The weekly protests remind everyone why a Jewish state is necessary

It was perhaps always unrealistic to believe that antisemitism would disappear. It is as old as human history itself.

The Hebrew Bible tells us that Adam and Eve were expelled from Paradise, the Garden of Eden. Since then, Jews have been expelled from many other places – in the 12th and 15th centuries from Spain, in the 13th from England, in the 15th from Italy and from many parts of Germany, Poland and Lithuania; and in the 20th, following the establishment of Israel, from much of the Arab world.

The Holocaust is sometimes perceived as an irrational eruption into European history. Yet it was but the culmination of antisemitic outbreaks which arose in the aftermath of the First World War and the Russian Revolution. In his recent book, In the Midst of Civilised Europe, the American historian, Jeffrey Veidlinger, estimates that around 100,000 Jews were murdered in the Ukraine and Poland between 1917 and 1921. They were regarded as agents of international Communism. Later, under Hitler, they were accused of being agents of international finance capitalism as well.

Antisemitism is a virus but one which mutates. In the pagan Greek and Latin worlds, it arose because Jews refused to acknowledge Greek gods nor make sacrifices to a deified Roman emperor. Then in the Christian era they were condemned as Christ killers. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jews were said to have declared at the crucifixion – his blood be on us and our children. More recently, they have been condemned as belonging to an inferior ‘race’, while the rise of nationalism made them outcasts amongst those who believed that they could never be a genuine part of the nation.

In recent years, there has been a further mutation in the western democracies, which came to be strengthened after October 7th. This variant of antisemitism is new in two respects.

First, it comes primarily from the left, from those regarding themselves as progressive and enemies of racism. There are of course remnants of right-wing antisemitism, but they are doctrinally weaker than antisemitism on the left. In Britain at least the antisemitic far right is now of minimal importance.

Left wing antisemitism has become intertwined with Muslim extremism in a strange new alliance which disguises itself as anti-Zionism. But the attacks on and harassment of Jews in universities and elsewhere show that for the protesters every Jew is a Zionist until proved otherwise. Protestors single Israel out for evils which in other states are ignored or downplayed. They not only criticise the policies of Israel’s government – and of course Israel’s policies are as open to criticism as those of any other government - but seek to de-legitimise it by denying its right to exist. As Thomas Friedman of the New York Times has said, “Criticising Israel is not antisemitic and saying so is vile. But singling out Israel for opprobrium is antisemitic and not saying so is dishonest”.

In the 19th century antisemites singled out Jews for the denial and deprivation of civil rights. Today, anti-Zionists single out Jews for the denial of national rights. The older antisemitism insisted that Jews had no place in the national community. The new antisemitism insists that Israel has no place in the international community.

Years ago, Israel’s Foreign Minister, Abba Eban, confronting left wing protesters at Harvard said: “We have lived with the double standard throughout the centuries. There are always things the Jews couldn’t do. Everyone could be a farmer, but not the Jew, everyone could be a carpenter, but not the Jew, everyone could move to Moscow, but not the Jew, and everyone could have their own state, but not the Jew”.

Conor Cruise O’Brien pointed out in his book, The Siege, to my mind the best account of Zionism so far been published – that the question, “Does Israel have a right to exist?”, which Israel has had to contend with since its formation, is intertwined with another question that has often been asked, “Do the Jews have a right to exist?”

To the extent that modern anti-Zionism seeks to de-legitimise Israel, it has the same terminus as antisemitism – death to a very large number of Jews.

In Britain left wing antisemitism under the guise of anti-Zionism was legitimised during Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party from 2015 to 2020. In 2020, the Equality and Human Rights Commission concluded that there had been “unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination [against Jews] for which the Labour Party is responsible”. Perhaps it is worth remembering that Sir Keir Starmer remained for much of the period of the Corbyn leadership a member of his Shadow Cabinet, though he has sought to make amends since.

The second novel feature of modern antisemitism is that it is largely restricted to the professional classes, the intelligentsia and members of the universities – particularly the more prestigious universities – in Britain Oxford and Cambridge, in the United States Harvard and Columbia. Last May, a Union of Jewish Students survey across 20 universities of 1,000 students found that 29% regarded October 7 as “understandable” and an act of “resistance”. In the Russell group of prestigious universities, the figure was higher – 38 per cent. The commentator, Andrew Neil, has said that the more prestigious the university, the stupider the students.

It is significant that the antisemitism of the Corbyn regime did not prove an electoral barrier for the progressive intelligentsia or members of the academic community. In the general election of 2019, the Conservatives under Boris Johnson won an overall majority of 80, and were over 11% ahead of Labour. But, had the vote been restricted to those with degrees, Labour would have won by 14%. And Corbyn’s Labour Party managed to secure more votes in the 2017 and 2019 general elections than Keir Starmer achieved in 2024.

This does not of course mean that Labour voters were antisemitic. What it shows is that antisemitism did not prevent them from supporting the party. Progressives were indeed troubled by Corbyn, but not by very much. The Guardian, which represents their views, declared, “The pain and hurt within the Jewish community, and the damage to Labour, are undeniable and shaming. Yet Labour remains indispensable to progressive politics,” as if antisemitism was just a minor blemish on the face of “progressive politics”.

Such attitudes are, fortunately, not shared by most ordinary people. Strident demonstrators do not represent the population at large. The great 18th century conservative thinker, Edmund Burke, regarded it as”a general popular error to imagine the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare”. Strident demonstrators do not represent the population at large. Most people in Britain probably neither know nor care that, for example, Grant Shapps and Margaret Hodge are Jewish. Isaiah Berlin used to say that if you met a British person, you could assume that he was not antisemitic until something showed otherwise – something you could not assume about some countries on the Continent. That remains true. Probably Jews are seen as British in roughly the same way as Catholics – and to that extent Jews have been thoroughly integrated into British society.

The only organised antisemitic movement in 20th century Britain was Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists in the inter war years. But its members came primarily from the unemployed, ill-educated and inadequate – marginal elements in society. And its electoral support was minuscule. It was too weak to contest any seats in the 1935 general election; and was never able to win so much as a local council seat in a by-election.

The new antisemitism in the most prestigious universities is far more dangerous since it is supported by the future leaders of the country.

But, with this exception, Britain has been one of the more philosemitic of countries. Nevertheless it is clear that antisemitism has been pervasive in the history of Europe. It has been little understood and almost impossible to combat. It is a recurring phenomenon, even though taking different forms in different historical periods; and it is impossible to tell where and when it will recur. At the beginning of the 20th century, the German socialist, August Bebel, said, after the Dreyfus affair in France, `It is a consoling thought that it [antisemitism] has no prospect of ever exerting a decisive influence on political and social life in Germany.’ It is a mistake to believe that any country is permanently immune from the disease.

Nevertheless, one can conclude on a positive note. For, since 1948 there has been a fundamental change in the conditions of Jewish existence. As Winston Churchill told the House of Commons in January 1949,”The coming into being of a Jewish state in Palestine is an event in world history to be viewed in the perspective, not of a generation or a century, but in the perspective of a thousand, two thousand or even three thousand years”.

Israel is an insurance mechanism against antisemitism. And sadly we can never know when or whether that insurance mechanism will be needed.

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Sir Vernon Bogdanor is Professor of Government, King’s College London and a member of the International Advisory Council of the Israel Democracy Institute.