Labour’s war on the wrong type of Jew
JVL Introduction
Geoffrey Alderman, doyen of historians of British Jewry, is an ardent Zionist.
But he is appalled at the hounding of Diana Neslen for her anti-Zionism, no matter how profoundly he disagrees with her.
Here he reminds us of the time when anti-Zionism was fashionable – even widespread – among the Anglo-Jewish ruling elites.
WE also append a copy of a speech givenin 1934 by Dr.J.H.Hertz, then Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregation of the British Empire.
This article was originally published by Jewish News blogs on Fri 11 Feb 2022. Read the original here.
Labour’s war on the wrong type of Jew
Earlier this month it emerged that the Labour Party had abandoned an investigation into the political – or, if you prefer, philosophical – beliefs of an 82-year-old Jewish woman and party member, Diana Neslen.
According to the Guardian, which broke this story, Neslen has been investigated no less than three times in less than three years for tweets she had authored concerning Israel and Zionism. Neslen is an anti-Zionist Jew who makes no secret of her distaste for the Jewish state, which she regards as “a racist endeavour.”
In 2018, after a great deal of debate, Labour adopted the definition of antisemitism espoused by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. One of the examples appended to this contentious definition alleges that antisemitism is “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g. by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavour.” Diana Neslen’s tweet had clearly challenged the argument underlying this example. Thus began Labour’s ill-conceived investigation of her conduct.
Under threat of legal action, this investigation has now been abandoned. But it should never have been started.
I say this as a proud Zionist who does not believe that Israel is or ever was “a racist endeavour.” But as an historian of British Jewry I call to mind a time when anti-Zionism was fashionable – even widespread – among the Anglo-Jewish ruling elites.
In 1897 no less a Jewish cleric than Hermann Adler, chief rabbi of the United Synagogue, condemned the forthcoming First Zionist Congress as “an egregious blunder” and denounced the very idea of a Jewish state as “contrary to Jewish principles.” Adler was, indeed, the only western European rabbi to contribute to a collection of anti-Zionist articles, by many leading Jewish ecclesiastics, published in Warsaw in 1900 under the title Or Layesharim [`Light unto the Righteous’]
Among the elites that ran British Jewry during the first half of the 20th century Zionism was feared not least because – so their argument went – it played into the hands of home-grown antisemites, who might argue – indeed who did argue – that if the Jews were a ‘nation,’ with a right to national self-determination, let them leave Great Britain and migrate to wherever this nation-state might be established.
Prominent among those who so argued was Edwin Montagu (a son of the ultra-orthodox founder of the Federation of Synagogues, Samuel Montagu), who became Secretary of State for India in July 1917. In that position he was the strongest opponent, in Lloyd George’s wartime Cabinet, of what became known as the Balfour Declaration.
A week after the Balfour Declaration had been published there was formed the League of British Jews, which boasted all the leading Anglo-Jewish anti-Zionists among its founders. Its president was the Conservative MP Lionel de Rothschild; Sir Philip Magnus was a vice-president; other members included David Lindo Alexander (a former president of the Board of Deputies), Edwin Montagu’s elder brother, Louis, who had succeeded his father as President of the Federation, and Claude Goldsmid Montefiore, a founder of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, who was in due course to accuse the Zionist movement of having aided and abetted the rise of Nazism in inter-war Germany.
Talking of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue should remind us that its first rabbi, Israel Mattuck (died 1954) was an enthusiastic outspoken anti-Zionist all his life. And need I add that many charedim today, if not strictly speaking anti-Zionist (many are, of course), are certainly non-Zionist in outlook?
According to Jewish Voice for Labour, to which Diana Neslen belongs, there are currently over 40 Jewish members of the Labour party facing disciplinary proceedings relating to allegation of antisemitism.
I do not know and have never met Diana Neslen. If I were to meet her, I might be tempted to challenge her anti-Zionist views. What I would never be tempted to do is to accuse her of being in any way antisemitic.
Professor Geoffrey Alderman is an academic, author and journalist
Appendix: Speech by the Very Rev Dr. J.H.Hertz, then Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Empire on the Occasion of the Wext London Synagogue Premises at 33 Seymour Place on 27th May 1934. Source
Interesting we have this Zionist academic defending the right of Jews to be anti-Zionist without being called antisemitic. At the same time we have a former Israeli Attorney General acknowledging that Israel is an apartheid state. Yet still we are hounded and silenced when we try to speak out and have these views heard. I wonder what it will take to turn the tide. Thank you JVL for keeping us informed with these crucial articles that we do not see in mainstream media of hear about through Labour Party official channels
Mr Alderman has neatly defined the difference between Zionism and Judaism. Judaism is a faith Zionism is political.
Alderman states that though he might argue with Mrs Neslan about her politics he would not question her faith.
Yet this is precisely what Keir Starmer does. As a non Jew he has the temerity to denounce Jews as being “antisemitic.” Mr Starmer denounces anyone who disagrees with him in this way. If I were a Jew I might find Mr Starmer`s hypocrisy even more odious than I already do.
