‘Zionists’ teach Zionism

‘Imagine’

Imagine a classroom full of 8-year-olds.  They study a subject called ‘National and Social Upbringing’.  They’re told to open the textbook (printed in 2019) at page 29, which summarises, in just two bullet points, what they have just learned:

• Jerusalem is an Arab city built by our Arab forefathers thousands of years ago.
• Jerusalem is a holy city for Muslims and Christians.

In the next classroom, 10-year-old kids are taught Islamic Education.  At page 63, the textbook (also printed in 2019) tells them that

Al Buraq Wall is part of the western wall of Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Muslims alone have absolute right to it.

‘Al-Buraq Wall’ is what Israelis call the Western Wall.  It used to be called the ‘Wailing Wall’, because it’s there that – for almost two millennia – Jews used to express their sorrow at the loss of the Temple.  But the kids can be forgiven for not knowing that, because Jews are conspicuously absent from their textbooks – until they suddenly appear in the 20th century, first as ‘immigrants’ and then as conquerors, land thieves and blood-thirsty monsters.

A couple of pages further, the same Islamic Education textbook informs the kids that the liberation of Al-Aqsa Mosque is the duty of the entire Nation of Islam; that – as Muslims – they, the kids, must “sacrifice” for its liberation.  The Mosque, is of course forever under attack: the Social Studies textbook for Year 7 claims that, as early as 1969,

the Zionists set the Al-Aqsa Mosque on fire.

Imagine other textbooks, also used in this school: an Arabic Language textbook for 10-year-olds expressing profound admiration for Dalal al-Mughrabi – a terrorist responsible for the death of 38 Israeli civilians, 13 of them children; arithmetics are taught by adding up numbers of “martyrs”.  Physics – by studying the mechanics of slingshots used by heroic youths

to confront the soldiers of the Zionist Occupation and defend themselves from their treacherous bullets.

I wrote ‘imagine’ – but this is no imaginary school.  No, it’s typical of the ‘education system’ controlled by the Palestinian Authority.  The vast majority of Palestinian children in the West Bank attend such schools.  As for the kids of Gaza, they have the ‘benefit’ of a Hamas-designed curriculum.  The same Hamas that produced an animation propaganda movie showing Israeli Jews being forced to board ships under the rifles of victorious Muslim fighters.

Problem and solution

Anyone who dreams of peace between Jews and Arabs will be driven to despair by such ‘education’.  How can Palestinian children be expected to make peace one day with those who they’ve been brainwashed into seeing as murderous monsters, as aliens with no rights and no connection to the land they are constantly ‘trying to steal’?  You’d think that none should be more exercised by this ‘education’ than the self-appointed ‘peace and human rights activists’.

Yet, if we are to judge by a recent opinion piece published in the Jewish Chronicle, the real, pressing problem rests not with Palestinian schools in Gaza and the West Bank, but with Jewish schools in the UK.  The issue, opines Sabrina Miller, is that these latter schools don’t

acknowledge the Palestinian narrative in any meaningful way.

The problem – she claims – is that these Jewish schools don’t allow their students to engage with “Israel-sceptic organisations from an early age”.

That’s why, says Ms. Miller, Jewish youth is unprepared to resist the anti-Israel onslaught they will experience as students on UK university campuses.  That’s why

many university students, frustrated with the mainstream community’s approach to Israel, abandon Zionism entirely.

Let Yachad (one of these “Israel-sceptic organisations”) ‘school’ Jewish children about ‘the conflict’ “from an early age”, says Ms. Miller, and they’ll become better advocates for Israel and lifelong Zionists.

But why?

Ms. Miller is, of course, entitled to her opinion.  And she’s not entirely wrong.  It is true that many British Jewish students feel unprepared for the ‘anti-Zionist’ venom they face on campus.  It is true that, faced with the most outlandish accusations, some are shocked to the point where they feel helpless.

But why should they have to face that venom – and be prepared for it?  Do students of Pakistani descent face a backlash caused by the often unsavory acts of the Government of Pakistan?  Are British students of Indian descent required to either defend or condemn Narendra Modi?  Why is there, in British universities, such an obsessive focus on a conflict thousands of miles away?  One of the many conflicts in today’s world and – in objective terms – by no means the gravest or the bloodiest?  Why were there – at a conference of the British Labour Party – a thousand times more Palestinian flags than Russian, Chinese, Indian, American and British flags, taken together?

So why does Ms. Miller place the onus on Jews and on Jewish schools – i.e. on the victims and their education?  One does not combat domestic abuse by teaching women and girls krav maga; it is the abusers that need to learn a lesson.  If Ms. Miller saw black people being lambasted by racists, would her solution be that schools teach BAME people more biology, the better to confront their detractors, who accuse them of being racially inferior?

‘Palestinian narrative’

But even if Jewish schools wanted to teach “the Palestinian narrative” – what exactly is that narrative?  As the West Bank textbooks prove, Palestinians don’t live in a democratic, liberal society.  Neither the ‘moderate’ Palestinian Authority, nor Hamas (the local branch of Muslim Brotherhood) tolerate a free press, freedom of speech, freedom of public debate…  They brook no dissent; quite the opposite – both Hamas and the PA actively encourage and reinforce societal taboos that tightly constrain speech and severely punish ‘unorthodox’ expression.  What is “the Palestinian narrative”, then – other than whatever these two dictatorial regimes decide that ‘the masses’ should know, believe and say?  The PLO Negotiations Affair Department unabashedly declare on their website that Jews are “immigrants [who] colonize Palestine at the expense of our rights and aspirations”.  Is this “the Palestinian narrative” that we ‘must’ teach to our children “from an early age”?  Should we also school them in the ravings of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane – just for balance?  Even better: should we teach Mein Kampf in Jewish schools – lest our young people feel ill-equipped to fight fascism and antisemitism?

Is your house flooded?  You clearly need more water!

