Sunday’s march against antisemitism is not a march against antisemitism
JVL Introduction
The Campaign Against Antisemitism describes itself as “a volunteer-led charity dedicated to exposing and countering antisemitism through education and zero-tolerance enforcement of the law.” In 2002 it raised over a million pounds to fund its activities.
Between April 2020 and June 2022, JVL presented the Charity Commission with five detailed submissions setting out evidence to show that CAA is not a bona fide charity, but a partisan political campaigning group.
The Guardian reported JVL’s concerns about it in January this year here. We said then that it “seems more obsessed by anti-left political posturing than by any concerns about genuine antisemitism”.
Nothing has changed.
Barnaby Raine explains here why the march against antisemitism it has called on Sunday must be treated not as such but as “a march against Palestinian freedom, using Jewish safety as its awful pretext”.
RK
A Twitter /X thread by Barnaby Raine
On Sunday there will be a "March Against Antisemitism" in London. A short thread:
— Barnaby Raine (@BarnabyRaine) November 23, 2023
Sunday’s march comes a day after a march for Palestinian freedom. I’ll be speaking there, on Saturday. In a different world, I’d love to march on Sunday too – I am a proud Jew who hates racism – but its organisers have framed it as a hostile response to support for Palestine.
It is not, then, a march against antisemitism. The thousands of Jews who have joined Jewish blocs for Palestinian life and freedom in recent weeks are all told that we are not welcome. It is a march against Palestinian freedom, using Jewish safety as its awful pretext.
On this view, to stand up for Jews means to align oneself with the powers of the West against the savage hordes, with the coloniser against the colonised; this is a language pioneered to turn Jews into cannon fodder for imperialism (which is what “Israel” is).
The Jewish left generalise from the experience of millennia of anti-Semitism to insist that nobody should be called a “human animal” ever, by anyone, nor should their homes and hospitals be bombed because their lives matter less. That is what Jewish history teaches us – urgently.
We understand anti-Semitism as one of a series of paranoias through which power denigrates Others, we know it can appear among the discontented too, we want to fight it because we want everyone to live in dignity. Our anger at anti-Semitism and at Zionism come from the same place.
Most Sunday marchers (ignoring Tommy Robinson etc) will be genuine in their concern about rising anti-Semitism. But they will not beat it by doubling down on a garrison state – it hasn’t worked so far. It’s time for us, as Jews, to turn back to projects of solidarity.
One beautiful dynamic of recent weeks has been the emergence of proud Jewish worlds that want nothing to do with colonial violence, and want to reconnect us instead to coalitions with others who know what savagery “Western civilisation” means: I’ve joined @BlackJewishA
The anthropologist Prof Ghassan Hage in a lecture several years ago cited Nietzsche’s account of the difference between “sense of power” and an objective evaluation of a person’s or an organisation’s (or a state’s) actual power. “Sense of power”, Nietzsche wrote, is my subjective feeling of the power I have, my (or my in-group’s) evaluation of it when neither I nor my group has an objective estimation of it. I can have some quantity of power, ‘x’, and may feel that that power is rising: in such a circumstance, says Nietzsche, I can “deploy power magnanimously”. For example if something, be it large or trifling, is irritating me when I am experiencing myself as strong, I can act magnanimously towards it.
But if I feel that my power is declining, even if objectively its level remains at ‘x’, then I don’t act in the same way in the face of challenge: it no longer feels trivial but becomes a threat to me, my group, my ‘tribe’, my in-group.
On the face of it, Israel, and the USA, appear powerful militarily, but against the realities of a changing world order, what is the subjective sense of power among the ruling elites, in the widest application of that term?
In his lecture, Hage applied this thinking to what he called Israel’s ‘crisis of omnipotence.’
It’s clear that we can’t apply meanings of the word ‘magnanimous’ to Israel or to its apologists and zealots: highly moral, showing kindness or forgiveness? Not seeking revenge? Great of mind; nobility of soul, elevated in sentiment; raised above what is low, mean, or ungenerous? No wonder the likes of Tommy Robinson wants to gatecrash.
The CAA was formed in the summer of 2014, during Operation Protective Edge by Gideon Falter, the Vice Chair of JNF UK. The JNF was the oldest Zionist organisation and the main instrument of Israeli land apartheid. Clauses in its tenancy agreements forbade the employment of non-Jewish labour. Today the JNF is an Israeli para-state organisation.
I have no doubt that the CAA was created at the instigation of Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs to fight back against support for the Palestinians during Israel’s barbaric attack on Gaza. The same is true today. Even the venue for its first demonstration, the Royal Courts of Justice is the same.
The CA pretends it opposes right-wing and ‘left-antisemitism’ equally but a cursory glance at its website shows this to be a lie. It has even added a further 6 examples of antisemitism to its original 6. They include not wanting to keep company with supporters of Israel!
In 2017 I wrote ‘Campaign Against Antisemitism is a campaign against Palestinians’ for Electronic Intifada.
https://electronicintifada.net/content/campaign-against-antisemitism-campaign-against-palestinians/19916
It is as true now as it was then.
What a ludicrous article. The march was against antisemitism and certainly not pro-Isreal nor islamophibic, it was against racism. It was in stark contrast to the pro-Palestinian marches with their myriad of antisemitic banners, chants and Jew hatred.
I have nothing but respect for Jewish people who have placed themselves on the right side of history despite the truly horrible cancellation smears they will have to endure.
Solomon: what is ludicrous is claiming that the march against antu-semitism had nothing to do with Israel, since it is plain to the Jews who are in protest against Israel that it is the rise of opposition to the state of Israel and certain of its specific policies which is driving a proportionate rise in unfounded accusations of anti-semitism.
Yes, there are Jews who have been abused, but the suspicion is that many of these anti-semitic attacks have been encouraged by Israel’s much-publicised claim that it is committing its genocidal actions on behalf of the whole Jewish people, while Jews who reject those actions have had great difficulty in making their voices heard above the hubbub set up by Israel’s media allies.
But there are also Jews who will testify, in complete contradiction of your assertion, based on hearsay rather than actual experience I imagine, that when they have participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations, proclaiming themselves as being Jews, they have been treated honourably by the other demonstrators and were never aware of any kind of anti-semitic element taking against them. Israel is relying on people’s ignorance of the reality to strengthen belief in their carefully-woven fantasy: and there are ignorant people who believe what Israel says and react accordingly.
And I have to say, we Jews who support the Palestinian’s right to live free of Israel’s oppression can do so without supporting Hamas’s recent actions; and we are sick of the way we are depicted by the representatives of Zionism.
And I feel driven to ask, is London a ‘no-go’ area for Jews? Has there been one shred of credible evidence that this is so? Or is this just another scare campaign whipped up by the Hasbarists to justify their support for a state which is rapidly becoming a ‘no-go’ region for non-Jews?