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Crying wolf?

Shami Chakrabarti (centre) takes her seat in the House of Lords, September, 2016. Press Agency Images. All rights reserved.The
latest report by the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee (HAC) Antisemitism in the UK Tenth Report of
Session 2016–17
, was released to
great fanfare on Sunday 16 October. Its accompanying embargoed press release,
headed “All Parties – And Media Giants – Must Address ‘Pernicious’ Antisemitic
Hate”, led with the following note: “[T]he failure of the Labour Party
consistently and effectively to deal with antisemitic incidents in recent years
risks lending force to allegations that elements of the Labour movement are
institutionally antisemitic.”

Against a background of rising criticism of the Israeli
state and its actions, attempts have been made in recent decades to redefine
our understanding of antisemitism to include much of this criticism under the
rubric of what is labelled “left antisemitism”. Genuine antisemitism and
criticism of Israel which “oversteps the bounds” are rolled up into one and the
same thing. In recent months the British Labour party has become the focus of
attention as the exemplar, par excellence, of this “left antisemitism”.

In this respect the
publication of the Chakrabarti report at the end of June was an important
moment not just for the Labour party. It was a model of careful language,
civility and empathy. Chakrabarti didn’t accuse anyone of bad faith, and strove
to engage with the real pain that has been caused to people involved on all sides in this issue so far. It
seemed to herald the possibility of moving beyond the fractious and divisive
use of antisemitism as a political football which has so dogged debate in
recent years. That is why I am dismayed to see the direction and trend of the
latest Home Affairs Committee report (hereinafter called “the Report” and its
author referred to as “the Committee”; all references to “paras” are to
paragraphs in the report). 

I want to comment
particularly on the following areas of the Report:

a) its obsessive focusing
on Labour

b) its shameful rubbishing
of Chakrabarti

c) its confusions over
“Zionism”

d) its attempt to
(re)define antisemitism (including a misrepresentation of a definition it
says it is endorsing)

e) its insistence that
antisemitism is special, not like other racisms.

Demonising the Labour party

“It should be emphasised that the majority of antisemitic
abuse and crime has historically been, and continues to be, committed by
individuals associated with (or motivated by) far-right wing parties and
political activity. Although there is little reliable or representative data on
contemporary sources of antisemitism, CST [Community Security Trust] figures
suggest that around three-quarters of all politically-motivated antisemitic
incidents come from far-right sources.” (para 7)

Since obsessive
focusing on Israel is taken by many as an indication of antisemitism, what do
we make of the Committee’s obsessive focusing on the UK Labour Party, on Shami
Chakrabarti, and on the world of student politics?

We might
expect that three-quarters of the report would focus on the “antisemitic incidents com[ing]
from far-right sources”. But that paragraph is about the only attention paid to
the right in its 66 pages. Only 6 paragraphs (paras 121-126) look at antisemitism
in relation to any political parties, other than Labour.

Further, there is no reference to the rampaging
resurgence of all forms of racism in British political life, an openly racist
Tory campaign for the London mayoralty, a Prime Minister referring to refugees
in Europe as “a swarm” and accusing Labour of encouraging “a bunch of migrants” at Calais to come to Britain, and of
course the post-Brexit referendum surge of hate crimes. Why is there no
reference to this context?

Instead the report aims to “differentiate explicitly between racism and antisemitism
(Report, para 114)” arguing that they are two different kinds of animal.
Why?

As Jeremy Corbyn pointed out, in a mastery of understatement: “The report’s political framing and disproportionate emphasis
on Labour risks
undermining the positive and welcome recommendations made in it.”

One area that does receive attention,
the scale of verbal abuse on social media, Twitter in particular, is clearly
disturbing, and the Report does well to draw attention to
it. But again, the antisemitism which is found there cannot be an isolated
concern. Other forms of racism, Islamophobia in particular, and a generalised
culture of anti-immigrant hate speech, sexual harassment and bullying is passed
over as of no particular consequence. Rather, the Committee simply seems to
have assumed that a) abuse in this sphere all comes from the left and b) that
it is somehow licensed by what it claims to be Corbyn’s light-hearted attitude
to antisemitism.

