The Lacuna in Jones’ head

One despairs of Owen
Jones.  The brain of the Guardian’s
resident life-style leftist seems to turn to jelly whenever he approaches the
issue of anti-Semitism.  Instead of anything
in the way of an insight, still less meaningful analysis, all we get is a series
of platitudes linked together by Jones’ urge to demonstrate how concerned and
right-on he is.  [Antisemitism is a poison – the left must take leadership against it,
Guardian 15th March]  It is as if Jones is so guilt-tripped by the legacy of anti-Semitism that he cannot think straight.

Without anything in the way
of substantiating, Jones asserts that ‘this centuries-old sickness infects
progressive circles’.  This reminds me of what Abram Leon, the leader of
the Fourth International in Belgium, who died in Auschwitz, wrote in his
classic book ‘The Jewish Question – A
Marxist Interpretation’ p.247: ‘Zionism
transposes modern anti-Semitism to all of history and saves itself the trouble
of studying the various forms of anti-Semitism and their evolution.’  Anti-Semitism wasn’t a ‘sickness’ it was a
political, economic and social phenomenon that changed in different eras.  Jews in Europe weren’t only persecuted at
particular periods they were also oppressors of the peasantry for long periods.

When right-wing Labour MPs, led by John Mann,
and assorted Zionists orchestrate a campaign about ‘anti-Semitism’ in order to
destabilise the Corbyn leadership, Jones abandons what few critical faculties
he possesses to write yet another slushy mushy article for the Guardian. 

In his latest article Jones
complains that when people read his article they will say ‘ah, but what about Israel’.  He complains that it’s not possible to raise
the issue of anti-Semitism without people talking about Israel.  Indeed it is ‘victim-blaming (people are apparently being compelled
to hate Jewish people by the actions of a foreign state)’ whereas it is the exact opposite. 
Palestinians are accused of hating Jewish people by daring to protest at
their treatment.

It
doesn’t seem to occur to Jones that the reason Israel and ‘anti-Semitism’ are
conflated is because this is a deliberate strategy of Israel’s supporters, who regularly
and repeatedly accuse anti-Zionists of being anti-Semitic.  [See for example Anti-Zionism Always Equals Anti-Semitism Jonathan S.
Tobin, Commentary, 18.8.14. 

Indeed
any support for the Palestinians is deemed anti-Semitic.  According to Jeremy Corbyn’s new junior
foreign office minister, Fabian Hamilton, [Jewish News, January
13, 2016, New shadow minister:Boycotting Israel and not vile dictatorships is anti-Semitic  Hamilton ‘said
boycotting the Jewish state without taking action against other countries is
“simply anti-Semitic”.

As Brian Klug, one of the founders of
Independent Jewish Voices and an Oxford don who has written extensively on anti-Semitism
noted, ‘[W]hen anti-Semitism is everywhere, it
is nowhere. And when every anti-Zionist is an anti-Semite, we no longer know
how to recognize the real thing—the concept of anti-Semitism loses its
significance’  Brian Klug,
The Myth of theNew Anti-Semitism. The Nation, February 2, 2004 

Given the controversies over the now-defunct European
Monitoring Committee Definition of anti-Semitism, you might have thought Jones
would address some of the issues that were raised.  This was a definition drawn up by the Zionist
movement, whose main purpose was to provide some legitimacy to accusations that
anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism.  It
held that comparisons between Zionism and Israel’s behaviour with Nazi Germany were
anti-Semitic and that someone who
opposes the existence of the racist, apartheid State of Israel is anti-Semitic.  

What does Jones have to say about the EUMC or
‘new anti-Semitism’ which
includes ‘singling out Israel for criticism’? 
Nothing.  To be fair he probably
isn’t even aware of these debates. 

I doubt if there is a single Palestine solidarity
activist alive who hasn’t, at one time or the other, been accused of ‘anti-Semitism’.  When York University Palestine Society is
accused of anti-Semitism because it showed Caryl Churchill’s 7 Jewish Children,
then it should be obvious, even to an intellectual lightweight like Jones, that
the issue of anti-Semitism cannot be separated from anti-Zionism and support
for the Palestinians. [see Pro-Palestinian students perform ‘antisemitic’ playas part of Israel Apartheid Week, Jewish Chronicle 25.2.16.] 

7 Jewish Children is a short but quite moving and
stimulating play, which is on the Guardian’s own web site.   It makes the connection between hiding a Jewish child in an unnamed Jewish ghetto
under Nazi occupation and the death of her relatives and the bombardment of
Gaza in 2008-9 during Operation Cast Lead. 
According to the idiot Zionist novelist Howard Jacobson it is nothing
more than “Jew-hating pure and simple”  Let’s see the ‘criticism’ of Israel for what it really is, Independent 18.2.09.

Oxford University Labour
Club was recently accused of anti-Semitism when it voted to back the Israel Apartheid
Week. [It’s time we acknowledged that Oxford’s student left is institutionally antisemitic]   Guardian Comment is Free, 18.2.16.  The only example of anti-Semitism
was the fact that people sometimes used the term ‘Zio’ for Zionist. 

