Posts Tagged ‘antisemitism’
Please read the small print.
- ‘ANTISEMITIC’ MEANS ANTI-ARAB
This is not correct. The opposite of antisemite is not semite but philosemite. However the interpretation of antisemitism as anti-Palestinianism has great popularity as it enables the antagonist to accuse Jews of antisemitism while denying it in himself. There are also those who, as in Tiktoker Fiona Ryan’s song, ‘wear their antisemite’s badge with pride,’ but they tend to be fanatical Jew haters rather than moderately hostile.
2) JEWS ARE POLISH (OR KHAZARS)
The demography of Israel is such that Mizrahi Jews from Arabic speaking lands comprise more than half the Jewish population. As for the Beta Jews whose antecedents came from Ethiopia, there is no going back to Poland for them. The maternal grandparents of the present writer were born in Poland but they spoke Yiddish not Polish and migrated to England in the early twentieth century. If they had remained in Poland, they likely would not have survived the Shoah. Curiously, anti Zionist Jews ranging from right to left such as Neturei Karta (a minority group even among haredim), JVL or JVP are rarely considered Polish. It is perceived by the accuser as a slur, so intended for Zionist Jews and Israelis.
3) ZIONISTS COLLUDED WITH THE NAZIS
I find it difficult to print these words as they are such a grotesque misunderstanding of the Holocaust. The Nazis did not quiz Jews about their politics before selecting who would go to the gas chambers and who would be put to work. Those who looked capable of slave labour survived longer than those who did not. As for collusion, it is a word which overhadows anyone in a position of leadership in the ghettos who thought they could save more Jews from death if they provided the German occupiers with a productive workforce. There was often a terrible calculus in which saving some was weighed against saving none. Hence Rudolf Kastner and Chaim Rumkowski got accused of collaboration.
4) NON JEWS KILLED IN THE HOLOCAUST ARE FORGOTTEN
Roma, Sinti, Gays, Communists and people with disabilities were also killed by the Nazis but anti Jewish rhetoric, legislation, dispossession and murder were driving forces during the Third Reich and it is difficult to see why anyone would need to have this explained to them.
5) JEWS WERE EXPELLED FROM 109 COUNTRIES
I assume that the people who post this canard can name the 109 countries. I would expect also that they can explain why so many countries wanted to expel Poles (or Khazars).
6) ZIONISTS ARE WORSE THAN NAZIS
This is a very popular canard. The source of imminent or present danger always seems worse than other dangers. Thus I have seen people claiming that Hamas are worse than the Nazis, which is meaningless and unhelpful. The reason why such a grotesque comparison is made concerning Zionists (among whom I count myself) and Nazis is that it suggests the Nazis were in some way vindicated in their attempt to eliminate the ultimate evil. Neonazis are less bothered by Zionist/Jewish distinctions and want us all exterminated, but they do not fall within the middle-of-the-road mainstream.
7) JEWS ARE WHITE SUPREMACISTS
This applies likewise to black or Mizrahi Jews. Grist to the mill is the non Jewish perception of Chosenness and what they think Jews mean by it. I would say it refers to Jews being chosen for certain jobs in the world, in fulfilment of the 613 commandments. Saint Paul was the first to say that gentiles were under no compulsion to circumcise, keep kosher or recite the Shema twice daily. Contemporary Jews have laws and customs, culture and folklore, as do all peoples. As to whether national consciousness is supremacism, it is often suggested that this applies to English but not Scottish or Irish nationalism.
8) JEWS DOMINATE GOVERNMENTS AND MEDIA
This is difficult to insist on as so many western governments are now antagonistic to Israel while the broadcasting companies sometimes get themselves into trouble over their passionately anti Israel point of view. Yet I know this is not how it is perceived by people who want the government to desist from putting difficulties in the way of anti Israel action. They would want the government to cease all commerce and exchange of intelligence with Israel, to emphasize that Israel is an outcast among the nations. I don’t think they will achieve this as the UK needs Israel’s cooperation and they have already compromised trust by their anti Israel rhetoric and sanctions.
