Let’s expose the hard-Left anti-Zionists for the anti-Semites they really are

She escaped in 1942 but wasn’t so lucky this time around. In the latest, horrific anti-Semitic murder to defile France, Mireille Knoll, an 85‑year‑old wheelchair-bound Parkinson’s sufferer, was stabbed 11 times and burnt to death in her flat in Paris on Friday. Aged nine, she had escaped from the Rafle du Vel d’Hiv, when French police sent thousands of Jews to their death; yet in the end the world’s oldest hatred finally caught up with her, to France’s eternal shame.

At least the courts promptly confirmed that this was an anti-Semitic murder; when Sarah Halimi, a 65-year-old doctor, was murdered last year, it took months for the French authorities to accept, despite overwhelming evidence, that the motivation was anti-Semitic and Islamist-inspired. For all of Emmanuel Macron’s fighting talk, the state has lost control, putting the future of Judaism in France in grave doubt.

Among the attacks this year, an eight-year-old boy was beaten and a supermarket burned; Jews account for 0.8 per cent of the population yet are the victims of 38 per cent of racist attacks. In swathes of the country, outward signs of Judaism, such as wearing a kippah or affixing a mezuzah to a front door, have become too dangerous. Parents have been forced to take their children out of state schools.

As it prepares for Passover, France’s Jewish community feels that history is repeating itself, that the time to move on once again is creeping ever nearer. The community is descended from Holocaust escapees in Europe, as well as refugees from Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria, forced to flee in the 1950s and 1960s. Less than a lifetime later, another exodus is in train, an almost unbelievable development in a country that co-invented the Enlightenment, democracy and human rights.

If there is one European country where there will still be a strong and sizeable Jewish community in 30 years’ time, it will be the UK

When compared to this hopeless nightmare, the situation in Britain remains comparatively benign. If there is one European country where there will still be a strong and sizeable Jewish community in 30 years’ time, it will be the UK. Its institutions, including its schools and charities, are flourishing, and it has found a unique way of reconciling secularism within a broader form of Anglo-Jewish identity.

Yet here, too, the situation is deteriorating. Anti-Semitic incidents have risen sharply; and the hate on social media and some campuses has reached horrendous proportions. There have been arsons and attacks, and Jewish students are clustering around a minority of universities to ensure safety in numbers.

But perhaps the most catastrophic development has been the capture of the Labour Party by Jeremy Corbyn’s gang of hard-Left, neo-Marxists. If this were just about economics, it would be bad enough: but a rabid anti-Semitism lies at the heart of the warped ideology embraced by some of the most radical Corbynite supporters.

In the space of a few years, Labour has been transformed from a hardcore anti-racist, Philo-Semitic entity to the only major, mainstream European party to harbour many anti-Semites in its midst, and grant them ever more influence and control in local party associations. There is nothing like it anywhere else in the West, where cranks and racists only thrive in fringe or populist parties.

Corbynites see Israel as an outrider for the imperialistic West and capitalism, and therefore the embodiment of all that they loathe

What do these maniacs believe? The first plank of their deranged outlook is that powerful financiers and media types control our economy and society; there are no prizes for guessing who is orchestrating the “conspiracy”. It’s the oldest anti-Semitic trope of them all. Throw into that a Marxist definition of racism that stipulates that only the “weak” can be victims, and not the supposedly all-powerful “Zionists”, and you automatically absolve the hard-Left of any kind of racism (and, in fact, define Corbynites as automatically anti-racist) while delegitimising the real victims.

There was a time when Labour believed in Zionism, the movement for Jewish self-determination and the creation of a Jewish state. Corbynites no longer agree: they see Israel as an outrider for the imperialistic West and capitalism, and therefore the embodiment of all that they loathe. Israel’s foes – however evil, reactionary, homophobic and totalitarian – are thus the hard-Left’s allies in the broader struggle, which means sucking up to groups committed to terrorist attacks against Israel and Jews.

It is not necessarily anti-Semitic to criticise Israel’s policies, or to dislike or even abhor its government or prime minister, just as it isn’t necessarily anti-British to disagree with Theresa May or to want to throw out her government. All groups and countries have internal disagreements: that is the point of democracy. But to restate such an obvious point has become too facile an excuse.

It is anti-Semitic to criticise only Israel and no other country; it is anti-Semitic to care only about people who are killed by Israelis, including in self-defence, and not those who are murdered by Isil or assassinated by their own kleptocratic tyrannies, in the Middle East or in any other part of the world; it is anti-Semitic to judge Israel by standards that are so high that no country could meet them, especially in wartime; it is anti-Semitic to seek to ban trade with Israel but not with any other nation; and it is anti-Semitic to demand of the mainstream British Jewish community that they must distance themselves from Israel.

Yes, a few extremely religious Jews are theologically anti-Zionist; but in 2018, the overwhelming majority of mainstream, active members of the Jewish community support Israel’s right to exist. They buy Israeli-made food and goods, and they often have relatives in Israel. Many will disagree with the Israeli government – on issues ranging from corruption to settlements to conversion rules or to the treatment of liberal diaspora Jews – but they remain Zionists in the strict sense of the term. In fact, Britain’s Jewish community has become more, rather than less, culturally entwined with Israel, for reasons that include cheap flights and the migration of several thousand Israelis to Britain. And has anybody thought what abolishing Israel would actually entail? The hard-Left anti-Zionists must be exposed for what they are: anti-Semites.

Labour could change all of this. It would require expelling anybody using anti-Semitic language, with a register kept to prevent reentry. Labour would also have to restate, forcibly, that it believes that Israel has a right to exist as a viable, safe, democratic Jewish state as part of a two-state solution. This too should be a condition of membership. But will any of this happen? Of course not – and thus Britain’s Jews will continue to look to France, and worry that they too could be next.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/03/28/expose-hard-left-anti-zionists-anti-semites-really/?li_source=LI&li_medium=li-recommendation-widget