But Ms. Miller’s reference to “the Palestinian narrative” may really be just an intellectually dishonest euphemism.  What she truly seems to imply is that Jewish youth are not sufficiently exposed to “criticism of Israel”.  Are they not, really??  Anyone familiar with the British media knows that, whenever the word ‘Israel’ is uttered (and it is uttered a lot!), it is usually followed by criticism – varying in nature from unfairly harsh to downright outrageous.  These days, the BBC can’t even do an interview with a Holocaust survivor without mentioning the “occupied Palestinian territories”!

BBC’s Middle East Editor urges Jews and gentiles to explore the dark side of Judaism.

Even the Jewish media is replete with views of ‘Palestinian supporters’: within days of Ms. Miller’s opinion piece, the Jewish Chronicle published an article by British-Palestinian Layla Moran MP – in which she called for boycotting “the illegal settlements”.  For those still naïve about ‘liberal’ (or Liberal) vocabulary, “the” in “the illegal settlements” stands for ‘Israeli’.  After all, there’s nothing illegal about Han Chinese settlers in Tibet and Xinjiang, Moroccan settlers in Western Sahara, Turkish settlers in Cyprus, etc., etc., etc.  Is there??

Yachad applauded Layla Moran's article, which calls for boycott against Israeli settlements.

As for the social media – to which youngsters, Jews and Gentiles alike, tend to be addicted – there the ‘criticism’ is neither unfair nor outrageous, but most often berserk.

During the latest Gaza-Israel bout of violence, my girlfriend’s children (16 and 18-year-olds) were both bombarded with horrific anti-Israel comments on Instagram…

But apparently that’s not enough.  What our youngsters really need is… a bit of Yachad ‘education about the conflict’.

Ms. Miller refers to Yachad as “a Zionist anti-occupation movement”.  On Twitter, Yachad itself professes to be “pro-Israel”.  Well, let me tell you: both descriptions are… how should I put it in polite British terms… ‘a bit’ misleading.  Yachad has mostly ceased describing itself as Zionist – probably because the term is soooo ‘divisive’.  As for “pro-Israel”… I just ploughed through Yachad’s 100 most recent Twitter posts: there are exactly 0 (zero) posts praising the Jewish state, or defending her from her many detractors.  In fact, the most recent tweets endorsed Layla Moran’s call for ‘illegal settlement boycott’ and urged everybody to ‘move beyond’ being ‘pro’ or ‘anti’ Israel…

And more ‘water’ is what they’re getting!

Ms. Miller reports with chagrin that

Petitions have been circulated by parents trying to ban Yachad […] from Jewish secondary schools.  The claim made by those that started the petition is that “Yachad is hostile to Israel”.

Firstly, note that the initial “[p]etitions” surreptitiously became just one “petition” – in the space of just a few insincere words.  As far as I’m concerned, Ms. Miller is lying: I am only aware of one “petition” (actually, a complaint to JCoSS – the Jewish Community Secondary School); I was involved in writing it, so I know very well that it did not ask to “ban” Yachad, but to balance its views with those held by other organisations and by the (Zionist) majority of British Jewry.  I.e. to implement the school’s own declared policy of ‘pluralism’ and ‘diversity of opinion’.  And to uphold the law of the land, which prohibits (Art. 406 (1)(b))

the promotion of partisan political views in the teaching of any subject in the school.

and requires (Art. 407)

that where political issues are brought to the attention of pupils […] they are offered a balanced presentation of opposing views.

As for Yachad being “hostile to Israel” – let me just say that it routinely lobbies the British government to put pressure on the Jewish state, to force her to do things that the vast majority of Israelis believe to be detrimental to their safety and wellbeing.

And yet, Ms. Miller again deceives her readers by implying that Yachad is not ‘educating’ in Jewish schools.  In reality (and, in my view, in violation of the law), Yachad has unmatched involvement in the ‘education about the conflict’ in at least certain Jewish schools.  Here’s what their 2020 Annual Report says:

In January and February 2020, we completed six-part courses for both year 12 and year 13 at JCoSS, with over 30 students participating […] we also delivered sessions for years 7, 8 and 9 at JCoSS, meeting with over 75 students.

Yachad: political activists and ‘educators’

And it is not just JCoSS: as previous annual reports make it clear, Yachad (a political lobby, let’s remember!) is ‘educating’ several other Jewish schools, as well as some non-Jewish ones.

Perhaps Ms Miller’s objection is that Year 7 (11-12 year olds) isn’t sufficiently “early age” to

acknowledge the Palestinian narrative in any meaningful way.

Perhaps we should send Yachad to deliver some ‘National and Social Upbringing’ in kindergartens.  After all, the Palestinians are applying that early-age indoctri… err… ‘education’ method so very successfully!

Houston, we have a problem!

But Ms. Miller assures us that Yachad’s ‘education’ is precisely what’s needed to turn Jewish youngsters into staunch Zionists, able to hold their own on campus.

Except that evidence shows that the exact opposite is true.  Ms. Miller herself is a case in point: having now finally become aware of “the Palestinian narrative” and gained “sympathy for the Palestinian people”, one would expect Ms. Miller to be a passionate defender of Israel.  I therefore undertook an excursion to her Twitter timeline, in search for posts in which she defends the Jewish state against her detractors and combats the many lies that are said about her.  Well, I can only say that I returned from that hopeful excursion with empty hands and a sad heart…

Here’s a bit of intellectual honesty – coming from unusual quarters: Sara Hirschhorn identifies herself as a ‘liberal Zionist’; for years, she partnered with Yachad, for instance speaking together at community events.  But she is also an academic, trained to recognise and analyse reality as it is.  While speaking to a group of Jewish 14 to 18 years olds she was shocked to discover that they were (in her own words)

ashamed to be associated with Zionism.

Contrary to what Yachad and Ms. Miller would probably claim, Dr. Hirschhorn found that

It’s not the settlements, or the occupation. It’s the idea itself. […] the group did not cite the occupation or the settlements as responsible for their distancing — for them, it went far deeper, to the very premise of a self-defining State of the Jews, back to 1948.