9) ZIONISTS ARE PRONE TO INFANTICIDE
I wondered if this belonged with a different list of principles, belonging to the fanatical far right or fanatical far left but I see it so commonly, it must have its place in the middle of the road. If we say this is malignant nonsense, we are shown images of children’s corpses, said to be Gazan, and given horrific statistics of the deaths of children, as estimated by the ‘Hamas run Health Ministry’. If we say that children are killed in all wars, they will say ‘No!’ as emphatically as Dawn French in her notorious video. It is indeed a horrible war when the military and the civilians are entwined in the over-crowded debris of Gazan cities and towns. Whether the war could have been fought differently without the devastating death toll, I do not know. All I know is that I and other Jews on social media are called ‘baby killers’ most days and I know it is a gross insult, informed by a medieval hinterland of which they may not even be aware.
10) KEIR STARMER IS/JEFFREY EPSTEIN WAS – A MOSSAD AGENT
As Naftali Bennett recently said in reply to the Epstein rumour, he wasn’t. And neither is Keir Starmer, nor his Jewish wife. We are not all Mossad agents.
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Would that there were only ten of these commandments but I know that the popular misunderstandings, clichés and libels vastly exceed those I have mentioned. We Jews have not 10 but 613 commandments, codified by Maimonides in his Mishneh Torah (Repetition of the Torah) in the twelfth century. The Ten Commandments of Exodus 20 are called the Aseret Hadibrot – the Ten Sayings, very important but by no means the totality of the commandments.
The extremists and hysterics who suffer from a fanatical hatred of Jews have other sets of commandments, including those above but tending towards cosmic and apocalyptic perceptions of the place of Jews in the world. It would not surprise me if they had more than 613 statements which have ebbed and flowed through the ages.
Tie a Yellow Ribbon
Posted on: March 21, 2025
As you know, the yellow ribbon is used as a symbol for keeping hostages or prisoners in mind, currently with reference to the hostages still held in Gaza, the living and the dead. At home, I have some yellow ribbons which were handed out at vigils I attended in London, for the hostages and in memory of those murdered on or in the wake of 7 October 2023.
I thought about tying them round trees locally, even about buying more yellow ribbons, to adorn the trees of the ‘Quieter Neighbourhood’ roads, as an Enfield Council initiative is pleased to call them. I am aware of course that these ribbons, like the photos of hostages, get torn down as soon as they go up. In the UK, those who want the hostages forgotten are more numerous than those who want them remembered. I thought also that I would not like to see a street full of Palestinian flags here in Palmers Green and perhaps the yellow ribbons would incite a game of one-upmanship, over whose symbol would last longer or be greater in quantity.
The Palestinian flag is seen more often on London streets than the Union Jack, in Ireland readier to hand than the Irish tricolore. At the Labour Party Conference in 2018, under Corbyn’s leadership, Palestinian flags were handed out to delegates so that a whole forest of them waved in the conference hall, without a red flag in sight.
On the pro Palestinian marches which takes place in UK cities on most Saturdays, the symbol of the Star of David is butchered, drawn with a swastika inside it or behind it, with blood dripping from the six pointed star or being thrown into a waste paper bin. How does the self-vaunted ‘Jewish bloc’ of perhaps twenty persons put up with it? Perhaps they tell themselves that the Magen David is not a Jewish symbol at all but represents the Israeli flag – but we know better. The six pointed star on the gravestones of my relations, in the synagogues and worn on a chain round my neck – they are not about Medinat Israel but about, a people, a faith, a history and an identity.
