Varieties of Anti-Semitic Experience

When I was at University the Labour Club put before the Student Union a motion calling for a two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (this was in the 1980s when such a position was considered dangerously radical). The Jewish Society took exception to this and spent the run up distributing photocopies of an article by Elie Wiesel which gave a potted history of anti-semitism from the Macabbean revolt to Yasser Arafat and which more or less finished off by saying “don’t criticise Israel if you don’t want to be in this company”. Fast forward fifteen years ago. My wife was invited to the marriage of a colleague at the local synagogue. As we milled around in the porch afterwards I took a cursory look at the noticeboard. Along with details of the womens fellowship and the coffee rota and the other bits and bobs - the sort of thing you find in the porch of any country church - there was a notice explaining he drill in the event of a suspected letter bomb.

From these disparate incidents I think we can deduce three things. Firstly we ought not to underestimate the amount of anti-semitism in modern British society. Secondly it is ancient and protean – what else connects Antiochus IV Epiphanes, Tacitus, St John Chrysostom, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Martin Luther, Voltaire, Immanuel Kant, Adolf Hitler and Mohammed Ahmadinejad? Thirdly, where Israel is concerned the subject does get milked rather shamelessly.

This complicates discussion of anti-Semitism somewhat. So I was intrigued to pick up ‘The Changing Face of Anti-Semitism’ by Walter Laqueur in my local library. It comes with an imprimatur by Abraham ‘Armenian genocide, what Armenian genocide?’ Foxman, which was slightly worrying and the book, without notes or index is obviously written for a popular audience with an obvious ideological purpose. But Laqueur writes well and is generally fair minded. So we get an interesting overview of the issues and a canter through the lowlights of anti-semitic history, beginning with the Hellenistic era and finishing off with the present day.

It is Laqueur’s political judgements that raise eyebrows. After remarking that criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic he goes on to argue that “Israel does not border on Holland and Switzerland” (the country which does is Germany which is an interesting choice of comparison) and therefore ought not to be held to Western European standards. He then goes on to point out that Russia and China are rich and powerful and, therefore, exempt from criticism whereas Israel is neither. The first is special pleading, unless Iran’s human rights violations, say, or those of Hamas are to be considered in a local context as much as Israel’s. In the second instance Israel undoubtedly gets flack because it is considered an American client state (a view which strangely is compatible with belief in an all powerful Israel lobby bending America to its will) but if the price of the hostility of Libya or the Socialist Workers Party is support from the US, then Israel has probably got the better of the deal.

Laqueur certainly overstates the resistance of post-war immigrants to Europe to integration with the host cultures. The gastarbeiter scheme in Germany was virtually set up in order to keep immigrant communities at arms length from the host culture. Racist attitudes were hardly unknown among the European population during this period. (One of the reasons there are so many black churches in the UK is because West Indian immigrants in the 1950s who innocently turned up at St. Agatha’s-By-The-Gasworks were promptly told “we don’t want your sort here”.) Terrorism by Muslim groups in Europe is later than racism by decades and so cannot function as an explanation of it. I would hazard a guess that “New York” and “East Coast” are not used as euphemisms for Jews in France and Germany and when told that radical feminists dislike Jews because they invented patriarchy or that neo-conservative is a euphemism for Jews, I am sceptical. I would at least have liked citations. One can doubt the thesis that the holocaust is unique without doubting that it was evil, and one can hold that the holocaust is exploited for political ends whilst holding that it is imperative to remember it.

All that said, Laqueur makes some interesting points. He is right that Israel should have taken Palestinian national aspirations more seriously than it actually did, he is right that relentless anti-semitic propaganda in the Arab world is used to distract attention from other popular grievances and he is right that a rise in anti-Semitic sentiment will not be slow to find politicians to exploit it. To that end Laqueur cites the Labour party’s depiction of Michael Howard and Oliver Letwin as pigs. I thought this was rather splendid. For one thing if the political party in power starts doing this sort of thing, it is rather more important than the activities of minor Trotskyist sects which are so important in the phony war between “Stoppers” and “Decents”. For another thing the “anti-Semitism on the left” campaigners are rather apt to grant free passes to like minded souls. Hence the free pass allotted to Oona King, despite comparing the occupied territories to the Warsaw Ghetto and announcing her boycott of Israel in the same article or the comparative silence about the depiction of Michael Howard as a pig or as Svengali. (Actually, whilst I am on the subject I can’t be the only person who is uncomfortable about the whole “something of the night” bit, can I? Howard has always struck me as being comparatively decent on a personal level and prone to nasty right-wing dog-whistle politics on a political level. Don’t tell me that Widdecombe objected to the latter.)

In any event, there is undoubtedly a problem. It is necessary to oppose anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is on the rise. Anti-Semitism is exploited by defenders of Israel to get it off the hook. At least to some extent opposition to Israel is anti-Semitic. Laqueur wisely declines to come to any conclusions. How does one hold things in balance? Here the child killed by the IDF. There the victim of anti-Semitic violence. There is no equivalence, no economy of evil whereby these things can be weighed and one function as an apologetic for another. The occupation does not excuse the Hamas charter. The holocaust does not excuse the occupation.. The subject is a matter for Aeschlyus. The death of Agamennon is not justified, neither is the murder of Clytemnestra. What Minerva will turn the vengeful furies into the Eumenides.