No, it’s none of Israel’s purported ‘sins’, but

the post-modernist relativism they’ve grown up within.

The type of relativism – I’d say – that suggests that schools should teach ‘narratives’, rather than history; that opinion matters more than evidence and that there are no facts, just ‘views’.

And who is to blame for what many a Jew would describe as a catastrophe?  Here Dr. Hirschhorn’s honesty manages to shine through her ideological convictions.  Talking to her fellow ‘liberal Zionists’, she resorts to a Hebrew term from Jewish Day of Atonement liturgy (“Ashamnu” – we are guilty) to summarise her findings:

My conclusion? “Ashamnu.” We [liberal Zionists] must atone , for we have failed an entire generation.

She unequivocally assigns the youngster’s estrangement to practices that Yachad and similar ‘liberal’ outfits have been engaging in for years: that of always presenting Israel in harshly negative tones – 100% ‘criticism’, 0% praise.

Above all, we can’t only catalogue the (many) shortcomings — we must constantly and convincingly express what still makes us proud — in spite of it all — in the State of Israel today.  If we can’t do that in a selfie, a tweet, a Facebook post, an op-ed or a face-to-face discussion, we must take a hard look at how we have not only failed ourselves, but our future.

Dr. Hirschhorn is hardly the only one to ring the alarm bell.  So did Jonathan Goldstein, head of the Jewish Leadership Council:

Probably the single largest issue that we have to address now is the disengagement of our youth from […] core Jewish values and from its association with Israel. […] We’ve allowed our own youth to be detached from Israel. We’ve lost the narrative of the nation state. We’ve lost the Zionist narrative. […] We have to accept that we have a major problem globally and we have to take it on.

Note that Mr. Goldstein does not just diagnose estrangement from Israel – but also from Jewishness in general.  The two, as many a study has shown, go hand-in-hand.

In fact, Ms. Miller herself admits that

many university students […] abandon Zionism entirely.

Yet she chooses to blame “the mainstream [Jewish] community” and her ‘solution’ is… more Yachad!

Well, Ms. Miller was clearly right to choose journalism as a career.  That’s a profession in which, admittedly, one can do a lot of harm; but one at least does not get sued for malpractice.  Had she chosen medicine, I imagine her passionately prescribing a bout of chesty cough as a salutary remedy for Covid!

Gewalt, Yid’n!  What do we do?

The solution should be obvious even to ‘liberal Zionists’ like Dr. Hirschhorn, as long as – like her – they’re honest:

We need to reinterpret Zionism as national liberation, while teaching what our tradition offers about moral and political responsibility.

Of course, that wouldn’t be “reinterpretation” – it would be a return to the term’s true meaning.  Zionism has always been a national emancipation movement – which is why, in its modern embodiment, it appeared in a place and time replete with other such movements.

A few of the world’s national liberation movements and the approximate year of their beginning.

Our young people do not need to be taught “the Palestinian narrative” – or any ‘narrative’.  They need to be taught their people’s history.  Including Zionism, Israel and their history.

Do we do this?  Let’s listen to Ms. Miller:

[F]rankly, the ‘Israel education’ I received (if I can even call it an education) was appalling.  In Year 12 we watched Entebbe the movie, had one lecture on the War of Independence and another on Theodore Herzl.

Most Jewish parents send their children to Jewish schools simply because they want them to continue to be Jews.  Zionism should be an essential part of teaching them Jewishness – if nothing else, because without proud, unequivocal Zionism, they (or their own children) will not remain Jews.  If concepts like ‘nation’ and ‘nation state’ are ‘old school’, religion is something that belongs in the Middle Ages and ‘multiculturalism’ is the only alternative to Nazism – what, then, is the meaning of being a Jew?  For Yachad activists, Jewishness is a variety of socialism ‘decorated’ with the occasional Hebrew term and the odd ritual twisted out of context and meaning.  But most Jews don’t want to be socialists and most socialists don’t really like Jews.

It follows that it is not Yachad who should be ‘in charge’ of ‘educating about the conflict’ – it should be people or organisations that are proudly, unequivocally Zionist.  Yachad activists are entitled to their opinions and – as long as they find enough rich donors to fund their socialism – can ply their ideological merchandise like everybody else, in the free market of ideas.

That does not mean that we must teach myths or ‘beautify’ Zionism in any way.  It does not need beautifying.  National emancipation movements are necessary and – overall – good, progressive, desirable phenomena.  They fulfil essentially-human aspirations such as freedom and meaning to life.  But they are not – and never have been – perfect, faultless, ‘sans peur et sans reproche’.  They all caused great elation and also much pain.  They all reached for the skies with hands that were sometimes tainted with blood.  It is only when Jews are involved that some people tend to focus unduly on the imperfections that plague every human endeavour; when they attempt to turn vicissitudes of history into all-encompassing moral indictments.  It is only with Jews that some people want to visit the sins of the fathers on the sons; and to turn back the clock of history in the name of a ‘justice’ never before heard of, let alone practiced.

Indians proudly celebrate their independence – and so they should.  That that independence also involved bloodshed, displacement and suffering is well-known.  That fact shouldn’t be denied or concealed; nor should it be thrown in Indians’ faces at every opportunity; nor should it be used to contest the legitimacy of their country, or their right to enjoy it in peace and develop it as they see fit.

No, we should not (nor do we need to) teach a Zionist ‘narrative’; the truth, with its spots of bright light and oppressive darkness, with its beautiful aspirations and its harsh realities – the naked truth should be good enough.

What our young people need to hear is that truth, neither beautified nor maliciously twisted, but placed in its true context.  Every nation on the face of the earth has done things it should not be proud of; Jews, too – though perhaps less than most.  Yet every nation is proud of its heritage, its history, its culture, its homeland; Jews certainly should be – perhaps more than most.

