Good afternoon and welcome, everybody. I'm personally delighted and excited to present to our colleague or friend a speaker today, uh, Professor Brian Clark, who is a senior research fellow in Philosophy at Independence Hall. Brian has published extensively on anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and other forms of racism, and his work has been cited in numerous reports on this subject. Among these publications are often the Jewish case and being Jewish and doing justice.
He has also edited and introduced a selection of Haddon's essays. More immediately related to our topic today. Brian has recently published in venues such as The Guardian, openDemocracy and the Jewish Quarterly, a series of articles on the definition of anti-Semitism.
According to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and the Liberal Party's National Executive Committee, I make it short and just say that the title of his talk today is Defining Antisemitism, Demonising Zionism, The Current Controversy Over the Left and the Jews.
Brian, thank you so much. Thank you very much. Yakov. I was hoping you could speak a little bit longer so I could finish talking the peppermint that will lubricate my vocal cords such that I can get through this paper, which is a little on the long side, I'm afraid so. I'll go straight into it. This paper is based on the analysis in my essay, The Left and the Jews Labour's Summer of Discontent and the Current Issue of Jewish Quarterly.
To those who have read the essay, I apologise for subjecting you to its analysis a second time. Some people might think I should apologise for subjecting anyone to its analysis even once. For my part. Well, I don't feel the need to say sorry. I do regret certain gaps in the argument as well as points that I fail to make clearly enough. So I welcome your invitation to give this seminar today and to try to rectify some of those failings.
As I now see it, the paper has three principal topics rather than the two mentioned in the title I gave Yakov and Yakov just read out. So the new title is Defining Antisemitism, Demonising Zionism, Excoriating Corbyn. These are the three headings under which I will present my analysis of the current controversy over the Left and the Jews, which remains the subtitle. I begin with a section that sets the scene well. Before we begin a word about the reception given to this essay.
So far it has been mixed and I expected nothing less. After all, the subject is highly political. People feel very strongly about it and the perspective I offer is controversial at the extremes. There were two reactions that I can only describe as rants they tore into the essay, ripping it apart and dismissing its author me as some sort of scumbag. Now, the interesting point about this is that the two rants both came from Jews, but from diametrically opposite directions.
One is an article in the Weekly Worker newspaper published by the Communist Party of Great Britain Provisional Central Committee. Not to be confused with the Communist Party of Britain or the New Communist Party of Britain, or the Communist Party of Great Britain, Marxist-Leninist or the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain.
Marxist-Leninist. The author, a committed anti-Zionist, observes, I quote, It has been a tough three years, and when the going gets tough, academics are often the first to cave in. I'm sure everyone here recognises the accuracy of that. And Brian, with all his erudition and sophistication, has abandoned those of us who are not willing to throw in the towel. He has abandoned the most oppressed for the sake of Jewish chauvinism dressed up as a concern about anti-Semitism.
Now, the diatribe from the other side, as it were, was not published. But the author, who himself writes for Jewish Quarterly, as well as the Jewish Chronicle, calls my approach and I quote partisan and incendiary and describes the ending as, quote, hysterical. The most revealing criticism is this Klug knows he is in a small minority, as if that were an indictment, he continues.
But you can't wish away the Jewish community, which has shown remarkable consensus on Corbynism by just putting the Jewish community in inverted commas, as I do not because I wish it away, but because I question the meaning of the phrase the Jewish community. Now, what strikes me about these two broadsides and the reason why I'm mentioning them at the outset,
is that each of them filters out half of the arguments of the essay. Each is exercised by the half that goes against their particular grain. Ignoring the other half or perhaps not even noticing it. And my plea to you today is to hear my argument in the round may well take issue with it and not accept it. But please, if you will try to hear the whole arguments and not just one half of it.
In my view, the current controversy over the left and the Jews is genuinely complex and the issues it raises are tricky. But on the whole, the public debate, if you can call it a debate, is polarised. As a result, facts are misrepresented, statements are taken out of context. Language is inflated, claims are exaggerated, arguments are ad hominem and so on. Most of us bring an agenda into this room and our agendas diverge, and that's fine.
But I open with a plea for a different quality of debate, as the Lord says, and I want you to come now and let us reason together. The people will follow the general lines of the Jewish call to the USA, which I shall amend or refine or elaborate as I go. Part one setting the scene. And I'm sorry if this is a bit tedious, but for the sake of the argument, I think it's necessary to get the factual context in place, and some people will be more familiar with that than others.
