Putting the antisemitism debate in perspective

As the grandson of penniless refugees from Tsarist pogroms, one of them the victim of a racist murder in Britain, and the son of a Labour MP who in 1940 was among the first to warn the world about Hitler’s “final solution” and who subsequently protested against the Labour government’s attacks on Jewish concentration-camp survivors migrating to Palestine, I have never encountered antisemitism within the Labour party since I joined it at the age of 15.

In the rich cultural life of European Jews organised in the socialist Bund, Zionism was originally a fringe sect. It was under the shadow of the swastika that it became an expression of mass desperation. Zionism was an outgrowth of the Holocaust, and subsequently a tragic failure. Settlement in Palestine has not after all offered the Jews lasting security. Jews are no safer in Israel today than in Europe and America.

However, I support Israel’s right to exist. Generations have grown up there in the last 70 years, and they have no other home. I also consider comparisons with the Nazis glib and facile. There is a difference between brutal colonial repression – a practice of all regional superpowers including British imperialism – and systematic genocidal extermination. What I condemn is Israel’s identity as a racially designated state in which non-Jews face discrimination and which acts as a regional military occupation power.

Following the failure of past attempts to brand Jeremy Corbyn an apologist for terrorism or Stalinism, the current smear campaign is reminiscent of the fake “Zinoviev letter”, or of Churchill’s scare stories that Labour would establish a Gestapo police state. It is the Tory party that is riddled with racism, from the 1905 Aliens Act that blocked Jewish immigration, through the Right Club that was founded to “expose organised Jewry”, to Enoch Powell, to the Windrush scandal. It was the Daily Express that carried the infamous headline “Jews declare war on Germany” and the Daily Mail that screamed “Hurrah for the Blackshirts” in the 1930s, and only three years ago mounted a thinly veiled Jew-baiting campaign against Ed Miliband.

It is time to defend Corbyn’s consistent record of resistance to racism in all its forms.
Roger Silverman
London

• Keith Kahn-Harris (Labour’s far left needs to tame itself to root out antisemitism, 24 April) should examine the speeches in the recent Commons debate. Almost all of Ruth Smeeth’s examples of “antisemitism” combined abusive language with the term “Zionist”. In the debate John Mann (Labour) identified the nub of the problem, saying: “Any Jewish person is entitled to say that they are, to define themselves as, an anti-Zionist, or a non-Zionist … Any Jewish person … is entitled to say, ‘I am a Zionist’.” He went on to say that those who deny that right “are racists. Just a change in language – in the use of the word ‘Zionist’ as a pejorative insult – by the Labour party would alter the dialogue in this country in a very big way.”

However, the Zionist label now resembles previous intemperate use of the term “communist”: a badge of courage for some, for others a term of abuse. Mann is right that people in politics should have the right to define themselves as “Zionists” without being subject to abuse and threats. But does it also mean that those who regard Zionism as a malign force should not have the right to use the term critically, provided it is not embedded in racist or abusive language?

Surely being anti-Zionist is not per se racist, any more than anti-communism was necessarily Russophobic? Unless these distinctions are clarified it is doubtful that the Labour party or any other institution can root out racist or abusive attacks on Jews. Otherwise, pace Mann, we risk the absurd outcome that only Jews will be entitled to use the term in political debate and disputes, and critics of Zionists will automatically become racists.
Bryn Jones
Bath

• It is difficult to see how Mr Corbyn can reasonably do more to stamp out antisemitism (Jewish leaders say meeting with Corbyn was missed opportunity, 25 April). It will be difficult to comply with Jonathan Goldstein and Jonathan Arkush’s insistence that Labour adopt the full International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism. The definition is highly Israel-centric, and has very little to do with the right of Jews to believe what they like, celebrate their religion as they wish, and live in quiet peace in our society.

In their definition, “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” is antisemitic. It is difficult to argue against that claim, given the treatment of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. It may be that “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” is wrong, but the treatment by containment of the Palestinians in Gaza is not the act of a civilised government. Such claims and comparisons should not concern Jews living in Britain, unless they believe “Jews [are] collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel” – a belief itself defined as antisemitic.
Richard Cooper
Chichester, West Sussex

• I don’t doubt that there is antisemitism in the Labour party and other sectors of our politics and society. As a Jew, I am appalled by it, but we cannot be surprised by it. To be on the receiving end of antisemitic abuse is truly awful, but the failure of many Jewish community organisations to acknowledge legitimate criticism of Israel as distinct from antisemitic bigotry fuels antisemitism all the more.

As Jews, we cannot call out bigotry towards us if we allow our identity to be conflated with horrific atrocities committed by the state of Israel that we barely acknowledge, let alone challenge. Jews and non-Jews alike have a responsibility to challenge antisemitism, not only by calling it out, but also by examining our own moral blindspots. The Board of Deputies does not speak for all Jews. We are a diverse bunch. The voices that shout loudest are not always representative.
Sophie Marks
London

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