The 'Intelligence squared' debate

Anti-Israel ‘events’ are as numerous as midges in Scotland.  Most are small meetings of like minded ‘anti-Zionists’ vociferously agreeing that the Jewish state is the number 1 source of global evil.  The ‘opposition’ is very rarely represented; after all, the organisers of such ‘events’ typically aren’t interested in democratic debate – and certainly not when it involves ‘Zionists’.

There are rare exceptions: on 17 June 2019, an outfit called ‘Intelligence²’ (intelligence squared) organised a debate with the participation of both sides: the ‘Zionist’ and the ‘anti-Zionist’ camps – each represented by two speakers.  The ‘motion’ proposed to the audience was ‘Anti-Zionism is Antisemitism’.

The pre-debate vote showed 15% of the audience in favour (i.e., believing that ‘Anti-Zionism is Antisemitism’), 59% against and 26% undecided – so it can be inferred that ‘anti-Zionists’ were attending in numbers.  The post-debate poll showed 19% of the audience in favour, 76% against and 5% undecided.  Basically  – a defeat for the ‘Zionist’ side.  I’m one of those who – had I attended the event – would have voted in favour to start with.  So I watched the debate with interest on YouTube – and proceeded, for my many sins, to put pen to paper and tell you what I thought about it.

Before the debate even started, the moderator produced a definition of anti-Zionism:

“[O]pposition to the existence of a Jewish state in the territory defined as the historic land of Israel or Palestine."

That, of course, should have been not the beginning, but the end of the debate.  After all, multiple opinion polls (see this for instance) have shown that, for the vast majority of Jews – to the tune of 80-95% – Israel ‘is an ‘essential’ or at least ‘important’ part of their identity.  In other words, ‘anti-Zionists’ propose to dismantle a major pillar of Jewish identity, while at the same time proclaiming that they are not antisemites.

The moderator also told the audience that

“Now, surveys suggest that Israel is one of the most disliked nations in the world along with Iran and North Korea…"

That was, of course, yet another opportunity to put the debate to bed without any further waste of everybody’s time.  Iran is a theocracy that hangs people for ‘crimes’ like ‘waging war against God’ and ‘spreading corruption on earth’.  North Korea is a Communist dictatorship that – among many other things – operates ‘labour camps’ in which tens of thousands of political prisoners are killed through starvation, exhaustion and exposure.  Israel – warts and all – is a liberal democracy ruled by laws that, by and large, are in line with those of the UK, EU, USA and Canada.  Even according to the United Nations Human Development Index, Israel ranks 22 out of 189 countries – ahead of France (24), Spain (26) and Italy (28).  So what’s the reason for so much ‘dislike’?  Is it a mere coincidence that “one of the most disliked nations” happens to be made up of Jews – the same nation that has been ‘disliked’, berated and hounded for centuries??

Oddly (some would think), at the ‘Intelligence²’ event the Zionist speakers did not use these arguments.  In fact, they treated this public debate as if it were an academic one; they engaged in cogent and sometimes convoluted arguments, with great intelligence, but little flair.  They displayed much intellect but little charisma, lots of logic but few rhetorical sparks.

Here’s a passage from those first of the ‘Zionist’ speakers, journalist Melanie Phillips:

“The Jews are the only extant indigenous people of the land.  Israel was their kingdom more than three thousand years ago, they were driven out when it was occupied, they maintained a continuous presence in the land under the waves of colonialism – Assyrian, Roman, Abbasid, Mamluk, Ottoman and British –, they fought off Arab colonialists to re-establish their state in 1948 and are still fighting off Arab colonialism.  When the Palestine Mandate of 1922 which parcelled out of the former Ottoman Empire, it enshrined their right to settle throughout that land, a right that endures unaltered in international law the law also entitles Israel to hold onto land seized from its attackers…"

This was no doubt a good history lesson; but listing all the ‘colonialists’ who ruled the Land of Israel from early antiquity to modern times was most likely wasted on a non-academic audience.  Add a rather monotonous, colourless delivery and there you have it: a collection of erudite arguments, well-anchored in distant history and complex articles of law – but utterly bereft of oratorical effect and emotional impact.

If lack of eloquence were a capital sin, the Zionists would fortunately not be lonely in hell: the first ‘anti-Zionist’ speaker – Israeli-born Communist politician-turned-historian Ilan Pappé – also produced a rather lacklustre performance:

“For those who claim that anti-Zionism is a refusal to recognize the right of Israel to exist I would say that states do not exist by right, they’re found… they are founded by historical processes and they become a fait accompli.  The debate is about the nature of the state and the regime, we are all entitled to wish for and work for a better, more just and egalitarian state for everyone who lives in Israel, in Palestine and for those who were expelled from there.  In 1975 a vast majority of the United Nation member states defied Zion… defined Zionism as a form of racism and racial discrimination, it was passed with the same majority that passed the 1947 resolution recognizing Israel, the difference was that in 1947 the colonized world was not represented in the United Nations. In 1975 it was there, it was still trying to find its way in the post-colonial world. The third world discuss… equated Zionism with continued colonialism.  Alas neoliberalism corruption in post-colonial politically… in post-colonial political system… a corruption in the post-colonial political system, an aggressive American imperialism have cast it to the sideways of history this impulse and energy but at its height and within it anti-Zionism was part of the wish of the colonized people to build a better and more just world…”

Humour and sarcasm are great persuaders and Pappé did attempt them a couple of times.  Many in the audience would no doubt have laughed sympathetically, had they understood he was trying to be witty; but they didn’t.

Of course, even a humourless and flat-footed Ilan Pappé still has a great advantage as a speaker: a freak ‘anti-Zionist’ Israeli is by definition interesting – it’s the ‘man bites dog’ effect.