For the Labour Party, this past summer was not exactly tranquil, nor was it for those of us who got sucked into the maelstrom. In July, an initiative announced by the party's governing body, the National Executive Committee and AEC, sparked a storm of public controversy and led to the party being charged with anti-Semitism. Given the scale and intensity of the rage directed at the only sea.
You might have thought that it had proposed banning circumcision or chiquito or the sale of kosher meat or the wearing of tefillin. Not so. The only crime, so to speak, consisted in drafting a code of conduct to tackle antisemitism in the party. Now, there was, of course, more to this counterintuitive fact than meets the eye. It is a classic case of the tip of an iceberg or more appropriately, the vent of a volcano.
Before delving into the volcano and examining the crime in more detail, consider the furore it released it unleashed. You did not have to be Jewish to point a finger at you and you see. Nonetheless, the charge was led by Jewish organisations, especially those who either see themselves as speaking for the Jewish community or are also perceived by the general British public. The significance of this is something to which I shall return.
In the final section they included the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Jewish Leadership Council, and the Office of the Chief Rabbi excuse me. They were ably abetted by a number of Jewish and non-Jewish Labour MPs and public intellectuals, referring to the NSC code. The Jewish Chronicle denounced, and I quote, a cynical exercise in Jew hatred and described the party as,
and I quote again, institutionally antisemitic. 68 rabbis jointly signed a letter to the Guardian declaring that, I quote, Antisemitism within sections of the Labour Party has become so severe and widespread that we must speak out with one Jewish voice, one Jewish voice.
Now, the last time that happened was at Mount Sinai, shortly after the shortly after the exodus from Egypt, when the children of Israel answered Moses, quote, with one voice exposed to all three in the same rare spirit of accord, three losing three leading Jewish newspapers overcame their rivalry and published an identical front page warning darkly of, and I quote, the existential threat to Jewish life in this country that would be posed by a Jeremy Corbyn led government.
End of quote. Their joint headline read United We Stand. So we have gone from the old joke to Jews three opinions to three Jewish editors, one opinion nothing. And that's no joke. When a group thinks with one mind and speaks with one voice, it runs the risk of surrendering its critical faculties. Moreover, when a premium is placed on unity, dissenters become pariahs. For both these reasons, the strident consensus that sprung into being in the summer was not only surprising but alarming.
It was also false because there were Jewish groups and individuals such as myself who welcomed this initiative and not out of complacency about anti-Semitism, far from it, because there might be no such thing as the Jewish community, a cohesive collective with a unified voice. But there is a community of concern felt by many of us as Jews. Whatever our politics about antisemitism.
On the left, the spectre of anti-Semitism has haunted Labour ever since Corbyn's election as leader of the party in September 2015.
Among those accused were high profile Corbyn supporters, notably Ken Livingstone, former mayor of London, who was suspended from the party for remarks in which he crudely linked Hitler with Zionism in 2016 as allegations that, by the way, will become relevant later on in 2016 as allegations continue to be made against left wing activists, often on the basis of things they said in the pre Corbyn era, the NCC initiated two inquiries into anti-Semitism in the party.
One was conducted by Baroness Janet's Royal, who has since been elected principal of Somerville and Royal, examines allegations of antisemitism in Oxford University Labour Club. Oh, you will see. In her executive summary, she wrote, I quote, I do not believe that there is institutional antisemitism within those you will see. She added difficulties. However face you will see which must be addressed to ensure a safe space for all Labour students to debate and campaign.
The second inquiry was into antisemitism in the Labour Party. More generally. It was led by Shami CHAKRABARTI, the long time director of Liberty. She found that the party, and I quote, is not overrun by anti-Semitism, Islamophobia or other forms of racism. She did. However, the Texan quotes occasionally toxic atmosphere, which was quote again was is which is in danger of shutting down free speech within the party.
She made a number of recommendations for dispelling this toxic atmosphere and for reforming the party's disciplinary process. On the one hand, the Board of Deputies, disappointed by her comforting conclusion, dismissed her report as a whitewash. And on the other hand, the NDC, in its wisdom, took little or no action to implement the recommendations.
This neglect by the NDC, exacerbated by the failure to deal expeditiously with specific complaints, festered for two years until the crisis of this summer. At the same time, there was the drip, drip of poisonous posts on social media and on some left wing internet forums, all of which generated a kind of miasma.
