Mark Regev: The problem with Corbyn, AOC and left-wing antisemitism - opinion
FOR BRITISH Jews, the Corbyn phenomenon was highly unsettling. The outbreak of antisemitism at the top tier of Her Majesty’s loyal opposition was a genuine shock, especially as it was centered on the individual who challenged three consecutive Tory prime ministers for the keys of 10 Downing Street.Dreyfus, Zionism, and Sartre
American Jews also took notice. Prior to COVID-19, delegations to Israel from American Jewish organizations were always looking for something new to attract participants, and years ago started including a stopover of interest in the itinerary – a tour of Jewish Prague, a visit with Morocco’s Jewish community or even a meeting in Amman with the Jordanian foreign minister. During my tenure as Israel’s ambassador in Britain, more and more they included a stopover in London.
A UK visit was not just a matter of showing solidarity with a Jewish community undergoing a difficult period. The American Jews I met in London were anxious that Corbyn’s takeover of Britain’s Labour could be a sign of things to come in the Democratic Party.
Such fears were exacerbated following the 2019 phone call between Corbyn and US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a conversation that took place after Corbyn’s antisemitism had already received significant media coverage in the US. Corbyn, who at the time had legitimacy issues with social-democrats across Europe, thoroughly enjoyed his 45-minute discussion with the New York representative, tweeting: “Great to speak to @AOC on the phone this evening and hear first-hand how she’s challenging the status quo.” AOC responded with a warm tweet of her own: “It was an honor to share such a lovely and wide-reaching conversation with you, @jeremycorbyn!” Consistent with honoring Corbyn, she later pulled out of an event hosted by the dovish American Friends of Peace Now to commemorate assassinated prime minister and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Yitzhak Rabin.
Does the Iron Dome funding episode indicate that “the chickens have come home to roost?” Unclear. In Britain, the Jewish community played a decisive role in the effective public campaign against antisemitism in the Labour Party. If American Jews and their allies act with a determination akin to that shown in Britain, the Iron Dome funding affair may turn out to be just a troubling aberration. If not, the incident could very well be a milestone in the growing Corbynization of the Democratic Party. The latter development may have highly problematic implications for the American Jewish community and for the US-Israel partnership.
A discredited Corbyn was ultimately forced to resign his leadership after Labour’s unprecedented losses in the 2019 national elections, with the party’s faithful increasingly convinced that Corbynism was a prescription for keeping Labour out of office in perpetuity. Hopefully, Democrats are closely following developments across the pond.
A Jew most often combats the antisemite’s onslaught by being reasonable. He asks for fair treatment, as Dreyfus did, but this, Sartre points out, is a frail defense, which causes the Jew to further victimize himself, while inflaming the malice of his accusers.Museum unveils 14th century hand-painted scroll depicting ancient Israel
Sartre has gotten much bad press for his claim that “it is the antisemite who makes the Jew.” But Sartre was being polemical—he ignored the rich resources of Jewish self-definition so he could focus on the Jew who was anxious about being a Jew. Such an anxious, inauthentic Jew, Sartre says, “has allowed himself to be persuaded by the anti-Semites ... He admits with them that, if there is a Jew, he must have the characteristics with which popular malevolence endows him, and his effort is to constitute himself a martyr, in the proper sense of the term [i.e., a witness], that is, to prove in his person that there are no Jews.”
Sartre’s analysis applies to those Jewish anti-Zionists who wish to wipe Jewish nationalism from the map and turn the Jew into the universal man or woman—a purely virtuous apostle of human rights (while at the same time applauding Palestinian nationalism). By contrast, Sartre was a committed Zionist who argued that the United Nations ought to have armed the Jews when the British departed from Palestine. In 1949, he said that the creation of Israel was one of the rare events that “allows us to preserve hope.” “I will never abandon this constantly threatened country whose existence ought not to be put into question,” he remarked in 1976. In Anti-Semite and Jew, composed before the birth of Israel, he wrote that the Jew “may also be led by his choice of authenticity to seek the creation of a Jewish nation possessing its own soil and autonomy.” Though Sartre also says one can be an authentic French Jew, this seems a less attractive option given pervasive French anti-Semitism.
For Sartre, as for Herzl, the Jew’s problem was rootlessness: the Jew ran the risk of becoming nothing except a defender of universal rights, and so not Jewish at all. By default, his loyalty, like Dreyfus’s, would belong to the nation-state that oppressed him. A new Jewish rootedness—Zionism—was needed instead. And so Sartre’s logic leads in a Zionist direction, though this remains less than explicit in Anti-Semite and Jew.
Near the end of his life, Sartre gave a lengthy interview to Benny Lévy, his young Maoist secretary, who later abandoned Marx and became a rabbi in Israel. Sartre shocked his leftist comrades by telling Lévy that Jewish messianism was superior to the Marxist ideology he had long championed. For the Jews, Sartre argued, each virtuous act is justified because it contributes to the coming of the Messiah, and this seemed to him a better idea than Marxist class warfare, since it spoke to Sartre’s ideal of committed personal action.
Most European Jews, instead of emigrating to Palestine, had either remained loyal like Dreyfus to the nations that scorned them, or simply hoped they could survive the coming persecution without leaving their homes. Their hopes were ruined. Outside Paris’ schools, the visitor can now see plaques commemorating the thousands of Jewish children murdered by the Nazis with the active assistance of the French state.
Dreyfus’ nephews fought and died for France in World War I. His son Pierre, who passed through the hell of Verdun, earned the Croix de guerre. Dreyfus himself died in 1935, too early to see French gendarmes deport his favorite granddaughter, Madeline, to Auschwitz.
The Israel Museum unveiled the Florence Scroll on Wednesday, a hand-painted scroll from the 14th century which is now displayed unrolled to its full length inside the glass vitrine of a museum gallery.
The nearly 11-meter parchment is the focus of “Painting a Pilgrimage,” the exhibit depicting the pilgrimage of a medieval Egyptian Jew from Cairo to the Land of Israel, the earliest known visual travelogue of the Holy Land.
It’s a scroll dominated by the cherry red, leaf green and ochre yellow lines that make up its 130 illustrations, displaying holy sites located from Egypt to Lebanon and offering one painter’s idea of what the region looked like 700 years ago.
“Scrolls are usually rolled up and kept out of the light, so the colors are kept sharp and bright,” said Rachel Sarfati, the senior curator who has been researching the scroll for the last 14 years.
The parchment includes illustrations of Egyptian and Lebanese landscapes, a central drawing of the Temple Mount, others of Mount Sinai, the Cave of the Patriarchs and the Tower of David.
It’s a relic that depicts sites and places built and visited in ancient times, yet in a landscape that is very familiar to the museum visitors, accentuated in the “Painting a Pilgrimage” exhibit with hands-on, digital maps and two wall-sized slide shows offering a pictorial view of those locations in modern times.
“Rachel Sarfati curated this, she realized its importance and brought it to light,” said museum director Ido Bruno at the opening on Wednesday night.