Do Jews count?

David Baddiel – Cambridge 2011 | Photo: Chris Boland - Flickr | CC BY-SA 2.0 | cropped from original

JVL Introduction

Leah Levane, like many other critical commentators, finds David Baddiel stunningly unself-aware.

While agreeing with him that antisemitism is real, it is racism, many Jewish people are genuinely afraid, she is astounded by his many blind spots.

To claim that “Jews don’t count”, especially on the left, when the narrative since 2016 has been dominated by grotesquely exaggerated  accounts of how much of a threat antisemitism has been and remains on the left is both bizarre and dangerous.

Its  argument that Jews are uniquely discriminated against (“don’t count”) reinforces the idea of a hierarchy of racism. It has the effect of belittling the overt, well-documented and often embedded anti-black racism and Islamophobia (among other racisms), that are widespread in our society, including within the Labour Party.

Jews must not try to go it alone: they need to stand with others if they are to be effective in fighting antisemitism.

Photo of David Baddiel reproduced by permission of Chris Boland

This article was originally published by Counterfire on Sun 27 Nov 2022. Read the original here.

Do Jews count?

David Baddiel’s Channel 4 film focusing on antisemitism and the progressive left promotes a hierarchy of racism that only benefits the right argues Leah Levane

David Baddiel’s Channel 4 documentary Jews Don’t Count outlines some examples of antisemitism. The examples are mostly from the far-right and include the infamous Charlottesville march when white supremacists loudly proclaimed ‘Jews shall not replace us.’ However, his main focus is not on the far-right, but the attitude of ‘progressives.’

Dawn Butler MP, for example, was shown listing many marginalised groups but failed to mention Jews, which Baddiel considered typical and significant. From this Baddiel disingenuously implies that the UK Labour Party does not take antisemitism as seriously as other forms of racism or discrimination.

I can only presume that Baddiel has been in hibernation since 2015! He has certainly not bothered to read the Forde Report or watched Al Jazeera’s Labour Files.  As well as taking antisemitism seriously Forde and Al Jazeera expose shocking facts about the treatment of Black and Brown Party members and show categorically that there is a hierarchy of racism in the Labour Party that has placed antisemitism at the top.  Every allegation of antisemitism was amplified countless times by the mainstream media, which has all but ignored the findings from these two in-depth studies.

There were, of course, some useful points in the documentary but these were one-sided and require further explanation.

Stereotypes

Baddiel is correct to say that antisemitism is real and those heinous stereotypes pointing to Jewish power, control and wealth persist. However, the belief in Jewish power and control is far more prevalent on the far right. Threats of violence and attacks on Jewish people and institutions have been carried out by the right.

It is true that some on the left engage with conspiracy theories that use embedded Jewish stereotypes and these have to be challenged. But antisemitism is overwhelmingly generated on the right.

Many Jewish people are genuinely afraid. This is especially true of those who lost family in the Nazi Holocaust, or whose families had to flee the quotas and pogroms of the Russian tsars. Baddiel’s family suffered too.

Jewish people are well aware of the centuries long Jewish experience of oppression, exile, enslavement, quotas, pogroms and Holocaust. Understandably many fear that it could happen again. However, as already stated, the threat of violence is not coming from “progressives” as Baddiel suggests. And, he has nothing to say about how fear was whipped up by the right who named Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters, time after time, as posing an ‘existential threat’ to Jews.

The weaponising of antisemitism is irresponsible, reprehensible, cruel and wicked.

Antisemitism is racism

Baddiel rightly identifies antisemitism as a form of racism, despite Jews being seen as “white”. He evidences this line of thinking by showing two clips of Whoopi Goldberg arguing that the Holocaust was terrible but was not racism. Baddiel uses this to argue that ‘racism is ring-fenced to include only those of colour’.

However, when Baddiel interviews Stephen Bush, a Black British Jew and Baddiel’s own niece Dionna, a biracial woman from the US, he finds the fact that all Jews are not white to be of little significance. For example, Baddiel fails to tell us that Bush has led a study into the experiences of Black Jews, which found that most of them feel unwelcome in UK Jewish institutions.

When Dionna explains to Baddiel that she worries about what would happen to her Black mother rather than her white Jewish father if either got stopped by the police, he responds by saying that he gets trolled online, as though this was some form of equivalence.