The tendency on the part of some people on the left to deny that there was a problem, did not help to solve the problem they denied, nor did it help when time and again Corbyn condemned antisemitism because he is quote, against all forms of racism. I don't doubt for a moment that this sentiment is sincere. It comes from a man with an honourable record opposing racism and for that matter, other kinds of social injustice.
All his life it comes from the heart. But as I shall elaborate later, it spectacularly misses the point. Corbyn, moreover, was called to task for actions and inaction of his own, mainly from the past. For example, as a patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, he hosted an event at the House of Commons in March 2009 that included speakers from Hamas and Hezbollah, whom he referred to as friends. He later said that he regretted this choice of words.
In March 2019, he came under fire for a Facebook post from 2012, in which, on grounds of free speech, he backed a protest against an action taken by Tower Hamlets Borough Council. The council had ordered the removal of a mural by the graffiti artist and build one from a wall in Brooklyn. The old Jewish who sent the mural featured crude caricatures of rich businessmen and bankers with big hawk noses playing monopoly on the backs of the poor.
When earlier this year, this was brought to Corbyn's attention, he acknowledged that the imagery was, I quote, deeply disturbing and anti-Semitic, and he expressed regret for not having looked closely enough at the time. In short, the unrest over antisemitism in Labour under Corbyn had been simmering for a while before it came to a head in July over the crime committed by the NDC. The code of conduct on antisemitism that it produced.
So let's examine this crime and see if it justifies the imprecations pronounced upon it by Jewish leadership. When we discover, as we shall, that it does not, and that the hostility to the NDC code of conduct was out of all proportion to any deficiencies it might have contained. The ground will be laid for the question. What then did the reaction really signify? Part two defining anti-Semitism. Let me preface this section by saying that I think sometimes people expect too much from a definition.
People imagine that definitions are somehow going to settle the problems that are problems that are conceptual and sometimes controversies that somehow, by pinning a word down, you're going to prevent the arguments and the confusion that people have concerning that world. I would say that with any complex concept and any form of racism is complex. No definition is definitive.
And I think that's a kind of good rule of thumb to start from when opening the topic of definitions of anti-Semitism or any other form of racism. At the heart of the controversy over Labour's initiative was a document known as the i h r a working definition of anti-Semitism. The letters on HRA stand for the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, an intergovernmental body formed in 1998 to which 31 countries the UK included belong.
The HRA document issued in May 2006, consists essentially of a dictionary style definition, which I shall refer to as the definition proper. Although as we shall see, it was not properly a definition plus a set of 11 examples which the document explains are not intended to be exhaustive. When commentators refer to the Ayatollahs definition in full, they mean the combination of these two elements the definition proper and the 11 examples with no alteration.
Abstracting from different versions of the hostile reactions to the any see coat of Arms of anti-Semitism, Code of Conduct on anti-Semitism. The main indictment can be put this way. The NSC or the Labour Party is guilty of writing its own definition of anti-Semitism rather than adopting the HRA definition in full. This was reinforced by pointing out that the HRA definition, though not necessarily in full, has been adopted by several national governments, public authorities and agencies.
This claim is not false, so it must be said that at times it is a tad exaggerated. For example, Stephen Kinnock stated categorically that the HRA definition and I quote and is the only globally accepted one. But Anthony Lohmann points out that only six out of 31 governments whose countries are members of HRA have formally endorsed or adopted the definition. He adds, I quote him. It's not clear whether they have adopted the examples or not.
So hardly global. Anyway, the indictment thus turned on a comparison between the HRA text and the NDC code as announced in mid-July. And I realise this part of the talk is rather tedious, but it's necessary to go through this because the rest of the argument is going to depend on showing that there is a discrepancy, a huge discrepancy between the hostility towards the NDC code based on the comparison with the Ontario document and and an objective comparison,
if you will. The indictment thus turns the indictment against the NDC thus turned on a comparison between the original text and the NDC code as announced in mid-July. As people here might know, on fifth September, the NDC decided to incorporate the full HRA definition, but it is the July version that precipitated the reaction I am discussing, which is why I am dwelling on it.
The bare bones of the comparison can be set out by way of three questions and answers, rather than dragging us all through the detail which I set out in the Open Democracy article. Let's just bring it down now to three questions and answers first. Did the NSC code either ignore or alter the definition proper in the original text? Answer no. Second. Sorry. Answer No. The definition was reproduced verbatim. Second, did the NSC code include unaltered?