We have learned since 7 October, if we did not already know it, that we Jews, so often talked about, so often in the news, are a minority among minorities, perhaps 300,000 at most in this country and fifteen million, half of whom live in Israel, in the whole world. Our antagonists want us somewhere else, not here, not there, possibly not anywhere, or else gathered in Poland: Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Mizrachim, Beta Jews, Italic Jews, North Africans. What would the Poles think about it? In reality, ‘Go back to Poland’ is a curse because it is perceived as our graveyard, the epicentre of the Shoah, more than Berlin, Munich, Vienna or Budapest.
There are people who steadfastly build memorial sites for the killed and the kidnapped of 7 October. Daily, vandals kick over plants, tear down posters and remove objects related to love, pity and mourning but they are set up again, in the full knowledge that another vandal will come and the memorial be restored again after them.
The actor Jason Isaacs wears a yellow ribbon pin in solidarity with the hostages but a so-called influencer digitally erased it before posting the photo of Jason Isaacs, minus the yellow ribbon. If the Star of David gives offence and the Menorah and the scrolls of a Sefer Torah, all of them Jewish symbols, so too does the yellow ribbon, not political or religious but simply a sign that our missing people are not forgotten.
At the heart of the Yom Kippur liturgy is Yizkor, the memorial service, for which my synagogue suddenly fills up, seats at a premium, because many who are not given to religious devotions still want to remember the loved ones they have lost. Willingly, they pray for them. The yellow ribbon however signifies remembrance of the living, who may still come home. Some will want to erase it, finding it an unbearable symbol, although it is a symbol of hope. God willing, more may still come home.
Foreword
Last night, a woman in the BBC Question Time audience in Cheltenham held forth, reproaching the Labour MP on the panel for what she called ‘friendship with Israel’. Gaining confidence as she heard the gathering applause, she spoke of Israel ‘targeting babies, children, hospitals and schools’. ‘Enough of this rhetoric about antisemitism,’ she proceeded, to a perceptible rise in audience sympathy, ‘if you support Palestinian babies.’
Her warning against ‘the rhetoric about being antisemitic for supporting Palestinian babies’ clearly struck a chord with the audience and I reflected that perhaps some of them had been called antisemitic or knew people who were called antisemitic and thought it was unfair and untrue. It could be said that it takes a Jew to know what is antisemitic, but then we are likely to disagree among ourselves and, mercifully I have encountered many non-Jews who understand very clearly the difference between criticism of Israel and antisemitism. If they see it so clearly, I wonder, why are others so myopic?
Dear Friends
I get the impression that people of good will are often perplexed by the term antisemitism. They don’t want it fired at them like a poison dart but are not sure if we are unreasonable, aiming it at persons you think are merely making points, about war and peace, wealth and poverty, vengeance and forgiveness. You have watched the news on BBC and Sky; read the Guardian and the Independent, heard the Pope and Gary Lineker, and you want to take up a position against Israel’s wars, but you don’t want to give offence to your Jewish friends, colleagues and, possibly, relations. You’ve been told that comments about Israel are distinct from statements about Jews but noticed that diaspora Jews seem to believe we have a horse in Israel’s race. You’ve seen that some Jews call some other Jews antisemites and thought that hardly seems reasonable. And perhaps someone told you that Jews look down on non-Jews, calling them goyim which sounds like a bad name.
Last point first: the Hebrew word goy means nation, and goyim is the plural. If you look at a biblical concordance, you’ll see that it occurs many times; 560 times, according to Google’s counting and, every time, it refers to a nation or nations, including the Israelite nation. In post biblical times, the word has been used to ‘other’ non-Jews, rather as the word ‘foreigner’ has an othering stratum, separate from its essential meaning. The far right, in our own time, refer to ‘the goyim’ intending always to say it is what we Jews call non Jews whom, they claim, we exploit and enslave. The far right are almost the only people who admit to being antisemitic, and even then, not always.
