It’s a shame that ‘Jews, Money, Myth’ at the Jewish Museum closes today. It won an award last week and I is one of the most important things I’ve ever worked on. The Director and curator are both amazing women who work for a museum that has bomb proof front doors and the security guards aren’t to stop things being stolen but because of the constant risk of anti-Semitic violence.
The context of anti-semitism is living everyday knowing that even in a country like Britain there are significant numbers of people who hate you and would happily see you deported, beaten up or murdered.
The history of anti-semitism is long and particularly insidious. Anti-semitism is an ‘acceptable’ version of racism for people who would baulk at the idea they are in any way racist. “I’m not anti-Semitic, I’m anti-banker...” or “I’m not anti-Semitic, I’m anti-Zionist...” “I’m not against the Jews, it’s just the wrong kind of Jews who are anti-Corbyn...”.
There are plenty of bankers who aren’t Jews, there are plenty of countries who behave badly towards minorities. The hatred of Jews on the left existed long before the state of Israel.
I think there needs to be balance though?
Is somebody who criticises bankers/international capitalism inevitably anti-semitic? No - but anybody who wishes to take that stance responsibly needs to do so with a sensitivity to historic anti-semitic tropes about bankers/capitalism and ensure that their criticisms avoid these.
Is an anti-zionist also inevitably anti-semitic? The ICHR definition suggests not I think. By that definition characterising the
existence of Israel as a racist endeavour is anti-semitic, as is drawing British Jews into the argument, either by suggesting that they share responsibility for Israel's action or by dismissing/criticising their support for Israel solely in terms of their shared Jewish identity. But criticising Israel and it's actions by no means inevitably comes under either of those definitions.
If a Corbyn supporter criticises a Jewish Labour MP for their lack of commitment to the Corbyn 'project' is that inevitably anti-semitic? Again no - but for me the moment they drift into dismissing their concerns about anti-semitism just because they 'don't like Jeremy' that is anti-semitic.
For me the problem is that the current Labour administration and their supporters have shown little interest in engaging with these subtleties. I think that raises a case for them being anti-semitic by omission if not by commission.
That said what I am less comfortable with is the equivalence (in general, not from you personally) of that problem with the historic violent persecution of Jews. Of course historical context is important - that is why you cannot draw a parallel between white-on-black racist speech/ideas and similar ideas/speech in a black-on-white direction. But following that theme the Macpherson Report that said that the Met was institutionally racist was not saying that police officers were looking for the return of slave-ships, lynchings and Jim Crow laws. But for me there is still an issue whereby when I have a real hesitancy in putting forward my opinion that large parts of the current Labour Party are anti-semitic because I know that the emotional reaction of many to that phrase is - to put it bluntly - to think back to the Holocaust. I think that there is an element of the 'anti-Corbynists' (as above not you personally) that play on that association to demonise their political opponents.
I'm not a regular Labour voter, let alone a member of the party, let alone x2 somebody that is sympathetic to Corbyn and his supporters. But that is my 2c FWIW.