The 11 examples. Answer It contained a list that comprised seven of the 11 word for word, except for substituting Nazi for National Socialist in one sentence and expanding one example non controversially. The remaining four examples all pertained to political comment on Israel and were discussed in separate guidelines except for one clause of one example.
Arguably, they were incorporated into the code in a modified form. The exception quotes claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavour was omitted altogether from the NSC code and its guidelines. It has since become a focal point of controversy as people I'm sure aware. Third, in the light of these two answers, was the NSC guilty as charged, writing its own definition of anti-Semitism? My answer to that is we live in an age of overstatement, which is an understatement.
Without going deeper into the Rashi, the commentary on these two documents, we need to take a closer look in order to evaluate the early reaction to the NSC code. To begin with, the Okorie working definition is not a model of either clarity or consistency. Consider the definition proper. It comprises two sentences and I'll read them out anti-Semitism. And I'm going to put emphasis on certain words or phrases.
anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed towards Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and or their property towards Jewish community institutions and religious facilities. I wonder if it's Jewish or non-Jewish individuals why it wouldn't be Jewish or non-Jewish community institutions. But I can't really get myself into the head of the people who wrote this definition.
Now, this is, I would say, vague and rambling rather than clear and precise by definition. But this is not a definition. It just looks like one. Writing in the London Review of Books, Stephen Hadley, who is here today somewhere in the room, put the point this way. He said, The Ayatollah's definition, I quote him, fails the first test of any definition. It is indefinite. Exactly. Given that the definition gives little or no guidance, the weight of the document has to fall on the 11 examples.
But what are the examples of the Ayatollah's text includes an umbrella clause that explains their status. They are it states examples of what are known quoting from the document could taking into account the overall context be antisemitic? This crucial qualification is integral to the text, but equally crucially, it is overlooked by both proponents and opponents of the Irish IHRA definition alike.
Like almost invariably, the examples are treated as if they were instances of antisemitism full stop, which they are not. That's quite explicit in the document, except that some of them are, while others are not. This is where it gets really confusing. This to any thinking person gives pause to put it another way. The set of 11 examples is a ragbag that mixes discourse that is actually antisemitic, such as the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy.
It doesn't matter what the context is. It seems to me that just simply is an example of antisemitism with discourse that is only potentially so, such as applying double standards when criticising Israel. These two cases are so different from each other, but they're lumped together in the set of examples of what could happen depending on the overall context, be antisemitic.
So it's really confusing. Thus, the umbrella clause meant to cover all the examples properly applies only to some and not others. Far from providing clarity, the examples merely add to the confusion. Confusion begets confusion. One of the main functions of a clear and consistent definition of antisemitism is to help tackle a conundrum how to rule out antisemitic discourse while protecting legitimate political debate over Zionism,
Israel and Palestine. It is no accident that the four Iht HRA examples singled out in the NBC code were all about Israel. People of goodwill, whatever their views about the conflict, are genuinely confused on this question and. And. And seek guidance. I encountered this confusion and the vexation it produces when I took part recently in a meeting in Ramsgate of the South and its consistent constituency, Labour Party, which was devoted entirely to the discussion of antisemitism on the left.
And at the end of the discussion, after 2 hours in which I tried to shed light on the subject. One woman with a note of desperation in her voice said she still did not know how to talk about Israel when canvassing. To which I replied, Mel Culpa. I mean, you know, I tried, but it's difficult to get through everything that needs to be said in order to in order to shed light on this question.
The conundrum, in other words, is not a mere riddle. It's a practical problem about the limits of legitimate discourse and debate. A definition that muddies the waters, muddles the debate. In short, the HRA definition is not fit for purpose.
Even if every government in the civilised world, along with every public authority, embraced it, and even if a procession of learned scholars endorsed it while gravely reciting Latin verse, this would not make the definition less vague or the examples less confusing. If the Emperor has no clothes, he has no clothes, even if his non-existent finery is praised by one and all. The fact that this confused and confusing document has gained so much currency does not augur well.
It will not assist people of goodwill who are wrestling with the conundrum I have mentioned. It will only serve more confusion and contention. That is a prediction, but I don't particularly wish to make. But I'm afraid I think it's true. Not that the only C code was perfect. I, for one, had reservations about certain provisions. It did, however, improve on the original redefinition in several ways.
