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Opinion

Only Jews are accused of exaggerating the racism they face

The most avowed antiracists rarely care about antisemitism because they simply don’t get it

May 4, 2023 16:20
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3 min read

Most Jews, like most people, want a quiet life. We want to relax around our non-Jewish friends. We don't want to be permanently blue in the face, confronted again and again with instances of vicious antisemitism.

In short, we are exhausted. 

Yet to many in the world at large, including the great and the good, it is we – the Jews – who are being tiresome. People are tired of Jews protesting antisemitism. It makes them uniquely irritated, and as the Corbyn years drift further away, they’re getting bolder with expressing this annoyance. 

One gripe is our crybaby hypocrisy. A number of us, they point out, particularly on the right, are outspoken opponents of cancel culture, the no-platforming of speakers accused of wrong-think, particularly on gender and race. The fact that we now object to the Guardian cartoonist Martin Rowson’s woefully offensive depiction of outgoing chairman Richard Sharp – which appeared to draw on old-fashioned antisemitic stereotypes – is apparently an example of double-dealing.