Shami Chakrabarti, the former Director of Liberty now heading Labour’s antisemitism inquiry says: “The difference between a progressive political party and others is that it fights both prejudice and complacency.”
There manifestly is a problem of anti-Jewish prejudice within Labour as demonstrated by the insouciance with which some members have drawn parallels between Israel and the Nazis.
There also seems to be a problem about complacency - at the very top of the party. This was shown in the recent Vice documentary which showed Jeremy Corbyn’s extraordinary reaction to an article in the Guardian newspaper by Jonathan Freedland: “Utterly disgusting subliminal nastiness” expostulated Corbyn filmed in his car while on the phone to his communications chief, Seumas Milne. ”No he’s not a good guy” said Corbyn, presumably prompted by Milne. So much for Corbyn’s “I-don’t- do-personal” virtue signalling.
What did Freedland write to justify such personal invective? Nothing is the answer. Freedland had merely sought to untangle the relationship between Jews, Israel and Zionism. He stressed that criticism of Israel and Zionism is by no means always anti-Jewish. Equally, he argued that just saying that Israel and Zionism have nothing to do with Jews isn’t a credible defence to the charge of prejudice because it ignores the fact that for 93% of Jews, Israel forms part of their identity and that for 2000 years Jews have faced East towards Jerusalem when they pray.
Freedland also made this reasonable request to Israel’s many critics on the Left: pause before you accuse Jews of trying to silence your criticism of Israel when they counter- accuse you of antisemitism because sometimes that is what motivates your criticism. Freedland gave most “anti-Israeli activists” the benefit of the doubt by saying they were “acting in good faith”. He also emphasised that no-one was accusing Corbyn of being an antisemite. The piece was a model of measured and judicious exposition.
What is so odd about Corbyn’s reaction, is that Freedland had forensically teased out the very question that lies at the heart of the inquiry Corbyn was forced to set up: at what point does legitimate criticism of Israel morph into anti-Semitism? It is precisely because this line has become so increasingly blurred, most especially by the Corbynite anti-imperialist Left’s elision with Islamism, that this crisis has come to a head.
Yet before the Inquiry even began to take evidence, Corbyn seems to have settled on what its verdict should be: “There is no crisis” he declared. Ms Chakrabarti’s appointment meant “the antisemitic issue has been dealt with.”
Really? Prejudging the result sounds pretty “complacent” and not very “progressive” to me. It rather betrays the pious arrogance of those who have so viscerally and routinely traduced the term "Zionist” for so long: “We-can’t-possibly-be-motivated-by-racial-prejudice-because–our-anti-racist-credentials-are-pristine.” And Corbyn has been amongst the most pious, at least, in exonerating himself of the merest scintilla of prejudice.
It is this pious arrogance that explains what Corbyn misses: just how comfortable those (now suspended) members of the Labour party were with their vicious twist of the verbal knife by asserting that what Israel has done to Palestinians is as bad as what the Nazis did to the Jews, or in the case of Ken Livingstone, his implication that Zionism and Nazism had a shared malign ideology. The intention to cut where the wound hurts most, is a form a Jew baiting, and one of the ugliest forms of racism.
The speed with which the Bradford West MP Naz Shah withdrew and then publicly atoned for her posts advocating Israelis relocate to America suggests that her brain was on auto-wound. How else did the symbolism of enforced “transportation” as a “solution” to the Israel-Palestine conflict, elude her? It had to be spelled out to her before she caught herself on.
So a key question for the Chakrabarti inquiry is - what is it that emboldened those suspended Labour members to make such historically crass and insensitive remarks so shamelessly in public?
The 20 or more suspensions include a high proportion of Muslim councillors. Why? With commendable candour, the commentator Mehdi Hasan has offered this explanation: “It pains me to have to admit this but antisemitism isn’t just tolerated in some sections of the British Muslim community; it’s routine and commonplace. Any Muslims….if they are honest with themselves – will know instantly what I am referring to. It’s our dirty little secret….”
How has this been allowed to fester in a party that prides itself on being so “progressive”? And what has led those strident non-Muslim comrades to collude in invoking those Nazi tropes? How did they close their minds to the facts that show that for all Israel’s faults and, yes, sometimes its excesses, what the Nazis did to the Jews is beyond any comparison whatsoever? These facts should not need spelling out but I’ll mention just two: Israel is still the only country in the Middle East where it is safe for all faiths to practice their religion, and also where there is equal opportunity at some of the best universities in the world for Arabs and Jews alike.
That latter fact alone should give all those “apartheid” accusers pause for thought. Further proof that such racism as does exist is not inherent in the Jewish state is the fact that any Arab can convert to Judaism whereupon he becomes an Israeli citizen overnight. The reason this doesn't happen is because Judaism is not a proselytising faith, and hence conversion is not easy for anyone, ie not just muslims.
Of course something akin to a partial apartheid state could become fair comment if there is never a two state solution because a small minority of West Bank Palestinians (in Area C) would be left permanently without a vote to influence the policies of a government that controls much of their lives. Over 90% of Palestinians, however, are subject to Palestinian jurisdiction and to blame Israel entirely for the failure of the peace process is anyway simplistic and unjust.
Perhaps the Chakrabarti inquiry will provoke a moment of quiet self reflection – as it has with Naz Shah – by those on the Left who for years have so grievously delegitimised the world’s only Jewish state by routinely drawing a moral equivalence between it and the Nazis or apartheid South Africa. Above all, such comparisons serve to expose the historical illiteracy of those who resort to them.
This self reflection should start with Corbyn himself because his effusive expression of political support for Hamas and Hezbollah and - for such an avowed anti racist - his baffling record of platform sharing with some virulently anti-Semitic critics of Israel have helped spread the infection from Right to Left.
As for Ms Chakrabarti, she will have failed if she doesn’t acknowledge that the old boot boy anti-Semitism of the Right has been eclipsed by a more insidious cultural disdain for Jews on the Left disguised in the virtuous language of human rights.
As a human rights professional, let’s hope she sees through this bogus moral superiority and has the courage to say there are some so puffed up with their own “progressive values” that they've become blind to the fact that within the party she's just joined are a bunch of lousy racists - just like other racists everywhere.
John Ware was a reporter on the BBC’s Panorama from 1986 to 2012