For example, it stipulated that it is racist to require, and I quote from the NSC Code, more vociferous condemnation of Israel's actions from Jewish people or organisations than from others. And I know this speaks to the lived experience of some Jewish people on the left. It also highlighted the anti-Semitism that consists in making a gratuitous reference to being Jewish as in Jewish banker comparable to black MAGA.
Neither of these points is present in the HRC text. Yet both points, along with other indisputably positive features of the only C code, were passed over in silence by the critics while summing up the NSC code was a constructive, if flawed, initiative based on a document that is itself deeply flawed. The HRC document definition, the latter at least, has the good grace to call itself a working definition. The working definition by definition is not written in stone.
Yet this one seems to have acquired the status of a sacred text. The 68 rabbis who spoke with one Jewish voice rallied around it, urging Labour to adopt the Turks. And I quote from their letter full and unamended, as if it were the eternal word of God. But in the Judaism in which I was nurtured and educated, there is only one text whose status is sacred.
And it was not written by a committee of the HRA, nor for that matter, by a working group that was set up by the EU, AMC, the European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia. WHO so-called working definition going back now about 15 years was the prototype for the HRA working definition, all of which is so striking that it begs the question, what was this really about? What? Why was there a glaring absence of measured criticism and reasoned debate over the C code?
Why the blanket rejection of the code as if it were anathema and the implacable insistence upon the Ayatollah's definition to court? Did it signify an alliance of forces with an anti Corbyn and anti left agenda? Or did it express a profound disquiet that for good reason, many Jewish people feel? Which was it? And I'm afraid I have to go home. I'm sorry that I don't want to leave that question hanging, because that's it. All right. Okay. Section three, maybe demonising scientism.
It was both, in my view. It was a fusion of both. And that's the problem. This fusion is about as safe as a stick of dynamite. And I so comment on the danger in the final section excoriating Corbyn. My focus now is on the second factor the profound disquiet that many Jewish people feel for good reason because it keeps getting lost in left wing reactions to Jewish reactions. That's something that I've noticed for years. The grounds for disquiet go deep and they go back a long way.
A key moment occurred in November 1975, when the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 3379. Asserting that, quote, Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination. The devil is in that is Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination, as in Zionism equals racism and not just racism.
The preamble takes note of a declaration proclaimed earlier that year calling for, and I quote, the elimination of colonialism and neo colonialism, foreign occupation, Zionism, apartheid and racial discrimination in all its forms. In this long list of evils, Zionism is stigmatised by the company. It keeps Zionism. Which in another paragraph is referred to as, and I quote, this racist and imperialist ideology. In effect, the resolution determined that Zionism is a form of evil Zionism per se.
As such, no ifs and buts or caveats. Zionism in itself and in all its forms. Even though this finding affirmed by the closest thing the world has to a global political body, the UN totally erased the origins of Zionism in the Jewish historical experience of exclusion. Expulsion. And to borrow a phrase from the text of the UN resolution racial discrimination.
Furthermore, it completely flattened a national movement that, like other national movements born from oppression, had its left wing and right wing and even statist and non-status varieties. The uncle mentioned the book of essays by Ehud Olmert that I edited and published a couple of years ago. And he has included in that selection an essay that he wrote in 1920 called After Balfour, where he puts forward roughly a kind of binational proposal for.
Palestine. What? His credentials as a scientist are pretty strong. And if you go to almost any town in Israel, you will find a record on the street named after him. So I use him as an example when I say that there were non-status varieties of this movement, not that the resolution originated in an anti-Jewish animus. If you ask me, there were essentially geopolitical reasons in the context of the Cold War that lay behind the U.N. General Assembly resolution equating Zionism with racism.
Nonetheless, it rode roughshod over the memory of the Shoah, which had occurred barely 30 years earlier, and which drove many Jews, Jews who had no interest in Zionism in any of its forms, to turn to the state of Israel as a source of hope and pride. Whether or not the pride and the hope turned out to be misplaced and although revoked in 1991, again for geopolitical reasons, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the UN resolution left an indelible mark.
This is the point of the prevailing discourse of the radical left, or that portion of it, which is vocal in supporting the Palestinian national cause. This is the part of the left to which Corbyn has belonged all his adult life. He is, however, on record as supporting the two state solution. He repeated that in an article in The Guardian, by the way, on the 3rd of August, and he is not in favour of a blanket BDS policy. Nobody would ever guess this from the crude polemics against him.
