by
Les May
IT
seems that once again Jonathan Sacks has chosen to attack JeremyCorbyn who
he
accused of
contributing to Jews questioning whether Britain was still a safe
place to raise children. Which
raises the question ‘If
they do leave Britain where will they go which is a
safer place?’An 85 page report from the Institute for Jewish Policy Research with the title ‘Antisemitism in contemporary Great Britain: A study of attitudes towards Jews and Israel’ by L. Daniel Staetsky says on page 5:
‘… it
is worth stressing a fact that runs the risk of being understated in
a problem-centred report: levels of antisemitism in Great Britain are
among the lowest in the world.’
and
on page 64-65:
‘Looking
at the political spectrum of British society, the most antisemitic
group consists of those who identify as very right-wing. In this
group about 14% hold hard-core antisemitic attitudes and 52% hold at
least one attitude, compared again to 3.6% and 30% in the general
population. The very left-wing, and, in fact, all political groups
located on the left, are no more antisemitic than the general
population. This finding may come as a surprise to those who
maintain that in today’s political reality, the left is the more
serious, or at least, an equally serious source of antisemitism, than
the right. Indeed, Jewish victims of antisemitic violence or
harassment identify Muslims and the far-left as the chief
perpetrators. This perception is not limited to victims of
antisemitism. Three academic studies on the topic of left-wing
antisemitism have been published over the past two years, 35 clearly
indicating that the perception that the left has an issue with
antisemitism is quite prevalent in the minds of Jews and scholars of
political sociology and history. Is this view misguided or rooted in
error? Not quite. It is simply insufficiently precise.
The
left tends to see itself, and is commonly regarded, as an anti-racist
and egalitarian political group, both in terms of its political goals
and its modus operandi. This image tends to impact on people’s
expectations of the left or, at the very least, draws attention to
how well (or otherwise) it performs in relation to its own proclaimed
values. We found that the left (including the far-left) is no less
antisemitic than the general population. This is not a trivial
finding, as it runs counter to the left’s self-proclaimed ethos.
When the expectation is to find less antisemitism than elsewhere, the
finding of ‘just the same’ level of antisemitism as elsewhere is
likely to be noticed by politically attuned individuals.
Simultaneously embarrassing the left and being used as a weapon by it
critics, this dissonance becomes the centre of attention and gets
accentuated.’ (my emphasis)
So
what do you have to do to be classed as having an antisemitic
attitude? Not very much it seems. Here is an example of what it
takes on pages 63 and 64:
‘However,
what Jews are exposed to far more frequently are people who hold, and
from time to time may express, views that make Jews feel
uncomfortable or offended. A person expressing such a view
(e.g. ‘Jews think that they are better than other people’) may
hold this view in isolation and may indeed hold a weak version of it,
but when it is casually voiced in front of a Jewish individual, it
can cause considerable upset and concern.’ (my
emphasis)
Taken
at its face value this means that one section of the population is
demanding the right never to be offended and the right to tell us
what we should think about them. This is a demand for
exceptionalism.
At
the risk of boring the reader by repetition ‘freedom
of speech is having the right to tell people what they do not want to
hear’. And
that means having the right to say things which other people choose
to find offensive or feel uncomfortable about. This
right is protected by Article 10 of the European Convention. I’m
not going to let the likes of Jonathan Sacks take it from me and I
hope that Labour party members and supporters think likewise.
Labour
needs to stop feeling embarrassed by having the epithet ‘antisemitic’
thrown at it and let people know that what Sacks and his ilk are
trying to do is
tell us what we should think.
You
can find the report from which the above extracts are drawn at:
It
is hardly surprising that our media are full of stories about
antisemitism. In 2015 and 2016 alone, at least six surveys of
attitudes towards Jews were carried out by polling firms in the UK
(including YouGov, Populus, and ICM Unlimited) working on behalf of
different academic and advocacy organisations and news outlets. With
commendable honesty the report says ‘the polling of
antisemitic attitudes is a burgeoning enterprise’.
What
makes this report different is that it is difficult to fault the
methodology or the presentation of the results. I
urge you to download and read it.
******
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