By the way, Pappé himself mixed up ‘antisemitism’ and ‘anti-Zionism’ several times during his speech – he had to stop and correct himself.  Yet neither ‘Zionist’ speaker cared to point out – for the sake of the rhetorical effect if nothing else – that this may have been a Freudian mistake…

Pappé was followed by the second ‘Zionist’ speaker – former Member of Knesset turned academic Einat Wilf.  To my surprise (I heard her speak before), the speech owed too much to her current occupation and too little to the former one: this was another presentation heavy on facts and structure and light in emotional effect.  True, her obvious passion did shine through at times; but even then, the language was unnecessarily formal, the logic somewhat convoluted and the delivery unremarkable:

“We now know that antisemitism arose from a deep crisis in the society doing the blaming.  After all, these templates and ways of thinking about my people have been around for millennia; yet they become particularly useful in times of crisis and we are indeed again a species in crisis.  Technology questions the very intelligent of humanity; extreme weather undermines our confidence in our control; inequality undermines our ideal progress, our leaders or lack thereof leave us feeling bereft of a sense there's a steady hand at the helm.  And in times of crisis we desperately crave certainty and there are few greater certainties in this world to grab on than that the Jews are to blame…"

Don’t get me wrong: to me, all this makes sense and sounds familiar; but psychoanalysing antisemitism, even in the context of a bigger point, does little to persuade people that ‘Anti-Zionism is antisemitism’.

Thus far, the debate was, politely speaking, ‘interesting’.  It was about to became ‘exciting’ once Mehdi Hassan – Al-Jazeera journalist and the second speaker for the opposition – jumped into the ring.  Hasan is a pro.  He is naturally articulate, sharp and linguistically agile.  Just as important, he is familiar with this ‘debate’ format.  He knows this is about persuading people; it’s nothing like defending an academic dissertation.  In this type of ‘debate’, sharp rhetoric wins over dull substance – hands down.  In this type of debate, being accurate is hardly a priority – one can get away with twisted facts and iffy comparisons, because there’s just not enough time and span of attention to challenge them.  It’s about stirring emotions, not conveying information.

And because of all that, Mehdi Hasan single-handedly won the ‘debate’.  He didn’t even have to break a sweat: this was an unequal match; it felt like some professional snooker champion (say Ronnie O’Sullivan) was playing amateur pool players picked up from some country pub.

But it wasn’t all style and rhetoric – it was also strategy: both Melanie Phillips and Einat Wilf (and, to a certain extent, Ilan Pappé too) played defence.  Hasan demonstrated once again that, in political ‘debates’ just like in military confrontations, one needs to attack if one wishes to win.  He started his address, therefore, by wiping the floor with the motion and its defenders:

“Ladies and gentlemen we have been witnessing tonight a deeply cynical proposition to deliver a farrago of straw men distortions, deflections, false accusations and of course straight-up pro-Israel propaganda.  Then again hearing Melanie Phillips come here and champion the rights of gays in Israel in order to defend Zionism was well worth the entry ticket in and of itself."

Audiences at political debates are not like jurors in a courtroom.  They don’t necessarily ask for evidence – their fickle opinions can often be carried by a strong, passionate, determinate statement.  Of course, Melanie Phillips had mentioned the word ‘gays’ only once in her speech, when she stated that Israel is

“the only country in the Middle East where […] women and gays can live in freedom"

Hardly ‘championing’ anyone’s rights – more like a statement of fact.

Phillips could have (should have?) responded to that ad hominem attack, for instance by pointing out that, in a sermon delivered to the Islamic Unity Society, the oh-so-liberal Mehdi Hasan referred to the “kuffar [the Quranic Arabic term for heretics], the disbelievers, the atheists” as “cattle”.

Instead, she declared:

“I am sure that Mehdi Hasan and Ilan Pappé are deeply honourable men.  I would not presume to say what is in their minds or what their motivation is…"

Courtesy is such a nice thing, ‘innit?  Unfortunately, as Mehdi Hasan proceeded to demonstrate, it is not niceties that win a political debate.

So, back to Mehdi Hasan’s speech.  His next step was to re-state the proposed motion in a way that made it look unreasonable – indeed absurd – to the audience:

“[T]he motion says ridiculously, sweepingly, offensively, ahistorically that anti-Zionism is antisemitism that merely being opposed to Zionism – a political ideology, remember – is inherently, by definition, it's ipso facto antisemitic.  Which is absurd."

Put in this way, the motion does look ridiculous: how can opposing a political ideology equate racism?  Surely people have the right to question, criticise and oppose political ideologies.

Except that Hasan did not ‘interpret’ the motion, he (radically) misinterpreted it.  In fact, he managed to sneak past the largely unsuspecting audience two fundamental untruths.

To start with, Zionism is not a “political ideology”, despite Hasan’s surreptitious characterisation.  He counted (correctly, as it turned out), on people to ‘buy’ that, because of the ‘ism’ suffix.  Of course, many things are called an ‘ism’ (baptism, barbarism, criticism, plagiarism, etc.) – this does not make them political ideologies.

Wikipedia defines the term ‘political ideology’ as

“a certain set of ethical ideals, principles, doctrines, myths or symbols of a social movement, institution, class or large group that explains how society should work and offers some political and cultural blueprint for a certain social order."

But Zionism isn’t concerned with “how society should work”.  It offers no “blueprint for a certain social order” has no global ambitions or implications, it is confined to one people and one (small) piece of territory.  One can be a left wing Zionist, a right-wing Zionist, a liberal Zionist or a conservative Zionist, a profoundly religious Zionist or a militantly atheist Zionist.  The difference between Zionism and ideology becomes self-evident if one considers the Israeli political spectrum: Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu, Labour leader Amir Peretz and Aryeh Deri (Chairman of the Mizrakhi Ultra-Orthodox party Shas) are all Zionists; yet they advocate radically different (if not diametrically opposed) blueprints of social order.

In fact, in its ‘modern’ version, Zionism can best be described as a national emancipation movement, not fundamentally different from similar tendencies found among other ethnic groups – from the 19^th century onwards.