Here in this demonising discourse about Zionism in that perfunctory condemnatory is Zionism is a form of racism lies one source of the profound disquiet that had been bubbling up since Corbyn's election in 2015 and which erupted this summer. I call this discourse demonising because it is structured by a simple binary. Villains versus victims or oppressors versus oppressed. Angels versus devils wasn't ism on the side of the devils.
This is too loaded for the generality of Jews regardless of their position on Israel. Since demonisation quite literally, was at the core of classic antisemitism. Moreover, when 60% of British Jews identify as Zionist, while 90% say that Israel. I quote this is from research done by City University two or three years ago that Israel forms some part of their identity as Jews. Then inevitably, irrespective of intent, demonising Zionism ends up demonising Jews.
But someone might say, Is it not the case that Zionism is part of the history of European imperialism? It is. And was it not from the outset, a settler colonial project? It depends what you mean by that phrase. But yes, in a sense it was. Moreover, the stamp of Europe was impressed deeply on the way political Zionism redefined Jewish identity and conceived of the Jewish state, something which I think your own work brings out very clearly, as in Herzl Zionist writings in the Jordan start.
Herzl said the Jewish state that he envisaged would, and I quote, form a portion of the rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilisation as opposed to barbarism. And to quote that notice on this Congress, Max, an order echoing Herzl said, and I quote him We will endeavour to do in the Near East what the English did in India.
It is our intention to come to Palestine as the representatives of culture and to take the moral borders of Europe, the moral borders of Europe to the Euphrates River Euphrates. Furthermore, the actual Jewish state, Israel, the one that came into existence, sees itself as an extension of Europe. It represents itself this way and conducts its affairs this way on the international stage. Only last year, Benjamin Netanyahu declared, and I quote him We are a part of the European culture.
Europe ends in Israel, east of Israel. There is no more Europe. End of quote. It could almost have been the voice of Nordahl speaking from beyond the grave. And yet there are other voices from the grave. Voices that I hear, for example, in the story told by Aurora Levins Moralez Aurora is a Puerto Rican Ashkenazi Jewish feminist writer and a member of Jews of Colour in solidarity with Palestine.
Her essay. Who Am I to Speak? Recalls a piece of family history, and I quote from her essay My Father's Family, she writes, lived in a small southern Ukrainian village where each spring the Easter sermons sent their neighbours rampaging against the Jewish farmers and craftspeople who lived among them. Well, she says, quoting again, a three cornered argument among the Jews in the village about what, if anything, would save the Jews.
And I quote a little extract. The Orthodox said it was in God's hands. In other words, wait until the end of days when the Messiah comes. In the meantime, keep us. The Zionist said only Jews could be counted on to stand by Jews and we needed a defensible territory of our own. Where we called the shots. The Communists and socialists and anarchists said Only an alliance of all the working people can dismantle our oppression and everyone else's.
End of quote. The small southern Ukrainian shtetl village from which Aurora's father's family came is, so to speak, the same shtetl from which the families of most Ashkenazi European Jews came, including my family. And the scene three cornered argument went on in the struggles of our grandparents and great grandparents and in the east end of London. Orthodox versus Zionist versus anti nationalist left.
Actually, there were more than three corners to the argument. Some of the Orthodox Zionist, most of the Zionist were socialist and even Marxist. The debate over the Jewish future was complex, but the point is that this is the or seen the original and authentic setting for Zionism. This is the piece that is missing from the stock discourse that folds Zionism completely without remainder.
And so the history of European imperialism and colonialism. The missing piece is the centrepiece of the story for many Jews. Not only dead, not only dead ones, it is certainly not the whole story. The whole story is a broken story, a story with two halves that do not fit together. Look at it this way. Like the Roman God, Janus. Zionism has two faces which look in opposite directions at once. That is to say, it belongs to two opposite histories at one, at the same time, on the one side.
Zionism is part of the history of the Jews, a racialized minority, the internal other of Europe. And on the other side it is part of the story of British imperialism, specifically in the Middle East. On the one side, it was the exodus from Europe of a people persecuted for not being truly European. And on the other side, it was itself part of European expansion into non-European lands.