Nowhere
is this clearer than with regard to Ruth Smeeth MP who is said to have
experienced “more than 25,000 incidents of abuse, including being called a “yid
c**t” and a “CIA/Mossad informant”, and who has said that she has “never seen
antisemitism in Labour on this scale”. What percentage of the 25,000 were
antisemitic we are not told, though Ms Smeeth’s own statement on television is
reported: “It’s vile, it’s disgusting and it’s done in the name of the Leader
of the Labour party, which makes it even worse” (Report, para 104). But was it
done in Corbyn’s name? What’s the evidence for that assertion? How many of
these tweeters were left-wing Labour? Did the Committee bother to ask? There is
no evidence it did so. It seems to have operated on the generalised,
taken-for-granted assumption that as antisemitism is rampant in the Labour
party that’s where it must have come from. And it simply ignores the fact that
Corbyn “contacted Ruth Smeeth to
express his outrage at the abuse and threats directed against her” (or that the Sun
chose to headline this action as “Jeremy
Corbyn grovels to race-hate row MP Ruth Smeeth”!).

How can this explain
what happened to Rhea Wolfson, a Jewish member of the party who stood for the
NEC only to be (temporarily) blackballed on the grounds that she was supported
by Momentum, allegedly “an antisemitic organisation”. Tweets sent to her in early October included: “1 way ticket to Auschwitz
for you” and “Dirty kike she ready for the ovens” (Rhea Wolfson press release,
16 Oct 2016). It beggars belief that these tweets were sent to her by left-wing
Labour supporters.

This does not appear to be a mere a lack of
curiosity in the Report. On the contrary. Its authors seem positively to want
to lend support to the idea of Labour’s “institutional antisemitism”, mentioned
in the very first paragraph of its press release. The "Macpherson definition" of a racist incident is cited in para 13 – as
though the Metropolitan police’s unwillingness to recognise racism in the past
is equivalent to Labour’s relationship to antisemitism today. You wouldn’t guess
from the Report that every allegation of antisemitism in the Labour party has resulted
in the suspension of the Labour party member concerned within a matter of days
and that its leader has repeatedly and unreservedly condemned antisemitism. Given
this absence, which was compounded by the way the Report was presented to the
media, it is no surprise that all outlets duly led with its attack on Labour and focused on
Jeremy Corbyn’s alleged “lack of leadership” and “weakness” in dealing with the
assumed scourge of antisemitism in his movement.

Corbyn’s immediate response was a cautious, even gracious,
welcome (“I welcome some recommendations
in the report, such as strengthening anti-hate crime systems,
demanding Twitter take stronger action
against antisemitic trolling and allow users to block keywords,
and support for Jewish communal security”), together with a clear
recognition of what he politely calls “important opportunities lost” in the
report.

Corbyn also pointed out that: “Under my leadership, Labour has taken greater action against
anti-Semitism than any other party, and will implement the measures recommended
by the Chakrabarti report to ensure Labour is a welcoming environment for
members of all our communities.”

Critique of Chakrabarti

The Home
Affairs Committee seems to have been almost equally obsessed by a desire to
discredit the Chakrabarti Report and some effort is made to discredit Shami Chakrabarti personally in circumstances in which she has no right of reply.

She is, for
example, shamelessly taken to task for having joined the Labour party and also
for subsequently having accepted a peerage (which she should long ago have had
for her public service if peerages mean anything at all). The Community
Security Trust (CST) is quoted as saying it was “a shameless kick in the teeth for all
who put hope in her now wholly compromised inquiry into Labour antisemitism” (para
108). “Wholly compromised” is strong condemnation indeed – but nothing in the
Report suggests or even hints at how or in what way anything in her inquiry was
compromised. The CST were not asked what had changed to undermine their guarded welcome for the Report at the time it
appeared, which including saying, “Many of our recommendations are echoed in the final report’s language
concerning Zionism, the term 'Zio' and Holocaust analogies”; and also made the
point that “The final verdict on the Chakrabarti Report will depend upon its
implementation.”

The Committee’s report goes on to claim that the Chakrabarti inquiry was
“ultimately compromised by its failure to deliver a
comprehensive set of recommendations, to provide a definition of antisemitism,
or to suggest effective ways of dealing with antisemitism (para 118)".

I’ll come to
the separate issue of a definition of antisemitism below, including in the
Chakrabarti Report. But Chakrabarti did, of course, provide a comprehensive set
of recommendations and suggested ways of dealing with antisemitism. They need
to be implemented and only then can their effectiveness at dealing with
antisemitism over time be judged. How can it be anything other than partisan
bias for the Committee to dismiss them at this stage?

