s only Jewish state should be dismantled.
A minority of Zionists believe that God gave every bit of Biblical Israel to the Jews, and that the Jewish state should forcibly take hold of it all, regardless of what this means for the Palestinian population. This sort of extremism is not a necessary part of Zionism, nor is it the opinion of most Zionists. When anti-Zionists equate Zionism with this extreme, minority position, it’s a red herring.
From the late nineteenth century up until the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948, there was a debate among Jews, and more widely, about whether a Jewish state should be founded. But being anti-Zionist then, about a hypothetical Jewish state some time in the future, is very different from thinking that an existing Jewish state should be got rid of. The end of Israel means a Jewish bloodbath, and six million Jews driven out of the Middle East.
When someone advocates the dismantling of the world’s only Jewish state, I have to ask which other states they want to get rid of. Maybe they’re such Utopian Internationalists that they think all states should go, but then why focus on the world’s only Jewish state? Where is the campaign against the other states?
Supporters of Corbyn have always pointed out that some of the strongest anti-Zionists are Jewish. This is true, though they are a small minority.
In the nineteenth and twentieth century there was a certain preoccupation with what was known as ‘The Jewish Question.’ There was a strong Jewish socialist tradition within this debate that saw Internationalism, in which national identity is left behind, as the cure for antisemitism. They may have approved of settling Jewish communities in the Palestinian mandate, but they were opposed to the creation of an explicitly Jewish state. The dissolution of nations, they envisaged, would end the harms brought about by the Jews being a people among nations, without a nation of their own.
This was always a Utopian view. The holocaust, and the other circumstances surrounding the creation of the state of Israel convinced many of these Jewish socialists to abandon their theoretical opposition to nationhood. The harsh, post-holocaust realities suggested that a nation was necessary for the Jewish people to survive. But not all Jewish socialists abandoned their opposition to a Jewish state, and this is the tradition in which many Jewish anti-Zionist socialists place themselves today.
A smaller grouping of anti-Zionist Jews is made up of followers of an ultra-orthodox sect, which says that the Jews must not return to the Holy Land until the Messiah has returned. For this reason, they are against the existence of a Jewish state on purely religious grounds.
But anti-Zionist Jews do not speak for the majority of UK Jews, nor do they speak for a majority of world-wide Jewry. I find their anti-Zionism deeply problematic, but at least, as Jews, they have an excuse for obsessing about the sins of one state above all others. But what are we to make of a leader of the Labour Party, a potential Prime Minister, who allies himself exclusively with the minority of Jews who oppose Israel?
There are gay Christians opposed to same sex marriage, and even gay Christians who advocate lifelong celibacy for gay people. Some women opposed votes for Women. Some black Africans fought for the apartheid regime in South Africa, or the Smith regime in Rhodesia. Does anyone get a free pass because of these examples?
Here’s another unanswerable question for anti-Zionists: why boycott Israel but not China? Have you not heard about the occupation of Tibet, the re-education camps, ethnic cleansing, police brutality, disappearances and torture on an epic scale?
Now, when I say this is unanswerable that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t get answered. We are told that Israel is supposed to be a democracy, it’s friendly with our government, and more importantly with the USA. They say there’s no point protesting about China but there’s a duty to oppose Israel. This is terrible, cowardly, reasoning. It’s an answer, but it’s an awful answer.
If you’re Jewish or Palestinian then you have a reason for focusing on this state above all others. But if not, an obsession with taking down Israel is deeply suspect.
And while we’re at it, let’s correct one of the biggest errors you’ll hear repeated by the anti-Israel left. Israel is not, as they claim, the cause of antisemitism: Israel is the result of antisemitism.
Some people are exercised about the way that citizenship in Israel is linked to Jewishness, and they think this is like apartheid South Africa. This is highly questionable, but even if it were accepted I’d like to know what they are doing about the status of non-Muslims, and in particular Jews, across the Arab world. Would they rather be an Arab in Israel or a Jew anywhere in the Arab world? Why don’t they do something about all countries where full citizenship for all residents is an issue? Or at least one other country that isn’t the home of Jews. Israel is far from perfect, but it’s a paradise of freedom and human rights compared to its neighbours - including the Palestinian territories.