Seen from one side, Zionism was a flight from Europe, a movement that saw itself as the return of an exiled people to an ancient homeland, not as an extension of a European motherland. It saw itself that way, whether you or I accept the narrative of return or not. And I don't. Right. But seen from the other side, the Arab side, the Jews who came as settlers and established a state where Europeans by any other name.
And they were they were both. That's the point. They were Jewish, as distinct from European. And they were European as distinct from Arab. As the Palestinian academic Rafe Roke puts it, he's a colleague of mine. We both took part in a project called Arab-Jewish Engagements that met in Vienna for two years under the auspices of the Bruno Kreisky Forum for Intellectual Dialogue. As Raif puts it and I quote from his paper, the Europeans see the back of the Jewish refugee flow fleeing for his life.
The Palestinians see the face of the settler colonialist taking over his land. One movement, two faces. Yes, Zionism is part of the history of European imperialism in the 20th century and it was a settler project.
However, the plight of millions of marginalised European Jews in the first half of the century, together with their hopes and aspirations for a better life, are one thing the imperial ambitions of European powers that set out to colonise the globe in order to extend the scope of their rule, plunder resources and create captive markets for their products are another.
When the left gives the impression that this subtle difference eludes them, when they fold Zionism to court into the story of European hegemony, then they erase from the record the arguments that went on in the struggle from which Aurora's father's family came and my family came, which is the back story for Zionism when they erase this back story.
Is it any wonder if a ripple of discomfort spreads among the rank and file of Jews, including many of us who repudiate Zionism, who repudiate any form of Jewish nationalism, as I do when the radical left fold Zionism totally into the narrative of European hegemony over the Third World or the Global South, cutting it off from its roots and centuries of oppression of the Jewish people in Europe, which is the sense of the 1975 UN resolution equating Zionism with European racism.
They lose the Jewish plot. In another sense, they revive it. The standard way in which the radical left places Zionism on the map of the world puts it in its very essence among the rich and powerful to classic anti-Semitic tropes. The capitalist class with its imperialist ambitions often is not. This is accompanied by sinister talk of a Jewish or Zionist lobby that wills incredible influence, influence out of all proportion to its full size, owning the media and controlling Western governments.
Not that there is not an influential lobby on behalf of Israel in the US and other countries. There is. But lobbies are a natural feature of the political landscape, both in civil society and in the international diplomacy of sovereign states. In the Jewish case, however, this power is often depicted as if it verges on the supernatural.
The long arm of Mossad is detected everywhere, pulling the strings and heartstrings of Jews around the world, even of anti Zionists, as my friend, Daphne's experience illustrates. Daphne, not her real name is a lifelong socialist and a Jewish anti-Zionist. Fiercely opposed to Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the siege of Gaza. As incidentally, many self-described Zionists are too. She is also a member of the Labour Party at a well-attended local constituency meeting last year.
She proposed a motion criticising Ken Livingstone for linking Hitler and Zionism. The history of the Holocaust, Daphne told me, explaining her motion, I'm quoting her, is part of the identity of all Jews whenever they may feel about Israel. End of quote. When she introduced her motion to the meeting, she explained that it had nothing to do with Livingston's views on Israel. Her confreres begged to differ a quota.
Everyone who spoke against the motion suggested that it was part of a plot by Israel or that it was an attempt to prevent discussion of Israel. Daphne was made to feel in her own words, and I quote her again an agent of the Israeli state. There have been countless stuffiness down the years.
And as I know again from firsthand testimony, younger donors in the present who encounter similar attitudes, which is why you do not have to have an attachment to Israel to feel the profound disquiet of which I am speaking. Even if your views on political Zionism as an ideology and as a political project are as true for not kosher as deafness or as mine, you can feel this disquiet. It is enough simply to be Jewish.
So when Corbyn points out the cases of antisemitism over the past three years represent less than 0.1% of Labour's membership, he misses the deeper point. The lava within the volcano. He misses the same point in his defence of a very troubling remark that he made about a particular group of Zionists in a speech he gave in 2013 saying that they did not understand English irony, despite, I quote, having lived in this country for a very long time.
His defence is that he was using Zionists in the accurate political sense. That's a phrase that I'm quoting from him as if it were a purely technical term with a narrow definition and not, he said, as a euphemism for Jew. When it goes without saying, as far as I am concerned, that he did not intend it as a euphemism for Jew. However, in the first place, Zionist stands for a broad spectrum of cultural and political views, so there is no single, accurate political sense, as he suggested.