You may want to know how it happens that a Jewish person might be called an antisemite, either fairly or unfairly. Every nation has its traitors and, in this, we are no different. I would say that a Jewish antisemite is someone who not only separates themself from the community but intends harm towards the community – or identifies with people who intend to do us harm. When I was young, there was animosity between proponents of traditional, orthodox Judaism and Progressive Judaism, where women were ordained as well as men and certain laws, such as driving on Shabbat, were relaxed. Now a graver animosity is between those who care for Israel and others who suppose that they must dissociate and condemn it. Undoubtedly, this makes for very bitter hostility and draws into the argument non Jews who have strong opinions for or against Israel, an extension of the argument which probably helps to perpetuate it some of the time. This is not to deny that I’m infinitely grateful to Israel’s friends and the non-Jewish warriors against antisemitism who instinctively recognize it when they see it.
The present government of Israel has critics within the country, so numerous that demonstrations of many thousands filled the streets every week, fearing that the authority of the Supreme Court would be eroded by policies of the Netanyahu administration. Now there are demonstrations by those who think more could be done to bring the hostages home. Others believe that the government should make long term security a priority above all other issues and that the Iranian proxies can be given no quarter.
I don’t expect you to have the answers to geopolitics and wars. I understand that your hearts are moved by the suffering of children, continually depicted on our news stations as the reporters devote themselves to showing the human cost of war. In my opinion, they understate the human cost for Israelis who have suffered bombardment from Gaza, Lebanon, Iran and Yemen. Israel has invested in effective defences and shelters so the numbers of the dead are not as great as those in the countries which attacked it.
You may have heard that antisemitism does not, contrary to dictionary definitions, mean hatred of Jews but persecution of people who speak languages cognate with Hebrew, predominantly Arabic. There are some who say they are not remotely antisemitic as, although they dislike Jews, they have nothing but love and compassion for Arabs, particularly Palestinians. There is even a fad, around Christmas time, for claiming that Jesus was Palestinian as he was born in Bethlehem, now in the West Bank. This might have worked when the name ‘Palestinians’ signified Jews resident in the British Mandate of Palestine, but the implication that Jesus was an Arab is a curious rewriting of the New Testament and you may be sure that, when Easter comes around, the same people will not be arguing that Judas and Caiaphas were Palestinians.
I can see how complicated are all these matters to people who were not born knowing the word ‘antisemitism’ and I have one message in this letter which I want to convey.
After the Holocaust in the Second World War, certain terms were coined to apply to the murder of the six million, not on the battlefield, but by the intentional use of bullets, gas, starvation and scientific experimentation: such terms as genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, planned by the Nazi leadership and carried out by civil servants, army personnel and grunt level workers. It has become a popular device to adapt the terminology, making us Jews the perpetrators of genocide, calling us Nazis, telling us ‘You have become what you hated’ and posting cartoons on social media showing German stormtroopers morphing into IDF soldiers or Jewish children in the deathcamps redrawn as Gazan infants.
My message to you is – don’t do this. Why would anyone want to depict us as our most bestial persecutors? It is like the delight some people take in speaking of the existence of slavery in Africa before millions were captured and shipped away in the transatlantic slave trade. If it was done to you, your enemies will want to say you do it to another.
Most days on X, someone will anathematize me as a ‘genocidal maniac’. It is simply a thing to say to a Jewish person who is deeply – or even shallowly – connected with Israel, to cause maximum pain, to give greater offence than any F word or C word can communicate – although they generally give these words a whirl alongside the rest of it.
If you really don’t want to give offence, don’t use the inaccurate shorthand of hatred but use moderate, considered language.
To those who already do so, many thanks, and to those who stand with us without being asked, a blessing on your heads.
Post script: There’s something I forgot to mention but was reminded of when I saw it in progress today.
Antagonist: Israelis all come from Poland and like killing babies and stealing land; plus they are sexual perverts.
Our guy: That’s an antisemitic generalization.
Antagonist: Antisemitism is being against Jews. I’m just against Zionists and you’re an antisemite for conflating Israel with Jews.