There was no acknowledgement that Black parents are so fearful of police shootings that they teach even their very young children how to behave if police stop them. In seeking understanding for Jewish people in the face of antisemitism, where was Baddiel’s compassion or even curiosity about the reality of being Black in the United States? The comparison of their experience to that of white Jews in the UK simply isn’t valid.

Baddiel talks about those who have hit back at him because of his racism towards footballer Jason Lee.  But, perhaps surprisingly, I can leave a response on this to the Telegraph, which noted that:

 “Things went awry when Baddiel attempted to head off critics who bring up his mockery of the former Nottingham Forest player Jason Lee on Fantasy Football League – a recurring “gag” which involved Baddiel in blackface and on every occasion involved playground-level bullying. The comic huffed that he had apologised countless times but it was only here, 25 years late and in service of his own documentary, that he bothered to apologise to Lee himself. The air is thin up there on the moral high ground.”

Israel and Palestine

Baddiel is, of course, correct when he says that Diaspora Jews are not accountable for what Israel does and he made it clear that he does not identify with Israel.  He is right to object that when discussing antisemitism some people on the left, say ‘yes but what about what Israel is doing to the Palestinians’?  However, he did not examine why this happens and therefore implies that this is antisemitism too.

Baddiel says nothing about how anti-Zionism and antisemitism have been conflated to attack the left. Nor does he try to explain why the IHRA definition of antisemitism is being pushed so heavily, nor how allegations of antisemitism using that (non) definition, and most often relating to criticism of Israel, has led to people losing jobs and endless harassment.

And, of course since he is not responsible, he says nothing critical of Israel’s actions, nor does he criticise Israeli leaders for claiming that it acts on ‘behalf of the Jews of the World’. Israeli leaders of all Parties say this (even though it goes against the IHRA definition). The organisations of the Jewish Establishment support Israel largely without criticism. Whereas Jews who campaign for justice for Palestinians are unjustly labelled as ‘self-hating or even sham Jews’.

Why does this all matter?

It matters because it reinforces the idea of a hierarchy of racism, and argues that Jews are at the bottom, despite all evidence to the contrary.  It matters because it is unbalanced, because it feeds into that real fear without offering any way out. It matters, above all, because it does not focus on working together to defeat racism.

To argue that Jews should only concern themselves with their own culture and experiences is wrong. We benefit from knowing the story of other groups suffering racism. And it requires identifying the interests that racism serves and working together to defeat it. The vital fight against the Far Right and against racism needs everyone standing together. Baddiel has nothing to say about that.

Comments (7)

  • Doug says:

    The section in a Jewish school, where they prepared the kids for an attack, was that in this country
    If so, its wrong on so many levels
    Safest country in Europe for the Jewish Community thanks to JC and the Labour Movement
    Why would you do that to the bairns, put that fear into them when there is no justification for it

    0
    0
  • Kuhnberg says:

    “Non-Jewish victims of Nazism included Slavs (e.g. Russians, Belarusians, Poles, Ukrainians and Serbs), Romanis (gypsies), homosexual men; the mentally or physically disabled, mentally ill; Soviet POWs, Roman Catholics, Protestants, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Spanish Republicans, Freemasons,’black people (especially the Afro-German Mischlinge, called “Rhineland Bastards” by Hitler and the Nazi regime), and other minorities not considered Aryan (Herrenvolk, or part of the “master race”); leftists, communists, trade unionists, capitalists, social democrats, socialists, anarchists, and other dissidents who disagreed with the Nazi regime.”

    Wikipedia

    DB polices every mention of bigotry against minorities to make sure Jews are given pride of place. Do he object every time the Holocaust is mentioned and no reference is made to the persecution of groups he is not a member of?

    He has no interest in solidarity with the wider group of the oppressed, which is why he has no understanding of and no liking for the left. He criticized Corbyn on Frankie Boyle’s nasty comedy show for always making a point of including other groups in his condemnation of antisemitism, as if this indicated a moral failing. ‘Why can’t he just say it was the Jews?’ he complained.

    He doesn’t get it. This is not just a lack of imagination, it is a lack of humanity.