In
particular, Chakrabarti was very explicit about the need for clear and
transparent disciplinary procedures in the Labour party in order to deal with
allegations – this in a context where there was widespread feeling that
allegations of antisemitism were being used as weapons in a campaign to get
Corbyn. A significant part of her report – as yet unimplemented – relates to
issues of due process and natural justice. None of this is given more than a hint
of recognition by the Home Affairs Committee (para 114).

Yet this really does matter. A number
of accusations of antisemitism, of varying degrees of severity, have been made against
members of the Labour party who have been suspended as a consequence – without
due process, without knowing sometimes what they are accused of, who by or why.
The
Report fails to take note of the strong evidence produced that at least some of
the accusations of Labour party antisemitism were malicious and their timing,
beyond a shadow of doubt, politically motivated. All these accusations against Labour
party members are assumed by the Report and the media to be clearly established
instances of the extreme antisemitism that Labour is riddled by. But some we
know to have been false and some exaggerated.

In the end, this selectivity of
narrative and treatment does a disservice to any genuine fight-back against
antisemitism. Here it is particularly concerning that the report was signed off
by two members of the Labour party (who, by the way, have a clear anti-Corbyn
agenda) without appearing to express any concern about the need to investigate and
clear up the accusations of antisemitism in their own party as a matter of
urgency. But that can only be done when proper procedures are in place – as
Chakrabarti’s maligned report insisted. As Tony Klug pointed out writing in the Jewish Chronicle on 5 May in The problem is real but exaggerated: “While antisemitism is
monstrous – and, like all forms of racism, should be vigorously dealt with –
false accusations of antisemitism are monstrous too.”

On a
different note, it is undoubtedly true that while a few of the reported
instances of antisemitism in and around the Labour party relate to classic
antisemitism, most would appear to be connected with Israel and/or the ongoing
war over Gaza. This is something the Committee seems to have failed to look
into at all – though its obsession with a definition of antisemitism (see
below) suggests that it is happy to allow these key distinctions to be elided.

Here the
need to be able to have an open, wide-ranging and honest discussion about
Israel and Palestine is clearly crucial. And here the Committee’s intervention
is not at all helpful, asserting without evidence the existence of widespread “unwitting”
antisemitism on campus “and within left-leaning student political organisations
in particular” (Report, para 93). I won’t comment on this alleged campus
antisemitism section except to draw attention to the Open Letter to Home Affairs Select Committee sent within hours of publication of the report, signed
by over 300 students, which claimed: “[W]e believe
this report’s selective and partisan approach attempts to delegitimise NUS, and
discredit Malia Bouattia as its president [by suggesting she does not take the
issue of campus antisemitism seriously]. An attack on NUS is an attack on the
student and union movements. This is completely unacceptable and we cannot allow
these claims against us to go unchallenged.”

Compare
Chakrabarti’s lucid contribution in her report with that of the Home Affairs Committee:
“This is not
to shut down debate about what has been one of the most intractable and
far-reaching geopolitical problems of the post-war world, but actively to
facilitate it. Labour members should be free and positively encouraged to
criticise injustice and abuse wherever they find it, including in the Middle
East. But surely it is better to use the modern universal language of human
rights, be it of dispossession, discrimination, segregation, occupation or
persecution and to leave Hitler, the Nazis and the Holocaust out of it? This
has been the common sense advice which I have received from many Labour members
of different ethnicity and opinion including many in Jewish communities and
respected institutions, who further point to particular Labour MPs with a long
interest in the cause of the Palestinian people with whom they have discussed
and debated difficult issues and differences, in an atmosphere of civility and
a discourse of mutual respect.” (Chakrabarti
p. 12)

Opposing Zionism

Curiously,
the Committee report echoes much of Chakrabarti in relation to discourse, but
while Chakrabarti is forward-looking and educational (see quote above), the
Committee’s approach is punitive.

Chakrabarti’s
condemnation of the use of certain language inveighed, rightly, against any
“bitter incivility of discourse”, including her insistence that there was no
place for the use of the word “Zio” ever, nor for “Zionist” as a term of abuse (recommendations
accepted by the Labour party’s NEC in September). These are snidely dismissed by
the Report (para 102) as “little more than statements of the obvious”. And yet lo,
in para 32 of the Report we have this: “The word ‘Zionist’ (or worse, ‘Zio’) as
a term of abuse, however, has no place in a civilised society… [Their use]
should be considered inflammatory and potentially antisemitic.” It is hard to
tell the Committee’s and Chakrabarti’s formulations apart, as the words are
transmogrified into no longer being “little more than statements of the
obvious”.