The fact is, most of the antagonists who post ludicrous errors about Israel do appear to be motivated by an animus which preceded Israel’s present wars. They do not understand the connection between diaspora Jews and Israel. It is an empirical connection, which they might understand better if they visited Israel or talked to more Jews. Such conversations on social media usually lead to the DARVO * moment when the antagonist calls our guy an antisemite. When the antagonist follows the template of centuries old anti Jewish discourse, but substituting ‘Zionists’ or ‘Israelis’ for ‘Jews’, the chances are that they will harm us if they can, even if we live in Stamford Hill, Salford, Golders Green or Barnet, rather than Haifa, Tel Aviv, Sderot or Jerusalem.
And it is already happening.
*DARVO: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender
Lost Knowledge
Posted on: December 9, 2024
A reliable informant (one of my daughters) told me that the 1979 television film of Jack Rosenthal’s The Knowledge was available on Youtube and that it had stood up well to the ravages of time. I found it and watched. The Knowledge refers to the qualification required of London taxi drivers, knowledge of topography and routes from any one place in London to any other. The story concerns half a dozen hopeless hopefuls, learning the Knowledge and being examined by a sardonic and bullying instructor gloriously portrayed by Nigel Hawthorne.
One of the candidates, Ted Margolis (Jonathan Lynn) from a Jewish family of cab drivers, is eager, borderline sycophantic and blessed with a retentive memory. Highly motivated, he is the first of the group to qualify as a cabbie by completing the Knowledge. When he breaks the news to his fellow candidates, they share his euphoria. They want to take him to the pub to celebrate but Ted tells them that he doesn’t drink. The worldly Gordon finds this difficult to believe and Ted says, ‘What do you want, I’m a Yiddisher boy. Cards, yes; women, certainly; drinking – one small [sounds like ‘eggnog’ but the sound isn’t quite clear] at Christmas.’
Nevertheless, they go off to the pub together and subsequently Ted loses his new green badge for being drunk in charge of a motor cycle. He is later seen applying his photographic memory to Hebrew phrases, and finally is in Tel Aviv, wearing a tembel hat and studying a road map of the city.
1979. I tried to imagine these scenes being written and screened today: Jewish references in a bitter-sweet comedy and, more than this, the fearless, unself-conscious way in which Ted reminds his friends, ‘I’m a Yiddisher boy.’ Didn’t we all do this: make humorous references to our Jewish lives to offer our non Jewish friends a bit of metaphorical chren, a spicy, tasty condiment daubed on the side of the conversation? Maybe we didn’t. In any case, who would do that now? Who would write it into their comedy?
The author of The Knowledge, Jack Rosenthal, who died twenty years ago, was married to Maureen Lipman. She was herself well loved by the public at that time and it was much later, particularly during her opposition to Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour, that she was vilified on Corbynist social media. It happened often to Jewish women who spoke against Corbyn, whether they were politicians or entertainers: Margaret Hodge, Maureen Lipman, Rachel Riley, Tracy Ann Oberman, Luciana Berger, Ruth Smeeth, Louise Ellman were reviled but Miriam Margolyes who was anti Israel was considered exemplary as a Jewish celebrity.
The bile against Maureen Lipman was staggering in Corbynist groups on Facebook, as you see here:
Notwithstanding being Jewish, Maureen Lipman had come close to being a National Treasure. Jews can still hold this position if they repudiate Israel, unless, like Stephen Fry, they speak out against the renaissance of antisemitism. Then they become persona non grata in certain circles.
The United Kingdom seemed one of the safest places on earth to be Jewish, for most of my life. Ted Margolis, in The Knowledge, made aliyah before it was strictly necessary.
We need to talk about Ken
Posted on: April 29, 2016
Sermon to XXXXX-XXXXX Reform Synagogue on 30 April 2016
When I heard Ken Livingstone yesterday, doing the rounds of the news channels, I thought he must have gone too far, even for his admirers, and that he was bringing himself and his party into disrepute.
