One Jew's view of antisemitism in the Labour Party. And related matters

It takes only one parent, if it’s the mother – as in my case – to make you a Jew. The Nazis were even more indulgent: a single Jewish grandparent was enough to send you to the gas chambers. That means not only I but even my sons would be candidates for extermination if they made a comeback.

All this suggests that I’m far more likely to be a victim of antisemitism than a perpetrator of it.

But it doesn’t put me completely out of reach of antisemitic thoughts, even less of the accusation of harbouring them. Not that I can actually be antisemitic myself: the reproach reserved for Jews who express a view seen by other Jews as antisemitic is that they are ‘self-hating Jews’.

It’s an offensive suggestion and I resent it. But I have to admit, if I’m entirely honest, principally with myself, that the reproach wasn’t entirely misplaced.

Like many to the left of centre politically, I view all racism as abhorrent. That certainly includes antisemitism but it also includes discrimination against Blacks as it includes Islamophobia. There are aspects of the behaviour of the state of Israel towards Palestinians which, it seems to me, are expressive of deeply and violently Islamophobic attitudes and therefore deeply racist ones.

It’s when I make that kind of point that I’m most likely to find myself taxed with being a ‘self-hating Jew’.

Now, in one debate on the subject with a Zionist friend, I found myself suddenly interrupted by her.

‘You said “the Jews”,’ she told me, clearly pained.

I was about to defend myself saying that I meant ‘the Jews of Israel’. But of course I didn’t: there are many Israeli Jews, though not a majority, who deeply dislike the behaviour of their government. What I really meant to criticise was the Israeli state.

But that wasn’t what I said. When I said ‘the Jews’ I was labelling all Jews as somehow culpable for the behaviour of the Israeli state towards Palestinians. Which is ironic: Israel often inflicts collective punishment on innocent people, taking action against the family of a terrorist for the behaviour of that terrorist. Here was I using the same kind of perverse thinking, accusing all Jews of sharing in the guilt of the minority that forms the Israeli government.

It’s easy to see how this happens. Israel is the only Jewish state. It’s relatively easy to slip from referring to Israel into referring to Jews. That explains my error but it doesn’t excuse it. Loose words can lead to loose thoughts. I had to find a way to maintain my criticism of the behaviour of the Israeli government without letting it drift into a criticism of all Jews.

There is evidence that elements within my own party, Labour, have not been that circumspect. Some have let their anger over the excesses of Zionism spill over into something much more toxic. There may also be others who actually harbour anti-Jewish sentiments, but have been granted too much tolerance because they are sound in their opposition to Islamophobia and violent Zionism.

There have been honourable examples of reactions to antisemitism. The Labour MP Naz Shah, attacked over certain remarks, had the decency to admit that 'the language I used was anti-Semitic, it was offensive'. She accused herself of ignorance and described herself as being on a learning journey, and thanked the Jewish community for the ‘amazing compassion’ it had shown her.

It’s hard to demand more of anybody than that they sincerely recognise their errors and work to eliminate them.

Unfortunately, not everyone is prepared to go that far. Some may indeed be prepared to protect and cover up antisemitic elements. Far more widespread is a simple failure to do anything at all. The evil is left to fester in the hope that it goes away or, at least, won’t attract adverse publicity.

Festering sores turn septic, and adverse publicity has burst out anyway, drowning the party in a scandal that drags on from day to day.

Corbyn: not providing what Labour most needs - leadership

The failure to act has its source at the top of the Party, with the man who holds the leadership, Jeremy Corbyn. A report on antisemitism in the party was prepared in June 2016; nearly two years on, it hasn’t yet been implemented. The intention is to have an in-house lawyer working on the problem; it seems that the paperwork to appoint one is on Corbyn’s desk and hasn’t been signed.

This is Corbyn’s way. He’s marked by a terrible indolence, a dangerous inattention to detail. The most recent scandal broke out when it emerged that he had offered support on FaceBook for the artist of a mural that was to be overpainted. Corbyn spoke out in favour of free speech, apparently unaware that at the heart of the mural was a deeply antisemitic caricature of Jews gorging themselves while others suffered the terribly poverty to which they’d condemned them.

Corbyn has apologised, but he has had to admit that he wrote his post before he’d looked at the mural. See what I mean? Indolence. Inattention to detail.

In the latest scandal, he’s had to apologise several times because he couldn’t get an apology out that was adequate first time. Or second time. Again, a failure of political instinct, a failure of effort to get things right from the start.

His supporters claim that the scandal is just a weapon to use against Corbyn. I think the best response to that came from a Shadow Minister quoted in the Guardian: ‘… because it’s true it’s being used against Jeremy doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem.’

