There are several dynamics at play in today’s Labour Party. There are pockets of real anti-Semitism – casual, naïve, unintentional, perhaps occasionally worse. There is disquiet over anti-Semitism among people of good faith, including some Jews – not all of it misinformed or misguided. There is criticism of Israeli crimes. And there is a drive to smear and purge Corbyn’s supporters, and Israel’s critics, as anti-Semites – a seasoned Israel lobby tactic, weaponised in Labour’s internal power struggle.
Strains of anti-Semitism have seeped into the left from three main channels: “overspill” from criticism of Israel; public conflation of Jews, Zionists and Israel by that state’s defenders; and tropes from anti-establishment media, where left and right discourses mingle. Anti-Semitism was once dubbed “the socialism of fools”, since it deploys images of elite control and financial power normally associated with the left. This offers it an entry point on the margins of left discourse. The actions of Israel and her supporters have made it appear more plausible.
After 2008’s crash, the radical left burst back into mainstream politics – but, long fragmented and disorganised, still lacks robust structures to guide, educate and inoculate against crankery. That a hippy like Russell Brand can flirt (however briefly and naively) with far-right figures and ideas bespeaks an organisational vacuum, legacy of a dormant labour movement.
But acknowledging this reality gets us only so far. The media have entered a state of full-blown hysteria on this issue, and not because anti-Semitism runs deep or wide on the left. Last year, the respected Institute for Jewish Policy Research discovered the amount of anti-Semitism in the UK is “among the lowest in the world”. Jews are “seen overwhelmingly positively by an absolute majority of the British population”, it found, and the left’s attitude was “indistinguishable” from most people’s. Only on the hard right was anti-Semitism noticeably worse. If left anti-Semitism looms large, it is because someone has placed it front-and-centre.
That someone is not hard to identify. Right-wing hacks and gossip columnists comb the archives for scandals to cherry-pick and twist; Tory and liberal papers explode with outrage; Israel lobby spokespeople demand scalps; Corbyn-phobe MPs stage political theatre and take aim at the leader.
Take the last few weeks. Three Jewish papers publish an absurd, reprehensible, inflammatory editorial claiming Labour poses an “existential threat” to British Jews. A Tory ex-Chancellor splashes a photo of his political rival over the cover of a Russian oligarch-owned paper. Margaret Hodge screams abuse in the leader’s face. The Guardian monsters John McDonnell for supporting Jewish anti-Zionists. Infamous pro-Israel group the Jewish Labour Movement demand left-wing MP Chris Williamson’s head.
A travelling circus of opportunist Labour MPs has clowned its way across the British media for the past three years. Some brave, anonymous soul whispers that Corbyn “targeted” a shadow minister “because she was Jewish”. No evidence? No problem. John Mann MP confronts Ken Livingstone in an absurd display of chest-beating machismo, cameras in tow. Do the media follow him everywhere? Or did he make the necessary phone calls himself?
Former Israel lobby spin doctor and US intelligence asset Ruth Smeeth MP claims she received twenty-five thousand abusive messages from Corbyn-supporters. Did she count them all? Or has some back-office Hercules trawled through, sorting “abusive” from non-abusive? By what metric? And why has Smeeth refused to publish them?
Corbyn appears before the Home Affairs Select Committee and Chuka Umunna denounces the “direct correlation and line of causation” between Corbyn’s supporters and anti-Semitism, demanding: “do you not think it would be helpful simply for Momentum to be wound up and shut down?” (In less than a year, Momentum activists would flood the streets and doorsteps of constituencies around the country, saving the skins of Umunna’s allies.)
This has not come from nowhere: weaponising phony progressivism and cod-identity politics is by now the centrists’ favoured tactic when attacking the left. Hillary Clinton’s entourage have defamed left-wing critics as misogynists and racists, often on the wildest pretexts. And US and UK centrists share tactics and learn from each other. When angry constituents email or protest, Labour MPs run crying to the press about “intimidation” and “abuse”. Corbyn assembles a shadow cabinet and his detractors discover a shallow, partisan feminism. Both sides of the Atlantic, the same spurious allegations protect established power.
Perhaps most spurious and long-lived is the so-called “new antisemitism”: the idea that criticism of Israel expresses anti-Jewish hate. To criticise Israel just as you might any other state is to find your words parsed by Israel lobby hacks for tenuous glimmers of anti-Semitic implication. Meanwhile, genuine anti-Semites are hugged close; backing Israeli crimes, after all, demonstrates “objective” support for Jews.
This ideology now shapes mainstream definitions. We are told that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism: Jews have the right to self-determination, so it’s racist to oppose a majority-Jewish ethno-state in historic Palestine. This is a bit like saying anyone against Scottish independence wants to abolish Scots’ right to vote. The claim implies that ethnic groups can gain civil rights only from unified, ethnic-majority states in territories they deem their historic homelands. The problems such an ideology might produce are not hard to spot, particularly where such a project impinges on other peoples’ rights.
We are told we may criticise Israel just as we may other states, but that Nazi comparisons are beyond the pale. Yet clearly the two positions are incompatible. For better or worse, our World War Two-steeped politics proliferates analogies to the Third Reich. Hyperbole it may be, but no other state commits crimes on the scale of Israel’s and escapes comparison to the Nazis, on the streets or online.
This prohibition, then, is at best spurious, arbitrary and irrelevant, at worst cynical and dishonest. To insulate a single state from intemperate protest is not just special pleading – it places a loaded gun in the hand of that state’s backers, aimed at anyone foolish enough to cross the line. Zionism’s opportunist collaboration with Nazism might likewise be taboo, but remains historical fact, even if one crass politician happens to garble that history.
But we are told these objections don’t matter, since ethnic minorities have the right to define what’s racist against them and what isn’t. That is the MacPherson report’s standard, after all – and to exempt a single group sounds like textbook racism.
Except MacPherson said no such thing. His report argued only that perceived racial incidents must be recorded and investigated. As the Home Affairs Select Committee concluded, proving an incident anti-Semitic “requires more than just the victim’s perception that it was antisemitic. It also requires evidence, and it requires that someone other than the victim makes an objective interpretation of that evidence.”
Just as well, since the alternative – as Professor David Feldman of the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism points out – is “conceptual chaos”. For one thing, not all Jews think alike; whose opinion counts? For another, some claims rule out others. Palestinians call Zionism racism; some Jews call anti-Zionism racism. One cannot believe both.
The political interests of the right, of centrist Labour MPs and of the Israel lobby drove this witch-hunt; the spurious logic of the “new anti-Semitism” offered them a pretext. When Labour’s National Executive Committee triggered this latest uproar by adapting a provisional, controversial working definition of anti-Semitism already used to quash dissent, it wasn’t swerving wildly off-piste: even Parliament’s Home Affairs Committee say we should amend this definition. By any standard, the NEC’s document was scrupulously reasonable and ceded the maximum possible ground, even suggesting the party take action where Nazi comparisons offend people or harm reputations. The only amendments made protected free speech on Israel.
This backlash has nothing to do with anti-Semitism or defending Jews. It is a cynical drive by defenders of Israel and opponents of Corbyn to gain power and weaken their enemies. But “crying wolf” by conflating Jews and Israel is a dangerous game, not only for Israel’s victims, but also for Jews themselves. It muddies the waters, makes Jew-bashing look respectable, and offers real anti-Semites a plausible alibi. Anyone interested in solidarity with Jews – let alone helping the Palestinians or defending democracy – must resist it. And the Labour left can no longer bow, scrape, apologise and pretend that none of this is intended to hurt them. It is – and they should call this witch-hunt by its real name.
Tim Holmes 
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