The Committee
seems clear that “’Zionism’ as a concept remains a valid topic for academic and
political debate, both within and outside Israel” (para 32). But not really.
Rabbi Mirvis’s opinion is given that “Zionism has been an integral part of Judaism from the
dawn of our faith”. Mick Davis of the Jewish Leadership Council is quoted as
saying that criticising Zionism is the same as antisemitism for “if you attack
Zionism, you attack the very fundamentals of how the Jews believe in
themselves” (paras 26 & 27).

The report is insistent that in a
recent survey, 59% of Jews saw themselves as Zionist. Assuming this is the case,
it still does not make Zionism a protected characteristic of Jewish identity.
What if opinion among these people changed? Would their becoming anti- or
non-Zionist now become a heretical position which the Jewish community could
use to exclude members from it as no longer adhering to “the very fundamentals
of how the Jews believe in themselves”? What indeed to make of the current 41%
of the Jewish population who don’t identify as Zionist? Are they not real Jews
as far as the Chief Rabbi or Mick Davis are concerned? The Report just leaves
these contradictory strands hanging – giving the overwhelming impression that
these are too complicated for ordinary mortals. Better leave them as no-go
areas.

Surely it is self-evident that Jews
see themselves in multiple and contradictory ways? So any attempt to let Jews
self-define what is or is not antisemitic soon runs into an impossible impasse
– which Jews are accorded the franchise to define where other Jews may tread (especially
when some sections of that community find almost any criticism of Israel likely
to cause offence)?

At every stage, the Committee buys
into the view that criticism of Israel is a dangerous place to go. “It is clear,
“says the Report that where criticism of the Israeli Government is concerned,
context is vital.” And how does the Report contextualize it? “Israel is an ally
of the UK Government and is generally regarded as a liberal democracy, in which
the actions of the Government are openly debated and critiqued by its
citizens.” (Conclusions, para 2). Does it follow that any criticism by
outsiders is likely to be offensive? Whatever happened to treatment of
minorities as a benchmark of a healthy democracy?

Indeed the Report cautions not simply
against using Zionism as a term of abuse (as did Chakrabarti) but against using
the term at all. Criticise “the Israeli government” not Zionists”, it says
(para 32). And sometimes, indeed, this might be good advice. After all, the
right to give offence does not translate into a duty to do so. But sometimes
the use of terms like Zionism is coolly analytical and can’t just be done away
with.

Palestinians – some 750,000 of them –
were dispossessed by a movement calling itself Zionist. How can they, and by
extension those who support Palestinian rights today, explain this history by
criticising “the Israeli government”? How can they be expected simply to regard
Zionism as the timeless essence of a Jewish right to self-determination, above
and beyond critique? Can anything be
done in the name of Zionism without those who oppose it being allowed to name it?

Leaving aside the debate
of what Zionism might or might not have been historically, ask what it has become.
Only one strand of Zionism has any political purchase today, and it is not a
pleasant one. Israel’s colonisation of the West Bank continues unabated.
Green-line Israel’s discrimination against its increasingly second-class
Palestinian citizens, and their physical displacement in the Negev, rolls on.
What Israel now needs is to be judged by what it is doing. It is Israel’s
actions that delegitimise it, not any antisemitism of the left. And these
actions, carried out by and on behalf of the Israeli government, are called – by
that government – actions on behalf of Zionism.

Of course the word “Zionist”
can be a surrogate for “Jew” (just as the same danger, only a much more extreme
variant, arises when Muslims are expected to distance themselves from acts of
violent political Islam). Of course it can be used in an antisemitic manner. But
it needs to shown to be the case, not simply assumed to be likely or, worse, read
off from the very use of the term.

Of course holding all
Jews responsible for what the government of Israel does is wrong – indeed
antisemitic. But who makes the elision between Jews, Israel and Zionism more
enthusiastically than the representatives of the Jewish Community when they
stand by Israel, right or wrong and claim to support it in the name of all
Jews?

