Hi All,
One of the current ongoing topics of the Jewish community in Britain is its fraught relationship between the Labour Party, its leader Jeremy Corbyn and his fanatical supporters .The latest row is the failure of Labour adopt the full definition of anti-Semitism as given by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, because of the references to Israel, for example Israel's right to exist (not) criticism of Israeli government actions as criticism of Israel is nothing new, because Israel itself is a democracy whose Parliament is a fractious, noisy and boisterous place , in which an observer may wonder how anything gets done.
I suppose 'dirty Jew' is unacceptable, but 'dirty Zionist' is fair game. You can see to a Jew how changing one word simply looks like a fig leaf for anti-Semitism, as it isn't just criticism of Israel that you get, but a denial that it should exist and a real desire to see it gone, in reference to the only Jewish majority state in the world and what is the last refuge for Jews who get persecuted elsewhere. Plus I've noticed that real Israel haters are often overt anti-Semites or if covert, when probed far enough, the polish rubs off and they're as anti-Semitic as the overt ones.
The casual reader may take the argument that Zionism is a political movement, whereas Judaism is a religion, thus criticism of Zionism is okay because its politics and not an attack upon Jews. This is a delicate line, but an interesting one, because my grandparents came from a very religious 'Orthodox'* Middle Eastern Iraqi Jewish family, they were NOT at that time Zionists in a political sense, only in a religious way that would be part of divine revelation, i.e. only when Messiah came would Jews return en mass to Israel and be governed by Jewish law, with the world being a peaceful utopian paradise . In the late 1930s and 1940s , Zionism was very much an Ashkenazi and secular driven ideology. In fact Iraqi Jews, who had lived there since the first exile, were a very important, educated and rich minority and helped, along with the British after the collapse of Ottoman rule, to build up modern Iraq and were its business people (90% of the Iraq's chamber of commerce was Jewish) , civil servants (education, transport and post office) and politicians (the most successful finance minister of the 1920s Iraq was Jewish) . That was until the later 1930s and early 40s, with Nazi influences and the Farhud pogrom which was the beginning of the end of our 3,000 year old community.
When in 1948 Israel was firmly established as a modern state, it was the Iraqi government and other Arab countries which conflated Zionism and Judaism, Zionist and Jew together: and thanks to them, today Sephardi or Mizrahi Jews are among the most ardent of supporters of Israel . From the late 1940s to mid 1950s, Middle Eastern and North African Jews were stripped of their citizenship, wealth, property and forced to emigrate to Israel, France, Britain and Canada , being allowed to take nothing more than a suitcase. Why? Because they were accused of being a fifth column, Mossad agents, agents of Israel and not Arab, but foreigner Jews. Israel thus gained a massive influx and of and middle eastern influence into the new country, with millions stuck in refugee camps in the deserts of Israel. Yet Israel went onto prosper and we know what Iraq is like today- despite its massive oil wealth. Incidentally a similar thing happened to Persia, when the fanatics overthrew the Shah and , well the rest is history.
Thus when I read that Corbyn supporters are saying of British Jews that we are agents of Israel or somehow a fifth column, rather than citizens within a community engaging in civic political discourse when we can see that a communist who disparages Britain and would be a disaster for EVERYONE in this country, it makes me and I think the rest of our community quiver and be fearful. It happened before, well its happened a lot of times. But in the 21st century, where we are supposedly rational, liberal and tolerant ?
Oh . I guess not.
This has already played out in France.
Will Britain be next? Will we have to leave?
* In the Sephardi world there is no orthodox, conservative or reform Judaism , just Judaism.
