Antony Ashley Cooper, “proto-Zionist Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury”. Wikicommons. Wellcome images. Some rights reserved.What has happened to British politics? In the final week before elections in Scotland, Wales, London and elsewhere, and less than two months from a critical referendum on Europe, the issues relevant to those voting decisions are almost nowhere in sight. Instead, the outrage stirred by a sequence of comments by Ken Livingstone has dominated the media, and, extrapolating from this and from a number of other widely reported incidents, there has been an outpouring of commentary on the supposed ‘antisemitism crisis’ in the Labour party.
It has been quite clearly shown that recent allegations that antisemitism is rife in Labour have been extremely inflated. Large numbers of Jewish members of the party have affirmed that it continues to be a welcoming place for them under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. Antisemitism is certainly not absent from the British left (or from any other major domain of British life), and expressions of it within the Labour party have been handled firmly and swiftly. According to the detailed reports of the Jewish community organisation, Community Security Trust, there were 924 recorded antisemitic incidents in the UK in 2015, including 86 violent assaults and 4 incidents of extreme violence. This is certainly serious. However, evidence suggests that the level of bigotry faced by Muslims in this country, which is much less comprehensively monitored, is considerably more pervasive and menacing. Why, then, has the question of antisemitism attracted so much attention?
Few topics generate as much confusion as antisemitism. What makes antisemitism different from other forms of racism – and what does not? What is the difference between antisemitism on the left and on the right? How does Israel, and Zionism, figure in the issue? How much sensitivity is appropriate to the various stock stereotypes of anti-Jewish prejudice? And what is the significance of the legacy and memory of the Holocaust? All these questions require careful thought, but in the media maelstrom they tend to give rise to a cacophony of jostling assertions and emotions, undermining constructive dialogue and pulling our political discourse toward incoherence.