This is the
minefield that discourse on Israel-Palestine now has to negotiate on a daily
basis but unfortunately the Home Affairs Committee has very little to say on
how this can take place productively. Yet surely this is essential, not just in
the democratic socialist party Labour aspires to be, but in our wider society
where the parameters of debate can no longer be defined by a narrow elite.
Again, Chakrabarti seems to have got this right: “We can facilitate free speech, whilst
acknowledging the evidence that we have received that there have been some
instances of undoubtedly antisemitic and otherwise racist language and
discourse in the past and at the same time encouraging a civility of discourse which
is respectful of each other’s diversity and sensitivities.” (Chakrabarti p.7)

This is simply good advice both to
avoid giving unnecessary offence and to move forward. Incivility of discourse
is to be deplored in its own right and because it is a counter-productive way
of doing debate (and democracy), allowing discussion of the important issues to
be sidetracked – and thus avoided. In this case it can feed a moral panic about
antisemitism, rather than dealing with the real instances of antisemitism (in our
increasingly racist and intolerant society), in a politically effective, open
and productive way.

Redefining
antisemitism

As already mentioned, one of the
severe criticisms that the Report has now made of Chakrabarti is that she
failed to define antisemitism (e.g. para 118). Leaving aside the fact that for
most of the twentieth century what constituted antisemitism was not in doubt,
the politicisation of the debate in recent decades has not helped and
Chakrabarti might well have felt this minefield was better avoided.

Not the Committee, which insisted on
jumping straight in, continuing a more than decade-long debate about how and to
what extent criticism of Israel must be incorporated into a definition of
antisemitism.

There has been a consistent attempt since
around 2005, to get what was a draft of a “working definition of antisemitism”
published on the website of the European Union Monitoring Centre for Racism and
Xenophobia – one never endorsed by that body or its successor the Fundamental
Rights Agency – adopted as the
definition of antisemitism. I dealt with the history of this disputed definition at length some years ago in openDemocracy, and refer readers to the
argument developed there.

In summary, suffice it to say here this
document produced a “working definition”:

Antisemitism is a certain perception
of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical
manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish
individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and
religious facilities. (emphasis in the original)

For clarification, this was illustrated with
eleven examples of what “could,
taking into account the overall context” be antisemitic. About half of the examples cited were concerned not simply with
Jews but with how Israel was referred to.

The trouble is that the definition is
so vague as to be useless as the practical operational tool that was being sought
at the time by the EUMC. The eleven examples provided of what “could, taking into account the overall context” be
antisemitic, don’t resolve the problem. If they could be antisemitic, equally
they might not be… No EU member state adopted the document and the Fundamental Rights
Agency quietly laid it to rest, removing it from its website.

The All-Party Parliamentary Committee
on Antisemitism which in 2006 had pressed for the government to adopt the
definition had, by 2015 decided otherwise (Report, Feb 2015, paras 9-11). It looked as though this highly
controversial definition was recognised as simply unhelpful in the wider
discussion of combatting antisemitism.

But the draft EUMC “working
definition” took on a life of its own – as an ideological weapon to beat those
who criticise Israel “too harshly”. Although it included the qualifier “could, taking into account the overall context” be
antisemitic, there
is in it nonetheless an underlying presumption that criticism of Israel is
likely to be antisemitic unless proved otherwise.

Now the Home Affairs Committee has resurrected this draft working
definition (in the form adopted almost verbatim by the International Holocaust Remembrance
Alliance and referred to as the IHRA definition). It notes the objections but simply
says “We broadly accept the IHRA definition, (para 24. and recommend (Conclusion,
para 4) that it “should be formally adopted by the UK Government, law
enforcement agencies and all political parties” (with two caveats – see below).

But the Committee distorts the
document in a crucial way. It claims (para 17) that the list of illustrative
examples are antisemitic. It simply
drops the all-important qualification, that they might, “taking into account the overall context”, be antisemitic.

Was this done deliberately? One
hesitates to suggest it as it would then be utterly dishonest. Or was it simply
incompetence? If so it is of a high order. In any event it is astonishing that
no-one on the Committee, or commentators to date, have remarked on it.

In deference to representations made by “the Friends of Palestine” (para
21, a vague identification not clarified further in the Report) the Committee
proposes to add two caveats to its (misrepresented) account of the IHRA
definition, and says:

"[T]o ensure that freedom of
speech is maintained in the context of discourse about Israel and Palestine,
without allowing antisemitism to permeate any debate, the definition should
include the following statements:

• It is not antisemitic to criticise the
  Government of Israel, without additional evidence to suggest antisemitic
  intent. 