There is a serious problem of antisemitism in the Labour Party. It needs to be rooted out. And that needs to happen soon.

Making things happen. That sounds like an essential ingredient of leadership. And what’s needed right now in the Labour Party is leadership.

That’s something we ought to be able to count on from the Leader. Sadly, there’s precious little sign of that , as he flounders from apology to apology, taking too little action too late, and handing weapons – genuine, usable weapons – to his adversaries. To our adversaries.

Antisemitism is a morally crucial question. That makes it something vital for Labour to address. But in purely political terms, it’s not the biggest question facing Labour or Corbyn.

That’s the question of Brexit. And it’s another issue on which it’s proving impossible to pull a coherent stance out of him. Another issue on which the Leader’s showing himself incapable of leadership.

Reinforcing my sense that whatever the solution may be to the Labour Party’s present woes, it’s going to have to start with a change at the top.

An age-old plight returns for Jews in Brexit Britain

There are moments that sear themselves into the memory. One of those, for me, was the day I first set foot on German soil.

Throughout my childhood, I was far closer to my Jewish grandparents than my gentile ones (should is say goyishe ones?) So I have a deep-rooted memory of the collecting tin on a mantelpiece, with a map of Israel on the side (not the same map as today, I might underline). Coins dropped in it went to help the brave settlers carve their inspiring new country out of the wilderness. There was little talk of the fact that there had been people there before them, for whom it wasn’t a wilderness, but home surrounded by long cultivated farmlands.

On the other hand, there was theme to which conversation would return from time to time, not so often as to feel like an obsession, but often enough for a child to feel it was important: the relatives who disappeared, in particular the ninety members of my grandmother’s extended family from her home city of Vilnius (Vilna, we called it), who vanished without trace during the German occupation of Lithuania.

We used language a little carelessly, just like those today who, in discussing Israel, allow their opposition to Likud or Zionists to slip, often unintentionally, into criticism of all Israelis and then, perhaps without noticing it, of all Jews. So back in those days, criticism of the Nazis easily became criticism of Germans, as though the words were synonyms, and often we lost track of the distinction between Germans in Hitler’s days and Germans since the war.

So it was no surprise that I reached the age of 24 without ever having visited the most significant power of Europe, home of its biggest economy. Somehow, some atavistic repulsion put me off.

Then came the day when I was staying with friends in Eastern France, as little as twenty minutes drive from the German border. They persuaded me to take a look at the other side.

Staufen: Faust sold his soul in a lovely village

They took me to Staufen im Breisgau, the village where Faust is said to have sold his soul to Mephistopheles. No choice could have been more appropriate: I had a sense of travelling to sup with the devil.

My friends drove a Range Rover. The car’s passenger compartment is high off the ground, so getting out isn’t simply a matter of opening a door and swinging your legs out. There was a step on the way down, so setting foot on German soil really was a bit of a ritual. I paused with one foot on the step and the other just a few inches above the ground.

“How am I going to tell my mother about this?” I thought, and “how will she react?” And then my foot was down and I was in Germany, the nation from which the killers of our ninety relatives had come.

Since then, I have come to know the country far better. Why, my wife and I even lived there for nearly four years, and enjoyed our time in the country. I came to appreciate its warmth and courtesy, and to admire the way so many, including many of the young, have made quite some study of the Nazi period, and learned to understand the horror and shame of the behaviour of their grandparents’ generation. The words “nie wieder”, never again, mark the souls of many Germans. A majority, I feel. This makes them far more wary of any drift towards xenophobia and helps them resist it more effectively than do the British. Far too many people in Britain suffer from the illusion that the war against Hitler means they are immune to such an obscene deviation. They harbour a sense of superiority close to complacency which leaves them more at risk than most of drifting into excess.

Why am I talking about all this now?

Because under German law, as one element of the nation’s attempt to make partial atonement for Nazi crimes, those of its citizens who faced persecution under Hitler as well as their descendants, are entitled to claim German nationality.

Who from among the country’s victims would want to become citizens again? Well, a small number always have, apparently. There were about 25 applications a year from Britain until recently. Right now, however, there are 400 in the pipeline.

What’s changed?

Brexit, that’s what’s changed. Jews don’t like being bottled up. It hasn’t worked that well for them in the past. I worked for a while with a Jew who had three passports and the right to a fourth. Why, even I have two. Always good to have a bolthole. Why did I want one? It always struck me as possible Britain would leave the EU and I was keen to make sure I could get back there even if that happened.

So when Britain voted to leave, Jews descended from Germans began to wonder whether it might not be time to exercise the rights granted to them by the nation their ancestors fled. After all, today it’s Britain that’s building walls and Germany that is holding a door open.

Beautiful irony, isn’t it? The children and grandchildren of refugees from Germany now turn to that country for refuge.

