Getting it nearly right on antisemitism

JVL introduction

As director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, Professor David Feldman is a respected figure able to speak publicly and in depth about issues that are generally given short shrift in mainstream media.

Thus he was granted a rare Guardian Comment is Free slot on February 18 to ask difficult questions under the heading What we are getting wrong in the fight against antisemitism in Britain.

In particular, he asks: “Are we doing enough – or even the right things – to combat antisemitism?”

It is courageous to question the conventional wisdom, shared by the Labour party, that antisemitism is in a category all of its own, to be combatted by purging tainted individuals, plus adoption of the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, plus Holocaust education.

Feldman’s questioning stance and disapproval of the IHRA definition has already, according to some reports, been behind the Pears Foundation decision in March 2021 to remove its name from the institute Feldman heads.

Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi’s short commentary highlights the most powerful of Feldman’s arguments and notes some areas where he could usefully have gone further.

IHRA definition “has become tainted by its repeated abuse”

By Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi

David Feldman pulls no punches when stating his preference for the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA), published last year, over the IHRA working definition which the government has been promoting since mid 2016.

Providing a reference to the smearing of Amnesty International for its recent report demonstrating the apartheid character of the Israeli state, Feldman says the IHRA document is too often used “to tarnish opinions that are deeply unwelcome to most Israel-supporting Jews, but which are not antisemitic.” There is no shortage of other outrageous examples of the phenomenom Feldman describes, most recently the attempt to destroy the career of a young Palestinian academic – an attempt only diverted by a widely supported campaign in her defence.

Feldman commends the JDA, to which he contributed, for aligning “the struggle against antisemitism with anti-racism more broadly.” Whereas he sees stark evidence of the disastrously divisive impact of the IHRA approach, his critics have demonstrated their own wilful myopia by hailing enthusiastically the way other identity groups have latched onto the IHRA model to press their own sectional interests.

Not only is the preoccupation of the government and Jewish communal bodies with the IHRA working definition counter-productive. Feldman also argues persuasively against the frequent misconception that the problem is to do with individual “antisemites”. In an earlier Guardian piece he ridiculed “the notion that we are dealing with a virus or poison,” leading the Labour Party to focus on individuals – “antisemites who have ‘caught’ the contagion. All sides call on Labour to suspend or expel these ‘bad apples’ to fix the problem and make the barrel healthy again. But it is not as simple as that.”

He sees antisemitism as a reservoir of stereotypes and narratives which people may draw upon, often unintentionally, wherever they sit on the political spectrum.

Here he is weak. It is as though this reservoir is simply there for all time, full of notions with mysterious power to articulate an eternal hatred, taking no account of how stereotypes interlink, how they connect with other forms of racism, how they change over time as living social formations evolve. It is not by chance that, according to an authoritative source Feldman himself quotes, the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, “levels of antisemitism are found to be highest among the far-right.”

Nor does Feldman offer a critical account of how the “bad apple” theory came to dominate discourse about Labour under Jeremy Corbyn.

He notes that “antisemitism seems to be one sort of racism that the government is ready to address” and “antisemitism unites the political class as little else.” This did not happen because “the political class” was genuinely concerned to drain the reservoir of antisemitic stereotypes. It happened because the Conservatives shared with the Labour right and the rest of the political and media establishment an implacable determination to defeat the popular movement around Corbyn, using exaggeration, distortion and downright falsehood to portray the party as a threat to Jews.

Reading the latest of many letters of resignation from the Labour Party by Jewish activists can leave no doubt that we are dealing with cynical weaponisation of antisemitism in the service of factional politics. It is disappointing, if understandable given the eggshells Feldman has to walk on, that the sternest criticism of the political establishment that he can muster is to say: “the earnest response from senior politicians and civil servants has fallen short.”

Nonetheless, he is absolutely right to note that political consensus in Westminster means little without a wide anti-racist coalition. And this is not going to happen as long as the Holocaust is seen as the main vehicle for antisemitism education.

“There is a vast disjuncture,” Feldman writes, “between the Holocaust – the state-sanctioned murder of 6 million Jews – and the sort of everyday antisemitism experienced in Britain today.” He notes that the Holocaust is the only compulsory subject in the history national curriculum for pupils aged 13 to 14.

As a member of the National Education Union in contact with teachers struggling to deal sensitively with antisemitic views in the classroom, this writer can state with conviction that the November 21 government guidance to which Feldman points is – to be blunt – worse than useless. It consists of a jumble of ignorant assertions such as the following:

“The Holocaust did not start with the gas chambers, but started with words. That is why education is so important and why stamping out antisemitism today is crucial, so we welcome today’s announcement on ensuring that Higher Education institutions adopt the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism.”

It celebrates government funding for post-16s to visit Poland in order, as Feldman puts it, to learn the lessons of Auschwitz. The question which remains unasked is, what are those lessons? In the current climate, which Feldman questions but does not do quite enough to confront, the lesson seems to be that there must be no challenge to Israel, or Zionism, or anyone who claims to oppose antisemitism redefined in such a way as to protect that state and that ideology.

The humane, universalist lesson which should be learned from the horror of the Holocaust is surely “Never again, for anyone.” But that lesson cannot be learned if Holocaust history largely discounts the non-Jewish victims of Nazism. Teachers aware of this find they cannot incorporate it into the narrow, government-sanctioned curriculum without risking being accused of – of course – antisemitism.

David Feldman almost certainly understands this full well, but it does not figure in his analysis, perhaps due to lack of space, or disapproval on the part of Comment is Free editors.

Either or both of these may account for a lack of critical analysis applied to the data on the increase in anti-Jewish hate incidents with which Feldman begins his essay. He cites a report from the Community Security Trust (CST) and gives a link to a recent Guardian article which says: “Anti-Jewish hate incidents have hit a record high in the UK, with reports of antisemitism in person and online rising above the previous 2019 peak after conflict erupted between Israel and Palestinians last May.”

The illustration above the article, provided by the CST as evidence of antisemitism, is a photo of a slogan daubed on a wall – “(ZIONIST) POLICE STATE”. Guardian sub-editors have thoughtfully added a sub-title – “Biggest surge coincided with bloody conflict between Israel and Palestinians in May 2021.”

This graffiti, however, is not evidence of antisemitism – certainly not an example of “antisemitism in person or online”. It appears to be a reaction to Israel’s attacks on Palestinians. It has nothing directly to do with Jews. Connecting it to antisemitism, to hatred of UK Jews, depends on a conflation between Israel and Jews which we are rightly called on not to make. Yet Zionist bodies including the CST have been at pains to promote just such an elision, which many non-Jews have – tragically – come to believe. Ironically this is the very conflation – of Jews with Israel – that the IHRA condemns when it takes the form of holding Jews responsible for the actions of the Israeli State.

David Feldman’s thoughtful contribution to this crucial but fraught debate is very welcome, as are readers’ responses to this commentary.