Anti-Semitism is not just getting worse – it’s now the norm
rowing up, my Jewish peers and I were told that anti-Semitism could never be truly escaped. It had destroyed our families and, indeed, murdered many of our ancestors. But the truth was that as teens and young adults living in a stable Anglosphere, we privately rolled our eyes at this narrative. Anti-Semitism, at least in its rawest forms – hooknose caricatures, accusations of money-grubbing greed, Zionist world control conspiracy theories and, of course, incitements to anti-Jewish violence – was simply not a part of our lives and probably never would be.
How wrong we were. It has been with fury, shock, anxiety and misery that Jews like me have had to learn a lesson. Insurgent Islamism on one hand and the rise of the anti-Israel, pro-Palestine Left on the other has meant that anti-Semitism is not just something our paranoid elders worried about after all. It is here, explicit, plain as day, persistent and in our face.
The meme retweeted (and later apologised for) last week by Leftie actor John Cusack, who has a record of anti-Israel tweets, was regrettable but not wildly surprising. It was a giant hand emblazoned with a blue Star of David crushing a group of people beneath it, paired with the quote: “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticise.” Whoops!
The inability to recognise where anti-Israel and anti-Semitic world views collide means these sort of slips are now commonplace in all corners of the Left. Last week it emerged that the BBC had failed to vet two guests who asked questions during its Tory leadership hustings programme. These men had a record of making extremely contemptuous comments about Jews.
The imam, Abdullah Patel, who asked candidates about Islamophobia on Tuesday’s programme – had previously tweeted about politicians “on the Zionists’ payroll” and endorsed the relocation of Israel to the US. Another questioner, ex-Labour staff member and solicitor Aman Thakar, has said that the worst part of Hitler’s legacy was “the abuse of the term nationalism”. I don’t think the Jews thrown into gas chambers or gunned down in ditches would agree, but hey. Who cares? It looked like the BBC didn’t – at least not before it was too late.
It’s now acceptable to cheer in public at nakedly anti-Semitic comments. Last week, the Cambridge Union debating society hosted Mahathir Mohamad, the Malaysian prime minister known for Goebbelscalibre anti-Semitism.
“I had some Jewish friends, very
Ggood friends,” wisecracked Mohamad in the hallowed chamber. “They are not like the other Jews, that’s why they are my friends.”
The response? Not indignation, rebuttal or outrage, but laughter. Laughter.
Flagrant anti-Jewish tropes are now a part of my everyday life, in ways I’d never have predicted a decade ago.
While on BBC Two’s Politics Live last week, I disputed a fellow panellist’s claim that Jeremy Corbyn does not have a problem with anti-Semitism. I was immediately accused on Twitter of being, in the words of one Aaron D, “an extream [sic] right-wing journalist”. The kicker came in the PS. “I wonder whos [sic] paying her from Israel.”
Construing the identification of anti-Semitism as, in itself, a Zionist plot, as Aaron D did, is just a familiar riff on core Jewish conspiracy theories. Blaming Jews for antiSemitism is another – though not one I used to imagine myself having to confront face on.
Yet there I was the other week, interviewing a Lebanese activist, and being told that the real reason for anti-Semitism is Israel. If only the Jewish state would go away, then, poof, no anti-Semitism.
I felt queasy at this, but not
It’s now acceptable to cheer in public at nakedly anti-Semitic comments
surprised. For it has become standard – and I can feel the rage rising in me as I type – to assert that criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic and that people have the “right” to criticise Israel. This is a mendacious straw man.
The right to criticise Israel has never been in doubt, nor curbed – in or outside of Israel. What this devious argument is really doing is demanding the right to verbally destroy Israel’s legitimacy, full stop – and consequently, protect the right to be anti-Semitic. People like my Lebanese interviewee have availed themselves of this right, without censure, all over Britain and beyond.
When it comes to Jews, it has become abundantly clear that widely enforced rules ensuring cultural sensitivity towards minorities do not seem to apply. After all, the appearance of the Malaysian PM in the Cambridge Union took place at one of the most woke, right-on institutions in the country.
Cambridge has just launched a massive inquiry into its links with the slave trade, with colleges tearing down or repatriating centuries-old objects for fear of seeming imperialist and offending students of colour. Yet this is also a place where a packed room can madly titter at a speaker’s antiSemitic jokes.
The Malaysian PM’s anti-Semitism is interchangeable with his country’s anti-Israel mania – Malaysia does not acknowledge the Jewish state, and recently banned Israeli athletes from attending a Paralympic swimming event.
Until there is widespread recognition that mouth-frothing anti-Israelism is nothing better than a fig-leaf for the dirtiest, nakedest forms of anti-Semitism, the problem is going to only get worse. My generation’s predilection for naked selfies never fails to puzzle me. I always assumed that the thing about nakedness was that it was what happened in the course of an intimate encounter – in context, in other words.
The new normal, however, seems to suggest that nakedness is something you snap and then send, offering to your partner a still of you at your most exposed and vulnerable. There’s something so empty-feeling about it all. But more pressingly, as numerous cases have made clear, there are very serious consequences for mental health when these naked photos get leaked, as they often are. Surely it’s just better not to take them?
Whoopi Goldberg, 63, made a similar observation last