As the former Director of
the Institute of Jewish Policy Research, Antony
Lerman observed, the almost automatic accusation of ‘anti-Semitism’ drains the
term of all meaning. [Vetting in Practice, Guardian Comment is Free, 31.5.07. Tony Greenstein] 
Like the boy who cried wolf, the repeated false
accusations of anti-Semitism render people immune to the real thing.  That is the real problem, but it isn’t one Jones is capable or able to address.

If Jones wants to find a
real example of anti-Semitism it’s not the hapless Vicki Kirby, whose
expressions owe more to clumsiness and stupidity, coupled with an inability to
discern the difference between Zionism and being Jewish, than overt anti-Semitism.  A far more convincing target would be Aviv Bushinsky, a former aide to Benjamin
Netanyahu, who recently described the American Ambassador to Israel, Daniel
Shapiro, as a ‘little Jew boy’  [‘Former Netanyahu aide lambasts US ambassador in heated spat’]. 

Jones only alludes to it, but the last 8 months
have been dominated by allegations of anti-Semitism surrounding Jeremy Corbyn
and the Labour Party.  Leading the charge
against Corbyn has been the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Stephen Pollard,
who ironically has a record of defending anti-Semites who are pro-Israel. [Poland’s Kaminski is not an antisemite: he’s a friend
to Jews, Guardian, 9.10.09.] 
Michal Kaminski is the reptile who opposed a national Polish apology for
the burning alive of up to 900 Polish Jews by fellow Poles in the village of Jedwabne in his
constituency.  He suggested that it was the
few Polish Jews who weren’t exterminated by Hitler who owed the country an
apology!  None of this prevented the Israeli
state from feting this fascist and anti-Semitic MEP.

Contrary to Jones assertion, all the evidence is that
anti-Semitism is not on the
increase.  Even the avowedly Zionist
Community Security Trust’s ‘Anti-Semitic Incidents Report 2015’  recorded 924
anti-Semitic incidents in 2015, a fall of 22% from the 2014 level.  As the CST’s report admits, the two highest
annual totals for anti-Semitic incidents occurred in 2009 and 2014 when there
were ‘significant trigger events in the form of conflicts in Israel and Gaza’. 

Jews
in Britain are living in a golden era of tolerance.  The same is not true in relation to racism against Muslims.  Arson and physical attacks, including murder,
are at an incomparably higher level for Muslims than Jews, leaving aside the
question as to how the CST define an anti-Semitic incident.  Anti-Semitism is not a form of state
hatred.  Synagogues don’t have fascist
goons demonstrating outside them unlike the East London Mosque on Whitechapel
Road which has faced three demonstrations by Britain First in the past month.

The elephant in the room is the relationship of
Zionism itself to anti-Semitism.  Zionism
was founded on the belief that Jews did not belong in the Diaspora.  Negation of and contempt for the Diaspora was
a fundamental part of Zionism’s founding ideology. 

It is the Zionist movement that has often found
kindred spirits among anti-Semites.  The
founder of Political Zionism, Theodor Herzl explained that ‘the anti-Semites
will be our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries, our allies’.
[Diaries, p.84]  Herzl himself had
friendly relations with anti-Semites including the leader of the
anti-Dreyfussards, Eduard Drumont. 

In his Diaries, Herzl relates how on a visit to the
cousin of the German Kaiser, the Grand Duke of Baden, the latter explained how
he supported Zionism as a means of weaning Jewish workers away from
revolutionary politics but he was worried that if he openly supported the Zionist
movement he might be accused of anti-Semitism.

Today in Europe some of the most racist and
far-right parties are, at one and the same time, supporters of Israel.   They combine Islamaphobia, anti-Semitism and
support for Israel.  This includes both
the British National Party and the English Defence League.  As Ruth Smeed,
spokesperson for the Board of Deputies admitted: ‘‘The BNP website is now one of the most Zionist on the web – it goes
further than any of the mainstream parties in its support of Israel’. [BNP seeks to bury antisemitism and gain Jewish votes in Islamophobic campaign, The
Guardian, April 10th 2008 .

As A B Yehoshua, one of Israel’s foremost novelists,
explained in a lecture to the Union of Jewish Students

‘‘Anti-Zionism
is not the product of the non-Jews. On the contrary, the Gentiles have always
encouraged Zionism, hoping that it would help to rid them of the Jews in their
midst. Even today, in a perverse way, a real anti-Semite must be a Zionist.’
Jewish Chronicle 22.1.82.

But despite his attempt to get into the good books of Britain’s Zionist lobby, Jones is savaged in this week’s Jewish Chronicle (17.3.16).  David Hirsh, the junk Zionist academic from Goldsmiths College, argues in Jew hate and today’s Left 

Whether he tries to avoid it or not, the fact is that the Zionist definition of anti-Semitism rests on support for Israel and opposition to Palestine solidarity.  This is not the first vacuous article Jones has
written on anti-Semitism.  Nor I suspect
will it be the last.

Tony Greenstein