I underestimated the number of people seeking to justify Ken’s loose assertion that Hitler promoted Zionism in the early 1930s.
Like thousands of others, pro Ken and anti, I started googling the Haavara Agreement, which is readily found on Wikipedia and therefore cited by Livingstone’s online supporters, especially if they want to say – and they often do – that there is a natural affinity between Nazism and Zionism.
I wanted to get an idea from Jewish and Israeli historians of the alleged collaboration with the Nazis, and whether it was used for the purpose of aliyah, immigration to Palestine. I read that the Haavara Agreement allowed Jews to escape from Germany to Palestine in return for paying a ransom to the Reich. I read also that there were some in the Yishuv movement, which aimed at Jewish settlement in the land, who prioritized emigration from Germany rather than supporting an anti-Nazi boycott. They made choices which were either pragmatic or collaborationist, depending on how you look at it, but Jews who got to Palestine were much more likely to survive.
In a comparable way, the Jewish leaders of the wartime Judenräte, the Jewish Councils in the ghettoes, were forced to have dealings with the Nazis governors. How this worked varied from ghetto to ghetto. In Warsaw, the Chairman of the Judenrat committed suicide, rather than fulfil quotas for deportation, whereas the Chairman in Lodz strove to fulfil the quotas, arguing that those remaining in the ghetto would be allowed to live. With the advantage of hindsight, we know he was wrong.
It’s widely observed that at the present time, if someone wants to discredit Jews, the first and least controversial move is to discredit Zionism. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it was the fashion to use racist pseudo-science against Jews and, then, in the twentieth century, Bolshevism, Capitalism and World Domination. Bolshevism has bitten the dust, but we are still accused of global domination through international banking and conspiracies. When I read about these Jewish conspiracies, I feel like asking why I’ve never been invited to one.
I must admit to using the key word Talmud in a Twitter search, which is asking for trouble. What comes up? Nothing about the kashrut of certain ovens for Passover use, you can be sure ( Bava Metzia 59b). Instead, antisemitic geeks cite passages from the Talmud which appear to promote all kinds of criminality and perversion. They sometimes show the text in Hebrew, which is a marvel since they often have inadequate command of English. Hard work goes into their posts and sometimes hard work goes into refuting them.
I am uncomfortable with the idea of hard work being necessary to refute Ken Livingstone or those others, who never admit that they or anyone is being antisemitic.
Yet I know that all history and all scriptures are in some way compromising. When violent passages in the Qur’an are cited to indicate the inherent violence of Islam, it cuts no ice. We have, and tend to reject, unenlightened passages in our own holy books. Even in our sidra today, Acharei Mot, there are far too many animal sacrifices for comfort.
For me, the crux of the matter is how to respond when moral ambiguities of Judaism or Zionism are highlighted by those who seek our harm, if indeed we should respond at all. It seems as if being well-informed about our own history and our literature ought to help, but information never seems to settle the questions.
I don’t have an answer but I think we can usually discern when somebody means us harm. If somebody hates a Jew because of the alleged massacre at Deir Yassin, or a Muslim because of ISIS or a Christian because of the Inquisition, then it isn’t because they’re well-informed. When Ken Livingstone cited the Haavara agreement, it was to put Zionism in the same ball park as Nazism, and not to disseminate knowledge.
Reading this through a year later, on 4 April 2017, I think I was too mild about Ken. Possibly I imagined that he might row back from his provocative statements. During the last year, he has made a crusade of voicing opinions about Hitler’s alleged sympathy for Zionism. It hardly needs to be said that Hitler first wanted Jews out and very quickly wanted them dead. Zionists wanted Jews out and alive, which, b’ezrat Hashem, we are.
Neviim Tovim, blogs by Gillian Gould Lazarus 