By
Les May
YOU
have probably never heard of Dutch schoolteacher Johan van
Hulst. I certainly had not until I read an obituary of him in
the Washington Post. Along with two colleagues he is credited
with saving the lives of some 600 Jewish children who would otherwise
have been sent to the death camps. All this under the nose of
the SS and knowing that if he were found out he too would be killed.
That is what anti-Semitism really means. It is part of the
experience of many of our continental neighbours whose countries were
occupied by the Nazis. It is not part of our experience and it
puts the ‘anti-Semitism’, which some would have us believe
is rampant in the Labour party, into some kind of perspective. It
also gives the lie to those people who claim the ‘The Holocaust’
was a hoax.
Both
Stalin and Hitler despised Jewish people because they did not have a
state of their own. Stalin deported them, Hitler murdered them.
With a history like this it is unsurprising that anyone who self
identifies as Jewish will feel a close affinity with the state of
Israel, the one country that is not going to deport them or murder
them.
But
identifying with a country is a two edged sword. It thrusts upon you
a moral responsibility for that country’s actions. On 17
March 2003 the late Robin Cook received a standing ovation from the
House of Commons for his resignation speech after leaving the Cabinet
in protest at the Iraq war. Thousands of people took to the
streets to voice their objections to the war. They were people
who wanted to tell Blair, and the world, ‘you do not go to war
in my name’.
So
the distinction between gratuitous anti-semitism and thought through
anti-Zionism may begin to look a bit hazy at times.
Nonetheless the distinction is real. Gratuitous anti-semitism
on social media should not be made an excuse for not questioning the
policies of the state of Israel, either by individuals or the press.
Nor should it be made an excuse for the press seeking to
interfere in the internal structures of the Labour party.
It
cannot have escaped notice that if Corbyn accedes to the demand that
Christine Shawcroft should be suspended from the party and removed
from the party’s ruling national executive committee (NEC), it will
shift the balance of power between the pro- and anti-Corbyn forces.
So whilst it is not difficult to find a few dozen examples of
gratuitous anti-Semitism coming from some members of the Labour
party, it is also a story being whipped up mostly by MPs who have
always objected to Corbyn leading the party and a press which thinks
the same.
How
many of the people who are so vocal about this would be willing to
act like Johan van Hulst did?
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