• It is not antisemitic to hold the Israeli
  Government to the same standards as other liberal democracies, or to take a
  particular interest in the Israeli Government’s policies or actions, without
  additional evidence to suggest antisemitic intent. 
(para 24)"

Unfortunately, this doesn’t really help. To take
the second statement, for example, in what sense can it ever be
antisemitic “to hold the Israeli Government to the same standards as other
liberal democracies”? What kind of caveat is this? The first caveat is in
principle more helpful, a clear recognition that there is a problem with the
strictures of the EUMC working definition. But it is contradicted by the
Committee’s obvious eagerness to define a broad range of statements as
antisemitic when it comes to Israel (para 17 again), giving encouragement to
those who think like it, to find antisemitic intent. The presumption
throughout, that criticism of Israel is dangerous ground to enter, is if
anything strengthened – as, I submit, those who favour the EUMC-now-IHRA
definition have always intended. If nothing else, it chills the atmosphere for
the serious debate about Israel and Palestine that is so urgently needed. Although
it can’t be quantified, anecdotal evidence from a number of Labour party
branches suggest that many members now find this whole issue too difficult to
discuss. Similarly on a number of university campuses there is pressure not to
raise issues around Israel-Palestine on the grounds that these make some
students feel “uncomfortable”.

It is clear,
however, that the debate about Israel-Palestine won’t go away. If the Home
Office Committee had recognised this and tried more carefully to elaborate ways
in which it could be developed constructively, it might have contributed to
defusing less constructive reactions – particularly on campus – when the
realities of Israeli politics are raised. While the occupation continues, while
Palestinians within Israel are subject to increasingly discriminatory laws,
attempts to understand the reality by employing concepts like “apartheid”, “settler-colonialism”
or simply “Israeli racism” are bound to flourish. So too will non-violent
campaigns to oppose oppression on the ground by exerting pressure on the
Israeli government – and on the British to act more decisively – by means of
grass-roots boycott and divestment campaigns and calls for sanctions. Diverting
attention back into a recycled version of a tired, politicised definition of
antisemitism will not help. By rolling up so much of what is intended as
political criticism into what is purportedly antisemitic it is far more likely
to debase the currency.

The outlines
of a genuinely workable definition of antisemitism is easily to be found, and indeed
Chakrabarti should perhaps have ventured here. Professor David Feldman (later co-vice-chair of the Chakrabarti Inquiry) provides a
good foundation in his Sub-Report for the
Parliamentary Committee against Antisemitism for its investigation into Antisemitism in Public Debate during and after Operation Protective Edge
(Jul-Aug 2014). He writes:

"Specifically, I
propose two distinct but complementary definitions of antisemitism. One
definition focuses on discourse, the other focuses on discrimination.

1. When we
consider discourse we focus on the ways in which Jews are represented. Here we
can say, following the philosopher Brian Klug, that antisemitism is ‘a form of
hostility towards Jews as Jews, in which Jews are perceived as something other
than what they are.’ Accordingly, antisemitism is to be found in
representations of Jews as stereotyped and malign figures. One such stereotype
is the notion that Jews constitute a cohesive community, dedicated to the
pursuit of its own selfish ends. It will be important to ask whether this or
other malign stereotypes figured in public debate on Operation Protective Edge.

2. In addition
to antisemitism which arises within the process of representation there is also

antisemitism which stems from social and institutional practices.
Discriminatory practices which disadvantage Jews are antisemitic. Taking a
historical view, we can say that British society and the British state became
less antisemitic in past centuries as Jews were allowed to live in the country,
to pray together, to work, to vote and to associate with others in clubs and
societies to the same degrees as their Christian fellow-subjects.
Discrimination against Jews need not be accompanied by discursive antisemitism,
even though in many cases it has been. If we apply this definition of
antisemitism to public debate on Jews and Israel last summer and autumn we will
need to ask whether any aspect of this debate threatened to discriminate
against Jews."

It is a
practical definition and operational in its approach. It can easily be
reformulated to be independent of and to go beyond its roots around Operation Protective Edge. For reasons still not clear, the Home
Affairs Committee sidestepped engaging with it in favour of a reversion to a definition
in which criticism of Israel returns as a central feature in talking about antisemitism.

