Why Black Lives Matter protests are a catalyst for anti-Semitism

When Labour under Jeremy Corbyn swiftly revealed itself to be the most anti-Semitic major political party in Britain in decades – one vile outpouring and grotesque comment after the next – I marvelled at people’s endless surprise. They had been fooled by the hard-Left’s selfidentification as “anti-racist”. How, they kept wondering, could the anti-racist party have so many anti-Semites in its midst?

Easily. Anti-racism movements often foster anti-Semitism. This is because the most committed anti-racists see Jews as part of an imperialist racist Zionist conspiracy, represented by Israel. According to their political lights, Israel is the world’s single biggest problem, and they believe it exists solely to egregiously and brutally oppress people of colour – including, but not limited, to their Arab neighbours. Jews, Zionists and racists unite, for them, in one toxic brain fog.

So I was dismayed, but far from surprised to see, that the Black Lives Matter protests have gone on producing potent outbreaks of anti-Semitism.

A few weeks ago, rioting in Los Angeles following the murder of George Floyd saw a number of Jewish shops destroyed, synagogues vandalised with “Free Palestine” graffiti, and a statue of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews being murdered by the Nazis, daubed in anti-Semitic slogans.

It goes on. Last week, at an anti-racism rally in Paris inspired by Black Lives Matter, placards and stickers read such jewels as: “Israel, laboratory of police violence”, “Who is the terrorist?”, “Palestine to the Palestinians! Boycott Israel!’’, and “Stop collaboration with Israeli State terrorism”.

Fair enough, you say. Except to go with the slogans, the Place de la République was soon ringing with mass chants of

“dirty Jews” – howls that Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the French far-Left, managed to deny were anti-Semitic.

Back in America, Ice Cube, the rapper, chose to advance the cause of George Floyd by posting a caricature of Jewish figures with the caption: “All we have to do is stand up [against them] and their little game is over.” The image was nearly identical to one used by Nazis in the Thirties to incite hatred and violence against Jews. Ice Cube also praised Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam founder and one of the world’s most rabid anti-Semites. All in the name of racial justice, naturally.

One is reminded of the gilets

jaunes movement of 2019 – another far-Left cause with a mass following (this time for “economic justice”). At one rally in Paris, in February 2019, Alain Finkielkraut, a Franco-Jewish philosopher, was set upon by demonstrators yelling “dirty Zionist’’ and “filthy race” at him. Anti-Semitism became a major feature of the protests.

The far-Right has long fostered vile racism and anti-Semitism, while the Left has staked its soul on being better, kinder, fairer. But now it can be hard to tell the difference between them.

Extreme antiracists see Israel as the world’s single biggest problem