The new year is upon us. Resolutions form no part of the Rosh Hashanah tradition, but if they did I know what mine would be: to extend the Twitter detox I maintained for a solid fortnight on holiday in August, and to stay off the social-media platform that is as addictive — and toxic — as any drug.
Part of the reason I held off was a general desire to be free of the constant churn and compulsive scrolling. But there was a more specific motivation too: I longed for a break from the apparently never-ending row over Labour and antisemitism.
I was doing well, too. I deleted the Twitter app from my phone and soon the world of Jeremy Corbyn, the NEC and the IHRA definition felt blissfully far away. But it could not last. A matter of hours after I’d returned home, the bags barely unpacked, I found myself at JW3 for the annual conference of the Jewish Labour Movement. I was right back in it.
Sure, I might have preferred to have been on the beach. But in the end it proved helpful, even therapeutic. For one thing, there’s a comfort in being surrounded by people who feel much the same way as you do — greeting each other with that look that says: “You know how it is”.
But there were three other things that struck me at the JLM gathering, three things that I wish those on the opposite side of this argument would have seen and heard for themselves.
First, it was clear that Jewish Labourites take absolutely no pleasure in this battle whatsoever. Their detractors regularly attack them as the originators of this row, deliberately keeping it going, but the people I met on Sunday were united in wishing this whole business were over. Depicted as gleefully plotting against the Labour leader and distracting from his agenda, they were in fact glum and fearful. They didn’t want this crisis, they didn’t seek it: most of those who gathered at JW3 would have dearly loved to be talking about anything but antisemitism, especially inside the party they once regarded as home.
After all, they have learned the hard way that merely to raise the issue of antisemitism is to unleash another torrent of it, the abuse flowing fast into your timeline or inbox. Their heart sinks when the news bulletin leads — yet again — with another story of Jews and those who hate them.
They worry that all this attention will have prompted some people, who’d previously never given Jews much thought, to wonder: “Maybe there is something a bit off about them after all.” So the idea that Jews somehow engineered this row to further a hidden political agenda is not only antisemitic in itself, it’s also wide of the mark. What was on show at JLM on Sunday was a collective heavy heart.
The second myth that was dispelled that day was the notion that this is a dispute chiefly about Israel and the Palestinians, with Corbyn under fire from Jews because he is too stalwart a defender of Palestinian rights. In this version, Jews cling to IHRA because they cannot tolerate any criticism of Israel and have been using the definition to shield the country from attack.
But here’s what happened on Sunday. When Gordon Brown called for the creation of a Palestinian state, for the sharing of Jerusalem and the withdrawal of settlements, he was interrupted by applause. When he condemned Donald Trump for cutting off funding to Palestinian refugees, he was applauded again. When Margaret Hodge slammed Benjamin Netanyahu’s nation-state law, calling it “despicable and abhorrent”, the applause was thunderous.
Put simply, these were not people who want to insulate Israel from criticism. They just dislike murals depicting hook-nosed Jewish bankers, they oppose Holocaust denial and accusations that 9/11 was a Jewish plot and they reject as crude racism the suggestion that “Zionists” are not English enough to appreciate irony. Not one of those is about championing the rights of Palestinians.
I mention those examples because they all relate to episodes involving Jeremy Corbyn himself. Which brings us to Sunday’s third revelation. You might imagine everyone in the room was desperate to see Corbyn gone. But it was more complicated than that. One questioner raised what I call the Easter scenario: what if this man called JC, venerated as a flawless saviour by his devotees, is eventually removed — and it’s the Jews who are blamed?
Just to raise that question sent a shiver down the spine. For this feels like a story with no good outcome. Either Corbyn stays in place, the opposition party led by a man who sees Jews as essentially alien, lacking a full grasp of English culture — or he goes, and Jews are charged with his downfall. Neither prospect appeals.
Labour’s qualified adoption of IHRA on Tuesday might just signal the beginning of the end of this ordeal. In this season of renewal, we can certainly hope so. But not many of us would bet on it.
Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