Antisemitism
is special

Chakrabarti was very clear that
antisemitism had to be investigated in the wider context of racism in general:

[My] clear view is that there is not, and cannot be, any hierarchy of
racism. This must stand regardless of perceptions, realities or stereotypes
about which racial groups may, or may not, be more established or more or less
discriminated against at any given moment. (p.4)

Of course antisemitism has its own
specificities but for the Committee’s Report to suggest that the distinct nature of post-Second World War
antisemitism (which it claims is unappreciated by Jeremy Corbyn) is that
“unlike other forms of racism, antisemitic abuse often paints the victim as a
malign and controlling force rather than as an inferior object of derision,
making it perfectly possible for an ‘anti-racist campaigner’ to express
antisemitic views”. (para 113). What about the accusations of hoarding wealth and goods, deployed against
Ugandan Asians in the sixties, that drove so many of them to seek asylum in
Britain? What about the Hutu view of Rwandan Tutsis as an exploitative and
controlling minority? And as for this being a distinctly post-Second World War trope
the Protocols of the Elder of Zion and Nazi antisemitism clearly saw Jews as “a
malign and controlling force”.

The
Committee goes further: “The Chakrabarti report… is clearly lacking in many
areas; particularly in its failure to differentiate explicitly between racism
and antisemitism” (para 114).

I have to
admit to being one of those who cannot see how (or why) to differentiate
explicitly between racism and antisemitism; nor how to oppose one without
opposing the other. Or to put it differently, I understand antisemitism as a
specific form of racism directed towards Jewish people. Like all racisms it has
its own specificities and these need to be clearly taken into account in any
strategy to combat this particular form of racism. But equally, as David
Rosenberg of the Jewish Socialists’ Group put it in the JSG response
to this Report: “There
is no separate solution for the problems that Jews face in Britain today. A
society that regards Jews positively and treats them properly will be a society
that treats all minorities properly.”

It is hard to see what the Committee believes
follows from its rigid separation of antisemitism from racism, but coupled with
its insistence on trying to define out of court certain criticisms of Israel,
this is bound to be counter-productive.

The Israel-Palestine conflict has, for good or ill,
become one of the moral touchstones of our age. The British government and
indeed the Labour party may well support a two-state solution. But is it credible any
longer to maintain that the status quo is provisional and that the
Palestinians will soon be exercising their national, political and civil rights
in their own state? Not in any future that Israel is currently offering. So the
question increasingly posed on campuses, in the Jewish community and elsewhere
– in short, wherever this is debated – is whether or not to be complicit in the
indefinite denial of fundamental human rights to millions of people? This
is a denial of rights being carried out by Israel, with occasional criticism
but no effective action to stop it by western democracies. As Tony Klug and Sam Bahour suggested a few
years ago, western democracies should cease letting Israel off the hook: “The laws of occupation either apply or do not apply. If
it is an occupation, it is beyond time for Israel’s custodianship – supposedly
provisional – to be brought to an end. If it is not an occupation, there is no
justification for denying equal rights to everyone who is subject to Israeli
rule, whether Israeli or Palestinian.”

To repeat the Committee’s words: “Israel is an ally of the UK Government and is
generally regarded as a liberal democracy, in which the actions of the
Government are openly debated and critiqued by its citizens.” (Conclusions,
para 2). It is precisely Israel’s claim to be a defender of liberal democratic
values while carrying out its policies of oppression, expansion, suppression of
the Palestinians that causes so much offence. Other countries may indeed be far
worse oppressors, but which other country at the same time tries to elicit our
complicity by claiming to act in defence of our liberal-democratic values? Of
course those who take these values seriously are likely to be very critical of
Israel. Trying to police the borders of this criticism in the name of fighting antisemitism
smacks of a cynical political motivation. It is a poor substitute for dealing
with any of the issues, whether it is defending Palestinian human rights or
tackling antisemitism at its roots in Britain.

A final note on the style of the
report

It’s impossible to read the report
without being struck by its all-too-often snide and judgmental tone, its cavalier
use of evidence, its cherry-picking of statements made by witnesses to it, its
failure to challenge and test the assertions made, and indeed its failure to call
or cite witnesses who might have been more challenging of some of the statements
made by Rabbi Mirvis and Jonathan Arkush speaking on behalf of an allegedly
united Jewish community. The feeling that this reader is left with is that this
failure must be because the Report’s authors agree with the opinions expressed.
But all too often, that’s all they are. Opinions. Not facts.