In many conversations with Corbyn supporters I have found that they know some of the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, but there are significant facts of which they are completely unaware. For example, they are rarely aware that a big chunk of the Israeli Jewish population is made up of Jews who were brutally driven out of Arab states, where it is now often illegal, and lethal to be Jewish. Are they and their descendants really colonial settlers? What about all those who came to escape the holocaust in Europe? Corbyn’s supporters are so pro-immigrant, pro-refugee in UK politics, but not, it seems, when it comes to Israel-Palestine.
Please believe me, there are at least two sides to this deeply complex issue, and if you only know one version of it then you’d be better off knowing nothing at all. There is a compelling Palestinian case, but there is a compelling Israeli case too. I never used to think this was true, because I never sought out a pro-Israel point of view. Let me tell you, finding out how much more there is to this than you’ve been told is a painful, humbling process.
Until you’ve looked carefully at both sides with an open mind your understanding of this issue is dangerously incomplete. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing; a little knowledge of Israel-Palestine leads to real harm to Jews. It’s not hard to find websites or books putting a pro-Israel point of view. Many of them are critical of Israel, but they will not have its right to exist undermined. Please read them. If your anti-Zionist cause is just then you will strengthen it by exposing yourself to a pro-Israel narrative. But if you just don’t want to hear the Israeli point of view then please ask yourself where exactly this resistance to hearing Jewish voices is coming from.
Looking at the level of misinformation and ignorance related to the Israel-Palestine conflict, it’s hard not to see this as part of a long history of lies about the Jews. As it was then, so it is now - the anti-Semites think they are courageous truth-tellers. Which takes us back to those professed anti-racists who backed Corbyn in their millions. Being so convinced of your essential goodness is how we sleepwalk towards evil.
What would Corbyn’s supporters have said if any Tory politician failed to see the antisemitic imagery in that mural? What would they have made of anyone to the right of Corbyn, hobnobbing with anti-Semites? For the record, at the same time as talking to Corbyn, Hamas and Hezbollah were actively planning to kill Jews. As with the IRA, the line is that he was only trying to bring peace by talking to people whose methods he disagreed with. But his disagreement was so hidden, so passive, so easy to miss - whereas his condemnation of the other side of the conflict, whom he never talked to, was delivered in vitriolic tones through a megaphone.
And where is the evidence that any of this ever brought peace one step nearer? It’s hard to see how undermining the resolve of Western Governments in confronting terrorism ever achieved anything, except in the terrorists’ favour. Corbyn’s history is indefensible, and yet cognitive dissonance is a powerful thing. ‘Jeremy hasn’t got a racist bone in his body, therefore…’
Opposing Corbyn between 2015 and 2019 has not been easy. It’s hard to comprehend the level of abuse aimed at anyone who moves in left wing circles and doesn’t toe the line on anti-Zionism. And if you weren’t on the left, well…. These people say they wanted a more humane world, and yet so often they denied the humanity of their ideological opponents. Consider the vile things posted about and to Jess Phillips, Luciana Berger, Margaret Hodge, Dame Louise Ellman and Joan Ryan. How much of this sewer of hate did anyone need to see to understand that there was something truly ugly - and incredibly misogynistic - going on?
Keir Starmer said he would tear out Labour’s antisemitism by its root. That has to mean expelling Jeremy Corbyn from the Labour Party. Anything less will make a mockery of every expulsion that has happened so far. Of course it won’t happen.
Don’t expect repentance from Corbyn, a man who has not changed his mind since he was a teenager. But maybe some of his armchair supporters, those who should have known better, might take a hard look at themselves now.
And where were the churches throughout this dark period? The Bishops of the C of E finally released a statement, unanimously adopting the International Definition of Antisemitism, on the eve of the Labour Party Conference. I saw the Bishop of Sheffield soon afterwards, when he visited the local synagogue for an event with the Council of Christians and Jews. ‘Where have you been?’ I asked him. ‘This has been going on for four years and you’ve only just said something?’ Why, given Christianity’s terrible record in inculcating and disseminating antisemitism throughout Europe, did the church wait so long? He replied that it hadn’t occurred to him that they had been silent for too long, but that he would reflect on what I had said.
We should all join him in reflecting on our response. How did we let this happen? Why did we not see it? Why did we stay silent? Why did we not do more? For too long it’s been a case of Hear no antisemitism, See no antisemitism, Speak no antisemitism. Shame on us all.
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