Some may seek to ignore the differences between ‘national emancipation movement’ and ‘nationalism’.  The latter can be construed as an ideology – if one sees it as driving a certain world order.  Consequently, one can be an ‘anti-nationalist’ without being accused of racism.  But, even if one declares Zionism as nothing but the Jewish form of nationalism, this begs the question: why do ‘anti-Zionists’ attack with such venom just one embodiment of nationalism?  Why would one fundamentally object to a Jewish state, but not to an Indian state, a Pakistani state, a Serbian state, a Croatian state, etc.?

Which brings me to Mehdi Hasan’s second untruth: his underlying suggestion that anti-Zionism is nothing but opposition to Zionism – “a political ideology” in his words.  Sounds perfectly plausible – but it’s still utterly false.  Let us remember the definition that was issued at the beginning of the debate – a definition to which all speakers would willingly subscribe.  ‘Anti-Zionism’ is not just opposition to Zionism; it is:

“[O]pposition to the existence of a Jewish state in the territory defined as the historic land of Israel or Palestine."

Contemporary ‘anti-Zionism’ (as opposed to pre-1948 anti-Zionism) does not oppose a future political outcome; rather, it wishes to dismantle an already-constituted nation state.  Or, at the very least, to change its character beyond recognition, contrary to the freely-expressed wishes of the overwhelming majority of its citizens.

And, as indicated already, ‘anti-Zionism’ does not propose to dismantle all nation states – or even a number of nation states.  It takes issue with just one nation state – the Jewish state.

Once Mehdi Hasan’s untruths are exposed, the motion ‘Anti-Zionism is antisemitism’ does not look at all ridiculous or sweeping.

We are still left with ‘ahistorical’, by which – I presume – Hasan means his contention that

“many victims of the Holocaust opposed Zionism; on the other hand many antisemites supported Zionism."

Of course, pre-1948 there were indeed many Jews who opposed Zionism.  But, does that matter?  Every national emancipation movement has its opponents.  It can hardly be claimed that, after World War I, all Arabs supported independence from the Ottoman Empire.  For many – perhaps even for the majority – that empire was the latest embodiment of the scripturally prescribed Islamic Caliphate.  But is that a valid argument for dismantling any of today’s 22 independent Arab states?  Can one seriously try to resurrect the pre-1947 Indian opponents of Gandhi to justify dismantling the state of India?  Or forcibly merging it with Pakistan?

As for “many antisemites supported Zionism”, Hasan would have great difficulty listing those “many” without resorting to ridiculous, Ken Livingston-esque statements like ‘Hitler supported Zionism’.  The best he could do during the debate was to claim – based on one random statement – that Balfour was an antisemite.  But, again: does all this matter?  Even if we accept as given that Balfour was both an antisemite and a supporter of Zionism, so what?  Saying ‘Anti-Zionism is antisemitism’ does not imply that only ‘anti-Zionists’ are antisemites, or that every supporter of Zionism must be free from antisemitic prejudice.  Human beings are complex; one can harbour racist prejudice, even while supporting anti-racist causes.  The fact that Abraham Lincoln and prominent members of the abolitionist movement harboured what would rightly be seen today as racist views cannot be used to justify slavery or to tar the cause of its eradication.

Hasan’s next argument was that denying Jews the right of self-determination isn’t antisemitism, because

“not every national, ethnic group that wants a state gets a state.  Ask the Kurds, ask the Catalans, ask the Scots – there are more than 5,000 ethnic groups in the world today but only 193 member states at the United Nations…"

He then went on to point at the Druze citizens of Israel

“do they have a right of self-determination if they create a Druze state inside of Israel?"

Moreover, Hasan argued:

“It's not racist for the Kurds to aspire to statehood […], but the flip side of that is true as well: the British government, the American government, most of the EU governments do not support Kurdish statehood; does that mean the British government, all of us, are racist towards the Kurds?"

Let’s leave aside the (juicy, but fundamentally dishonest) example of the Scottish independence; the Scots were offered a referendum and a majority of the Scots themselves chose (at least at the time) the current situation (extensive autonomy within a federative state), rather than full independence.  This is not a denial of self-determination – it’s an affirmation thereof.

Let’s also summarily dismiss the Druze case: Druze do not ask for an independent state of their own – not in Israel and not in Lebanon or Syria, in which there are even larger Druze communities.  Indeed, I have been told (by just one Druze man, so I cannot vouch for the statement) that the Druze religion expressly prohibits its adherents from seeking political (as opposed to religious and cultural) independence.

It is, nevertheless, true that many national groups are still denied a state of their own, despite aspiring to one.  It is no less true that ‘not supporting’ such national aspirations is different from actively opposing them; and ‘not supporting’ aspirations to a future nation state is very different from dismantling an existing one.  And, in any case, two wrongs don't make a right: true, the Kurds – because of unprincipled and self-serving attitudes by the 'international community' – still don't have a state of their own; but how does that justify taking from the Jews a state they have already achieved?

Says Mehdi Hasan, in an attempt to defuse some obvious objections:

“The issue is not whether Jews deserve a homeland or have a historic connection to the land of Palestine -- of course they do -- the issue is whether those historic and religious claims justify creating and expanding a Jewish majority state…"

To put it bluntly, this constitutes speaking with a forked tongue: Hasan manages to affirm in the same sentence that the Jews “of course” deserve a homeland and have a historic connection to the land of Palestine, but also that these are “historic and religious claims”.  The former part of the sentence appears to recognise certain rights; the latter relegates them to doubtful, uncertain claims.  Which is it?

As for the Jewish majority state, Mehdi Hasan is not required to help with (or even approve of) “creating and expanding” it.  It is already created.  Nor is he opposed just to “expanding” it, but – as we have seen – to its very existence, irrespective of size and borders.

Next come the usual accusations.  Mehdi Hasan claims that in Israel

“one ethnic group is privileged over another while another group is permanently disenfranchised dispossessed and subjected to endless military occupation."

