Friday, September 15, 2017
From Ian:
Melanie Phillips: Britain’s alarming antisemitism problem
Melanie Phillips: Britain’s alarming antisemitism problem
In 2002, on the BBC TV show Question Time, I was accused of dual loyalty in front of a jeering studio audience. My crime had been to defend Israel against demonization and double standards by both the audience and other members of the panel.David Collier: Why you shouldn’t just shrug your shoulders at SOAS
At that time I had visited Israel only twice in my life, two years previously. No matter. A British Jew defending Israel was – and is – immediately accused in some quarters of incipient treachery toward Britain, just as throughout history antisemites have accused Diaspora Jews of dual loyalty or treachery merely because they are Jews.
I thought of my own experience, of course, when I read the report on antisemitism in the UK published this week by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research.
There is currently much disquiet over the Labour Party’s conspicuous failure to address significant antisemitism within its ranks. But there has long been far wider concern among many British Jews about the antisemitic discourse, harassment and physical attacks which have become sickeningly commonplace in Britain over the past few years.
The report’s author, Daniel Staetsky, describes a situation which is complex.
Only around 5% of the population are out-and-out antisemites holding multiple anti-Jewish attitudes. Nevertheless, about 30% subscribe to some kind of antisemitic views.
The key is Staetsky’s distinction between antisemites and antisemitism. For while the number of antisemites is very small, the amount of antisemitism diffused throughout British society is much greater.
So why is it importantRichard Millett: Jackie Walker brings her “lynching” to SOAS.
It is important because it shouldn’t be happening anywhere. Just recently, Jonathan Arkush met with Baroness Amos. He described the meeting as ‘the worst of his life’. At the very top of SOAS, those in control have lost their way. Rather than bring the university in line, they have become protectors of the disintegrating environment. The Board of Deputies of British Jews is now considered a hostile element by a UK university and treated as such. A quick search will provide dozens of examples, of anti-Israel and Jewish rhetoric delivered at SOAS. Just one website, Richard Millett’s lists more than a dozen of his own personal experiences.
Yet SOAS is just an example of what can and will happen, wherever the perfect storm is created. Anti-Zionist activists, funding and the social and ethnic make-up of the students. Nobody has any interest in addressing the problem. At SOAS, Jews are not just a minority, they are a hunted minority. If you are Jewish with a soft spot for Israel you hide in the undergrowth or become prey. At a place like SOAS, which is so dependent on pacifying the mob, the Jews are left unprotected.
SOAS isn’t some regional town. It is a university. SOAS is like a local police station where the officers are all corrupt, were those arrested can have unfortunate accidents and local minorities live in fear of the authorities. SOAS is like a local council, where the Councillors prohibit Jews from certain professions unless they are willing to convert to the local church belief. This is an indication of a societal problem at an organised level. Not just a bad street, not just a bad town, but a bad Executive. A growing problem, developing at the very heart of our society. One that clearly threatens Jews.
Like a cancer it has to be rooted out. We need to identify what the problem is. Why Baroness Amos stands atop a rotten edifice, that betrays all of the core values it is meant to hold dear. We need to ask why is the lie unchallenged? Is it the demographics? Is there finance entering campus that is proving detrimental to Western society? What exactly is it that is developing in the academic undergrowth? Everyone who views SOAS with distaste should want to understand just which variables need to be in place to create an environment like this.
If you don’t want all universities to eventually look like SOAS looks today, you have to understand why this is happening. Why in London there is a university that threatens people who tell the truth. First there was one, now there are several of these pockets, spread across the country. A disease that is spreading. Which is why you cannot, must not, just shrug your shoulders.
Then Walker was joined for a Q&A by three other anti-Israel activists: film director Ken Loach, author and journalist Victoria Brittain, and academic Prof. Jonathan Rosenhead.
The Q&A session basically turned into a full attack on the Jewish Chronicle and those writing for it who Walker called “proto-fascists”, The Jewish Labour Movement (Walker thinks the JLM should not give training sessions on anti-Semitism), the Israel Advocacy Movement who Walker accused of digging into her Facebook, the Labour Party compliance unit who Walker thinks is leaking everything to the Jewish Chronicle, the Campaign Against Antisemitism and the Community Security Trust who Walker said “churn out biased surveys all the time”, the so-called “weaponisation of antisemitism” (see above), the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s Working Definition of AntiSemitism which is being increasingly adopted by governments and councils, and, of course Israel.
These hard-left activists want the IHRA defintion changed because they only recognise the neo-Nazi type anti-Semitism as seen at Charlottsville. That means they, in their opinion, can never be considered anti-Semitic.
They don’t like the IHRA classifying “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” as anti-Semitism. That’s because they want the end of the only Jewish majority state.
