I called out anti-Semitism – and was rewarded with spitting derision

Last week, I wrote about how the Black Lives Matter protests following George Floyd’s murder in May have prompted outbreaks of clear-cut, nasty anti-Semitism, most notably in the US and France. I wrote that, while extremely disturbing, this effect was unsurprising. After all, since the Seventies, antiSemitism has often co-existed with the agitations of the anti-racist hard-Left, under cover of the pretence that Israel is the source of all the world’s evil; a racist, imperialist boast in its very existence.

Having gingerly re-joined Twitter, I posted a link to the article. I don’t have many followers yet so rather assumed it would fly below the radar. No such luck. I was mobbed by people mocking my “take”, with the peculiar nastiness Twitter seems to invite.

“Lol I KNEW someone was gonna try this, just didn’t think it’d be this poorly argued,” wrote one. Another simply said: “Whatttt is this”, while another went for: “She’s gonna pull a muscle in her back [she’s] reaching so much.”

Then there was this: “They’re at it again” – presumably referring to Jews. It was horrid, but I couldn’t help but smirk a little at yet more proof that anti-Semitism is the only kind of racism in the West today that invites explicit, enraged victim-blaming.

In daring to point out one ugly and disturbing aspect of a mass movement, I had riled some of its supporters. But in calling that disturbing aspect out as anti-Semitism, I had invited spitting derision.

But whether the Twitter mob likes it or not, the link between some of the most ardent “anti-racists” and rabid antiZionism has been on even more dazzling show in recent days.

Although in brisk general currency over the past few weeks, it fell to actress and zealous Corbynite Maxine Peake to raise the UK profile of the idea that Israelis, indeed Israel, had a hand in George Floyd’s murder. Talking to The Independent, ostensibly about her new film

Fanny Lye Deliver’d, Peake asserted: “The tactics used by the police in America, kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, that was learnt from seminars with Israeli secret services.”

This is a patent falsehood of the kind that feeds anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists. The Israeli police has confirmed this is not its practice. Responding to complaints by the Jewish community, Peake issued a “clarification”, saying she meant no harm, but not an apology.

No amount of evidence to the contrary will ever convince true believers, such as Peake, that there is a problem with antiSemitism and that they need to learn the facts. It’s always, in their view, a case of Rightwingers making a fuss to detract from the plight of the truly under-privileged. Under Corbyn, even party high-ups refused to see anti-Semitism, even when it was everywhere.

It was a telling sign of what we might have had in a parallel universe when Rebecca Long-Bailey, the hard-Left candidate for the Labour leadership, shared the Peake interview on Twitter. It was a brilliant moment for Labour, the country and frankly the world when Sir Keir Starmer tossed her out on her ear for it. “I didn’t [sack her] because she is anti-Semitic,” he said sagely. “I did it because she shared the article which has got, in my view, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in it.” Long-Bailey, as would-be leader of the country, should have known better – and perhaps now she will.

If Peake is bad, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd is worse. A long-term obsessive hater of Israel, he recently told Memri TV that: “The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis… was done with a technique invented by the IDF [Israel Defence Forces]. The Israelis invested [the technique of ] ‘let’s kill people by kneeling on their necks and cutting off the blood supply of the carotid artery to the brain’. That is an Israeli technique, taught to the militarised police forces of the USA by Israeli experts, who the Americans have been flying over to the US, to teach them how to murder the blacks because they have seen how efficient the Israelis have been at murdering Palestinians in the Occupied Territories by using those techniques. And they are proud of it. The Israelis are proud of it. They go: ‘Look how good we are at this, you can learn…’”

The pièce de résistance followed: “Zionism is an ugly stain, and it needs to be gently removed by us.”

Some of the most egregious outbreaks of anti-Semitism in recent weeks have been in the US and Europe. But as Peake, Waters and Long-Bailey remind us, the same diseased thinking behind the urge to blame the Jews – including for the police murder of George Floyd – has thick and durable roots in British culture, too. Pointing this out may not go down well among the “anti-racist” Twitter mob, but that doesn’t mean it is any the less true.

‘It was a brilliant moment when Long-Bailey was tossed out on her ear’