Beyond the obvious disagreement on facts (e.g. to what extent any ‘privileges’ awarded to Jews in Israel are unusual, unacceptable or fundamentally different from those awarded the majority population in other countries), I take issue with Hasan choosing to cavalierly ignore the small issue of a 100-year-old conflict.  A bitter series of wars and violent acts, accompanied by political, economic and cultural warfare, as well as continuous attempts to criminalise and deny Israel’s legitimacy.  A conflict that the Jews neither wanted nor initiated, but for which consequences Mehdi Hasan appears to make the Jewish state wholly and uniquely responsible.

Is it really fair to – on one hand – affirm the right of Arabs (including Arab citizens of Israel) to express hostility and rejection to the very existence of the state of Israel and, at the same time, demand from the Jewish state to treat that Arab minority in the most egalitarian and enlightened way possible?  When, in the whole history of mankind, has a state been held to similar standards?

But even if we were to believe (ad absurdum) that Israel and only Israel is responsible for the current situation of inequality and “endless military occupation”, it does not follow that the ‘culprit state’ should be dismantled.  Which nation state has – in the whole history of mankind – been dismantled because it ‘misbehaved’?  Which nation state has been forced to become a bi-national or multi-national state?  Even the Germans did not forfeit their right to their own nation state, despite the German state perpetrating the most hideous crimes in history!

‘Anti-Zionists’ often cite the case of Apartheid South Africa.  But, even if (again ad absurdum) we ignore all the other many, huge and obvious differences, in South Africa whites have always been a minority (less than 20% in the 1960s, less than 8% nowadays); a minority, moreover, that had no “historic connection to the land”, a typical colonial settler population.

Perhaps feeling that he stepped on uncertain ground, Hasan quickly returned to ‘demonstrating’ that the motion was unreasonable.  This time, by claiming that it would force the Palestinian themselves to embrace Zionism.  Voting in favour of the motion, he said

“means to say to that oppressed group the Palestinian people to say to them that you're either a Zionist you either subscribe to the ideology of your oppressor or you're a racist.  What kind of choice is that?"

Just in case anyone missed it, Hasan drove the point home once more during the Q & A session:

“If you vote for the motion tonight you're saying […] we all have to be Zionists otherwise we're racists, we’re bigots, we’re antisemites.  Which, look, wouldn't be the end of the world for me: fine, I'll be a Zionist if you want me to be a Zionist I mean I once almost voted Lib Dem I'm okay with labels – but to ask the Palestinians to not just accept their dispossession, their ethnic cleansing, their ongoing occupation, but to also call themselves Zionists or else… is outrageous, you can't ask Palestinians to be Zionists you just can't, and by the way if they say it's racist to oppose Zionism well it's racist to ask Palestinians not to oppose their own occupiers…"

This is, of course, just another wild spin: the choice is by no means binary.  One is not required to be either a Zionist or an ‘anti-Zionist’ – in fact most people are neither; the Palestinians are not required to support or love the State of Israel – they’re not even required to stop opposing its actions or its policies.  They are required – not by the motion proposed at a random ‘debate’ in London, but by sheer intellectual honesty – to admit that the Jews possess the same right they demand for themselves: the right to an independent nation state of their own.  Such admission would not make the Palestinians Zionists and would not prevent them from protesting or opposing the Israeli actions; but it would indeed take them out of the ranks of ‘anti-Zionists’.  Demanding such admission is not outrageous – it is logical and necessary if peace is to be made.  Most conflicts in mankind’s recent history were not over the actual existence of states – they were conflicts over borders and resources.  Which made them more amenable to resolution by concession and accommodation.

One more – not very sophisticated, but highly effective – parable, oft-used by ‘anti-Zionists’ and recited at the debate by Ilan Pappé:

“The idea that the land of Palestine is the land of Israel always when you hear it think about someone coming to you in the dead of night in London and tells you I used to live in your house 2000 years ago and because of that the house belongs to me and the next day they come with the police who says ‘they have a right, you have to give them half of their house’.”

Except that Pappé’s ‘house in London’ parable strays away from the facts of the real story in too many ‘subtle’ ways and hence cannot in any way serve as a guide to the rights and wrongs of the situation.

Here’s a more honest (if longer) parable:
My maternal grandmother was born somewhere in Eastern Europe.  Her family owned a house there.  They were all killed or made refugees in the Holocaust.  I am what’s left – and I grew up listening to my grandma’s stories, longing, dreaming, praying to be able to live in my ancestral family home.  For many years, I couldn’t: the road was long and dangerous and my persecutors wouldn’t allow it.  One day, I was finally able to go there, to reclaim my inheritance.  That’s how I found out that, as soon as my family was killed and chased away, some Polish neighbours moved in.  As the borders changed, they were also thrown out and Russians moved in their stead.  Next, there were Latvians and finally Ukrainians…  By the time I got there, a few generations of Ukrainians had lived in the house.  The people I found there thought of it as their own home; I thought of it as mine.  Someone said that the only just solution would be to partition the house into two smaller apartments.  My heart ached, but I agreed – at least this way I’d have some of my family home – and a roof over my head.  But the Ukrainians wouldn’t even hear about it and they tried to kick me out…

The Q & A session consisted of just a few questions.  Some were obvious, one or two were stupid.
Somebody asked the ‘anti-Zionists’:

“Why is Israel singled out as a human rights violator – in the United Nations, by the Labour Party, by many other entities— as compared to so many egregious violators of human rights including in the Middle East why is it consistently singled out is that not a form of anti-semitism?"

Mehdi Hasan ‘responded’ to this question by promising to challenge its premise. then he pointed out that, in a previous ‘Inteligence squared’ debate, he had harshly criticised the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.  So no 'singling out', he claimed.

Of course, the premise of the question was not that Israel is singled out at the ‘Intelligence²’ debates, but “in the United Nations, by the Labour Party, by many other entities”.  Hasan did not challenge that premise, because it is very difficult to challenge it: for instance, Israel is the only country in the world for which the UN Human Rights Council maintains a permanent agenda item (‘permanent’ meaning that it has to be discussed at every session).  This ensures that resolutions condemning Israel are adopted each time the Council convenes.  In contrast, Saudi Arabia is a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council, alongside other human rights stalwarts like China, Iraq, Egypt, Rwanda and Cuba.