There is little point in reporting Starmer and Co to the so-called EHRC, as their ‘investigation’ into the LP proved beyond any shadow of a doubt, as did their decision NOT to investigate Islamophobia in the Tory Party. So perhaps JVL should consider submitting a complaint about Starmer and Co’s discrimination of left-wing Jewish members to the UN.
And slightly off topic….. In the past few months when doing some research on the CAA’s website, again and again I have come across articles in which they refer to Jeremy Corbyn as the ‘anti-Semite Jeremy Corbyn’. If you do a search on their website re >jeremy corbyn<, you will see numerous examples – either in the headline or accompanying summary – in which they do so. Here are a few examples:
'Laura Pidcock quits Labour’s ruling NEC after motion to restore whip to antisemite Jeremy Corbyn fails'
'Jeremy Corbyn, the antisemitic former leader of the Labour Party….'
'Scottish Labour leader under pressure to discipline Mercedes Villalba MSP who called for Party whip to be returned to antisemitic former leader Jeremy Corbyn'
'Four Scottish Labour MSPs pictured with antisemite Jeremy Corbyn over past week'
'A Labour councillor who reportedly defended antisemites Jeremy Corbyn and Jackie Walker…..'
'Antisemite Jeremy Corbyn insultingly appropriates memory of Cable Street…..'
But the CAA is a legitimate charity of course!
Let us be fair to Starmer (I always try to be fair!). He is not alone. Britain and the United States support Israel, not because it is a Jewish state but because it is the lynchpin of Western foreign policy in the Middle East. It guards over their interests and intimidates and threatens their enemies.
What better way to justify this than to explain this support in terms of their concern for the well being of the ‘Jewish’ state thus wrapping themselves in the mantle of anti-racism. The explanation being that Jews are entitled to a state of their own because of the holocaust (although this doesn’t apply to the Gypsies). The IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism provides the necessary definition of ‘anti-Semitism’ to provide the foundations for this political 3 card trick.
Of course there are others on the right and far-right who don’t need such a justification. In the words of Dutch fascist Geert Wilders, ‘‘If Jerusalem falls into the hands of the Muslims, Athens and Rome will be next.’ Israel is the last and best defender of civilisation against the Muslim hordes who are seeking to replace the White people of Europe.
Indeed all sorts of genuine anti-Semites support Israel for these reasons, from Tommy Robinson, Richard Spencer and Andrei Breivick to Trump and Bannon.
Jews who insist that they aren’t Zionists and for whom Israel holds no special place are out of sync with this. Hence why non-Jewish conservatives, of which Starmer is one, accuse us of not being Jewish or the wrong sort of Jew. The Jew they want is the conformist Zionist ready to bless their imperialist ventures.
Geoffrey Alderman gives us a glimpse of the anti-Zionism of the Jewish bourgeoisie in the first half of the 20th century. It took the Zionists until 1940, before they could capture the Board of Deputies. Stuart Cohen in English Zionists and British Jews argues that the only reason why the Jewish bourgeoisie eventually adopted Zionism was because they were left with no choice since the non-Jewish bourgeoisie had adopted it. To do anything else would have been unpatriotic.
So there is method in Starmer’s madness. It was the anti-Semitic non-Jewish bourgeoisie who force the Jewish bourgeoisie to adopt Zionism and Starmer is merely following in their footsteps.
The root problem is the blanket adoption by the elite institutions of today endorsing the IHRA definition without question & those who even dream of questioning must be anti-Semites.
I am coming to the conclusion that a large part of our task is to destroy the concept of race that so disfigures our international conversation. Unless we can do so, the people of Israel, and by extension the worldwide community of people of Jewish heritage, will come to be blamed for the criminal actions of a small Spartan state propped up for reasons of Realpolitik by the Western powers. The Nazis taught the world how much evil flows from an ideology of race, but the world’s powers have failed to learn the lesson, and we now face the prospect of another World War that uses race as a pretext for an unparalleled orgy of violence.
Geoffrey Alderman has an honourable record in differentiating between being pro-Palestinian and antisemitic. In 2019, he wrote an article for The Spectator, entitled “Is Jeremy Corbyn really anti-semitic”, in which he stated, “The fact of the matter is that Corbyn has an impressive record of supporting Jewish communal initiatives”. “I will agree that from time to time, as backbench MP and party leader, Corbyn has acted unwisely. But the grounds for labelling him an anti-Semite simply do not exist”: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/is-jeremy-corbyn-really-anti-semitic-
For daring to tell this simple truth, Alderman was subsequently banned from writing for the Jewish Chronicle, a paper which he had contributed to for many years: https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/jewish-academic-no-platformed-by-jewish-chronicle/
Vexatious claims of anti semitism are hate crimes and should be prosecuted
Always with the oppressed never the oppressors
Hit them where it hurts and flood MSM and toilet papers with these excellent articles
Then give us details of those who refuse to publish
Label them anti semites for bringing Jewish Community into disrepute
It is reassuring to see that even as ardent Zionist as Geoffrey Alderman has the integrity to make the distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.