And in the second place, it is a word that is contaminated by the discourse that demonises it. As George Benson has remarked, and I quote him, the adjective Zionist hits out like an insult. Even becoming diabolical is the word he uses, which means, of course, deriving from the devil. The word Zionist has a life of its own, independently of what anyone intends when they use it.
Which does not mean we should stop using it, by the way. But perhaps the most egregious way in which Corbyn misses the point is when he protests that he is against all forms of racism and therefore condemns antisemitism. He condemns it, that is to say, as an anti-racist. But the demonising use of the word Zionism, the use that inexorable leads to the othering of Jews.
I have argued, including an ad that is honest Jew like Daphne, is rooted precisely in a certain anti-racist tradition, the anti-racism to which the 1975 UN resolution gives expression and which seems to have found a permanent home in the discourse of the radical left. Corbyn, I am sure, will appreciate the irony of this. The final section, which is short, will be relieved to hear excoriating Corbyn. If anything, the excoriation of Corbyn by Jewish leadership has been ratcheted up since July.
According to Marie Van Zyl, president of the Board of Deputies, Corbyn has and I quote her declared war on the Jews at home. Furthermore, he, quote, threatens the security of Britain, not just the Jews. That's all a quote. And not just Britain, a Cuban government, she has warned could be, and I'm quoting again, a threat to world security. She added in the same interview on Israeli television, I quote, The Tories have always shown themselves to be friends of the Jewish community.
And meanwhile, Lord Sachs, the former chief rabbi, has compared Corbyn's irony remark to the notorious Rivers of Blood speech that Enoch Powell gave in 1968. It is hard not to see such hyperbolic and very public attacks on Corbyn as aimed at bringing him down. Which brings me back to the stick of dynamite, of which I spoke earlier. It appears that two different objectives are being conflated by Jewish leadership confronting antisemitism and toppling Corbyn.
Corbyn might be a lightning rod for controversy over Zionism, but it is also a symbol of hope for millions of people in this country. People who suffer from the austerity measures of those same Tories of whom the Board of Deputies president speaks so warmly. As friends of the Jewish community. He is idolised by young people who chant his name.
They see in him, rightly or wrongly, a politician cut from a different cloth, a man who cares for the poor, a hero who stands up to the rich bankers and the large corporations. They see him as a kind of saviour. But they also see correctly is an alliance of forces from without the party and from within ranged against this saviour.
And in the vanguard apparently is quote, the Jewish community or for short, the Jews standing shoulder to shoulder and speaking with one voice and a cord deep in the bowels of Western antisemitism. This struck. I quipped earlier that the last time you spoke with one voice was announced Sinai. That was in the Book of Exodus. But according to another ancient book, not a Hebrew book this time there was a subsequent occasion when Jews spoke in unison.
I refer to the story told in the penultimate chapter of the Gospel. According to Matthew Chapter 27, the crucial chapter which describes the death of Jesus at the behest of the Jews. As Matthew tells it, the Jewish leadership of the time, the chief priests and elders, led the Jewish mob.
That's like the equivalent of the Jewish Leadership Council of the Board of Deputies led the Jewish mob in demanding the crucifixion of Jesus, voice of the poor, scourge of the moneychangers, saviour of the human race. Or so the evangelists would have us believe Pontius Pilate seen that the Jews would not be deprived of the innocent victim, proclaimed his own innocence. To which, and I quote from Matthew 2725, all the people answered and said his blood be on us and on our children.
Jews speaking with one voice. It would, in my view, be anachronistic to call this chapter and this verse anti-Semitic. But they indicate the depth at which antisemitism lies. When Jewish leadership conflates the fight against anti-Semitism with the attempt to bring Corbyn down, it taps into the deepest vein of anti-Jewish bigotry. Not that it is remotely possible for Jews acting collectively to unseat the leader of the Labour Party.
We don't have that kind of power. Despite a common anti-Semitic canard to the contrary. But if Jewish leadership persist in their campaign against Labour leadership, if they do not cease their vitriol, if they refuse the olive branch extended by the only sea and by Corbyn himself, the only sea will be consulting widely about guidelines for the new code of Conduct on anti-Semitism. If they fail to heed the words of Hillel, be like the sons of Aaron loving peace and pursuing peace.
Pick about 1/12, then God help us. As a result of their relentless campaign in our name, we Jews collectively will be blamed. Talk about irony. Thank you.