    0
    0
  • George Wilmers says:

    Leah Levane is generous to Baddiel, whose threadbare arguments and transparent disingenuousness would hardly merit attention were it not for the large state and corporate media resources available to him and the adulation of organised apartheid lobby groups with whom the comedian would presumably disclaim any affinity. As Jonathan Cook points out, the political vacuity of Baddiel’s tirade against “progressives” is unmasked both by his own account of his personal experiences of antisemitism and by Jason Lee’s question to him in Lee’s podcast of their encounter: who did Baddiel think of as allies in the fight against racism? Cook notes that this was the one moment – more so even than when he had to apologise to Lee – that Baddiel looked genuinely flummoxed.

    https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2022-11-24/david-baddiel-apology-jason-lee/

    If Baddiel’s thesis that “Jews don’t count” in British society were correct, one might wonder why certain elected UK politicians noted more for their political opportunism than for their moral courage or dedication to truth are so keen to advertise a tenuous Jewish connection by highlighting the existence of some remote Jewish ancestor.

    I was astonished to discover that the former MP John Mann, now “antisemitism tsar” and Baron Mann, is listed in Wikipedia as a “Jewish politician” despite, according to the Jewish Chronicle and other sources, having no Jewish antecedence. Of course it is entirely possible that the noble Baron is unaware of this unsourced error on the part of Wikipedia, in which case he will doubtless seek to have the entry removed as soon as he has been informed.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_Jewish_politicians

    0
    0
  • David Baddiel’s claim that Israel doesn’t concern him and that he is not a Zionist should be treated with scepticism. When Corbyn suggested meeting openly with JVL and other Jewish groups such as Jewdas, Baddiel was at the forefront of objecting.

    When Baddiel wrote his book, he took it round to Starmer’s house. Why would that be? Did he feel some kind of affinity with Starmer and his determination to ‘root out antisemitism.’ i.e. critics of Zionism. Given Badiel’s long record of racism his profession of concern about antisemitism should be treated with derision.

    At a meeting 2 nights ago on the Labour Files one of the speakers exclaimed that she was sick of hearing about antisemitism. I understand that because the whole ‘antisemitism’ narrative in the Labour Party has been about denying Palestinian rights. Who would believe that the Board, which has never once in its 240 year history organised a demonstration against antisemitism, be so concerned about it under Corbyn?

    For the first time in its history the Board of Deputies held a demonstration against ‘antisemitism’ in March 2018. Its target Corbyn and among attendees were those well known anti-racists Norman Tebbit and Ian Paisley jnr. Prominent amongst the demonstrators were well known Jewish supporters of Tommy Robinson such as Jonathan Hoffman. Yet no one, certainly not Baddiel called them out for their misuse of the term antisemitism.

    This was the same Board who in 1942, when news was received of the Slovakian deportations were approached by the Federation of Czechoslovakian Jews who asked for the BOD’s co-operation in organising a demonstration. They refused. The Federation went ahead and held a public demonstration and rally. The Bishop of London, two Christian MPs and the Czech Interior and Rehabilitation Ministers spoke, but not the Board. Both the Secretary, Abraham Brotman, and the President, Selig Brodetsky, refused to attend.

    This is the Board’s history yet Baddiel has worked in tandem with them throughout the attacks on Corbyn, including making a few of his own. This hypocrite should be denounced not entertained or flattered.

    Baddiel is a licensed critic of the Jewish Establishment in this country. His singling out of ‘antisemitism’ is a continuation of Zionism’s exclusivism.

    0
    0
  • Stephen Richards says:

    Can we not question Jewish ‘power & control’ in Government & MSM? Can we not wonder what mechanism was used to promote & guarantee the acceptance of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism throughout Britain, Europe & USA. Israel has powerful friends, may some of them be Jewish? We cannot because it is a trope & banned by the IHRA definition. You dare not think it, because if you do, you are an anti-Semite by definition.

    0
    0
  • Noel Hamel says:

    David Baddiel’s claim that Jews don’t count does make good sense in the context of the Stalinist purges by the Labour Party, attempting to silence Jews who campaign for justice and human rights in Israel. That being said, there undoubtedly is antisemitic racism about but it is important to differentiate two things: historic racism can’t faithfully represent contemporary practices; and anger provoked by Israeli injustices cannot be subsumed in a general accusation of antisemitism.

    0
    0
  • Ronald Mendel says:

    Leah Levane’s commentary is spot on. I find Baddiel’s views on Jewish identity and anti-Semitism both myopic and self serving, for he ignores how principled anti-racists within and outside the Labour Party have been smeared as being self-hating Jews for standing up for Palestinian equality and justice. He also ignores the powerful tradition of Jewish internationalism which was expressed in opposition to South African Apartheid and more recently in support of Palestinian rights.

    0
    0

Comments are now closed.