Which, when you think of it, is a sad indictment of how far Britain has fallen.

The seeds of racism in all our souls

Some decades ago, I was a lodger in a house owned by Jewish friends. They were perhaps slightly closer to the Jewish mainstream than I was, but otherwise had similar views to my own: they were secular, leaned to the left politically and were deeply English in character even though the grandmother had never lost her native Russian accent (she had attended meetings addressed by Trotsky, and spoke wonderingly about how he could generate a wave of collective enthusiasm uplifting an entire audience).

On one occasion I met one of their cousins, a man of quite extraordinary culture and who ultimately suffered, or perhaps enjoyed, a remarkable end. We had a mild but warmly defended disagreement on some aspect of human behaviour – I forget which – and at one point he said to me:

“Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto”

I looked at him, completely blank, the sad – embarrassed, indeed – product of five futile years of studying Latin at school.

“So sad, so sad,” he said, “they teach you but they don’t educate you. We’re forgetting that our culture has roots steeped in Latin.”

He shook his head, overcome by sorrow at the pitiful state of our schools.

“It’s Terence,” he said, “the great Roman playwright. ‘I am a man and I hold nothing human alien to me’.”

Publius Terentius Afer
Smart man. Got his humanity right

Well, the words have never left me. Partly it was the context in which I learned them. Partly it was the idea itself. I am a human myself and therefore anything that can be found in a human, could be found in me too. I can’t say, “oh, no, that’s not me.” If it’s human, then admirable or repellent, it can be in any human.

It’s invaluable advice. It came to me just the other day, in the course of a conversation on Twitter. “Most people aren't racist,” I was told. Well, that’s a nice idea, but I don’t know. Racism strikes me as a fundamentally human response, and I find it hard to believe that it isn’t in all of us. Some combat it with more determination than others, some more successfully. But surely none of us is entirely free of it.

I know that I’ve found myself stared at, with my white skin, on night-time streets by gangs of young black men and felt distinctly uneasy. Would I have felt different if they’d been white? I’m not sure but have a nasty feeling I might have felt less alien, even though I might have been no safer. 

Then there was my visit to Mbabane, capital of Swaziland. We’d been told to avoid the city at night, but we had no local currency and couldn’t find an ATM in the country. So in the end we went into town well after nightfall, and drove around the streets looking for ATMs. We saw several, but each had a large black man, armed with a vicious looking stick, sitting next to it. We drove away quickly from three until, finally, we realised that the men weren’t there to rob us, but to protect us.

So at last I wen up to one of the machines. The man with the club couldn’t have been more helpful. 

“Ah, no,” he explained to me, “your card won’t work here.”

He gave us accurate directions that were easy to follow that took us directly to an ATM that provided us with the money we needed. 

Again, would I have felt less uneasy if the guards had been white? I simply don’t know. What I am sure about is that it would be no healthier for me to pretend that I don’t have those anxieties: we can’t overcome them if we deny them. So I don’t accept the notion that “most people aren’t racist.” I think the best we can say is that a number of people have controlled their racism better than others, but no one can say they’re wholly free of the contagion.

At least, not unless they merely want to live in denial.

In particular, what I’m sure of is that the racism boot is sadly on the other foot at the moment. Where, for decades, racism has been shameful and keep its head down, today it feels far more at liberty to express itself freely. In Britain, far too many Poles and citizens of other European nations have been asked, since the Brexit vote, when they’re going home. People argue that the vote was motivated by many considerations, but I would counter that a huge part of it was simple racism – or at best xenophobia, which is only racism’s little brother – and far too many seem to feel it’s permissible once more to spew its toxic messages.

That, as far as I’m concerned, makes it more dangerous than ever to deny the racism deeply within us. “Most people aren’t racist” sounds like a positive statement. It isn’t. It expresses a complacency that needs to be resisted.

Remember. If you’re human, then nothing human is alien to you. And that goes for the ugliest aspects of humanity as well as the most attractive.


Postscript What about my friends’ cousin’s end? I said it was remarkable.

He wasn’t particularly Zionist. He never showed any real desire to move to Israel. On the other hand, it was always a wish of his to visit the country, although it took him years to realise it. Eventually, however, he got there and spent three weeks touring around and seeing all the sights he’d longed to enjoy.

Then back at the airport, as he was walking across the tarmac towards the stairs to his flight home, he was struck by a massive heart attack and died on the spot.

It’s hard to imagine a better death. Quick and merciful. And having just realised his heart’s desire.

Of course, it was terrible for those he left behind. His family most of all. But even to me: I’d hoped to have another conversation with him and give him the opportunity to open my eyes to further aspects of our common culture I’d missed.

Now, sadly, it was not to be.