At the debate, unfortunately, nobody pointed this out.  Or the obvious fact that no one (or, at least, no one of any consequence) talks about ‘anti-Saudism’ or even ‘anti-Wahabbism’.  The likes of Jeremy Corbyn, Ilan Pappé and Mehdi Hasan may well be using Saudi petrol to drive to ‘Boycott Israel’ demonstrations.

Perhaps the best question was one which was nearly laughed down by an already impatient audience:

“My question is why are we… this is almost masturbatory… you should pardon the expression… what is the solution… we're all thinking, kind people… what is the solution?"

It was asked in a soft voice, with apparent British courtesy – which is perhaps why none of the speakers realised that they have just been called ‘wankers’.  (As if to prove the point, none of them really attempted an honest answer, preferring instead to use the floor to try and score some extra points.)

Jokes aside, I can fully understand why the lady who asked that question referred to the ‘debate’ as masturbatory.  Masturbation may earn us some selfish pleasure – but it doesn’t create anything.  No baby was ever conceived by masturbating.  And that’s what the speakers did: they practised a form of intellectual wanking – Mehdi Hasan more than all the others.

 * * *

Mehdi Hasan won the debate.  But it is a Pyrrhic victory.  It doesn’t help the Palestinians; it doesn’t help anyone.  The entire debate can (and should) be filed under ‘more of the same’: more oil on the fire; more on how not to change anything.  More incrimination that attracts recrimination, that generates counter-recrimination…

82 years ago, when the conflict was still young, the Peel Commission diagnosed it as “fundamentally a conflict of right with right”.  My parable supports that view.

Ilan Pappé’s parable is just more intellectual masturbation – pleasurable for him no doubt, but utterly sterile.  My parable is an invitation to make love and create life.  Perhaps it’s naïve, perhaps clumsy – but at least I’m trying to do it with a partner…

'Anti-Zionism’ is about the Joos, stupid!

Raised and educated in the UK, Prof. Ian Almond teaches World Literature at Georgetown University in Qatar.  So, when I heard that he took to the Qatari-based Al-Jazeera to write about antisemitism, I was hopeful. I thought he was going to write about the high incidence of antisemitism (including Holocaust-denial) in the Arab world.  But no: Prof. Almond chose to warn us all of ‘The danger of conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism’.

Still, I remained hopeful while reading the first few sentences.  Says Prof. Almond:

"I still remember the shock I felt when, at the age of 12, my teacher told me the word ‘joo’ I had just spoken, which I had thought to mean to lie or cheat, was actually ‘Jew’ and was anti-Semitic.  Throughout my British childhood, I had used that word casually and frequently, without ever knowing what it really meant."

Almond goes on to analyse the reasons for his childish mistake:

"I start with this example to make a simple point: anti-Semitism is so entrenched in our society, so depressingly persistent, that to trivialise it is to trivialise the blueprint of prejudice itself. It is a barometer of moral cowardice: when someone doesn’t want to take responsibility for their own faults or problems, they blame the Jews."

Prof. Almond is right to use the present tense in the sentence above: this is not ‘historic’, but contemporaneous antisemitism; the future Professor was 12 at the time (Jeremy Corbyn, by the way,  was 32), so that’s a mere 37 years ago.  We may wish to believe that one man’s character – say Brett Kavanaugh’s! – can change in that stretch of time; but deeply entrenched prejudice does not just disappear from an entire society in less than a generation.

Of course, things did change since the 1980s.  We are much more ‘politically-correct’ these days.  School children are less likely to refer to cheating as ‘jewing someone’; if they do, they will be told that they should not use the word in that sense.  But it’s not about a childish word – it’s about the societal prejudice it reveals.  The word may rarely be used with that meaning these days; but the prejudice is still there.  If you want proof, just surf Twitter.  Or listen to the many Labour Party supporters who seem to say that, when African Caribbeans, Muslims or Asians complain about racism, they have a point; but when Jews complain about antisemitism, there must be some dishonest motive behind it.

Prof. Almond’s childhood story is revealing – and his subsequent analysis is correct.  Too bad they are employed to excuse, rather than inform, the rest of his 'learned article'.

After declaring that “anti-Semitism is so entrenched in our society, so depressingly persistent, that to trivialise it is to trivialise the blueprint of prejudice itself”, Prof. Almond proceeds to do exactly that – trivialise it:

"There are definitely some voices who claim to support the Labour Party, and who allow their anti-Zionism to spill over mindlessly into anti-Semitism."

“There are […] some voices who claim…”???  Professor, don’t “some voices” include the very Leader of the Party, who rose to the defence of blood-libellers, conspiracy theorists and ‘artists’ who depict hooked-nosed ‘oppressors’?  Don’t “some voices” include ’illustrious’ members of the Party top brass (and good friends of the Leader), who implied that Jews conspired with their own genocidal persecutors?  Don’t they include a well-attended recent meeting at the Party Conference, where people chanted ‘From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free’ – a call to pogrom on 6.5 million Israeli Jews?  Are these really“some voices who claim to support the Labour Party”???

But that’s not the only place where Prof. Almond’s argument lacks internal logic – not to mention moral clarity.  We are all, in fact, lucky that the good Professor teaches literature, rather than medical science; because – bluntly put – his diagnosis suffers from terminal idiocy, in view of the symptoms that he himself described in the previous paragraphs.

Indeed, Prof. Almond’s judgement of “some voices” is that “their anti-Zionism […] spill[s] over mindlessly into anti-Semitism”.  So anti-Zionism comes first and “some voices” are guilty only of taking it a bit too far.  But, since (as he himself explained) “anti-Semitism is so entrenched in our society, so depressingly persistent”, isn’t it much more likely that anti-Zionism is the outcome of that deeply entrenched prejudice?  Indeed, that it is just a new symptom of that entrenched disease?  If – God forbid – I suffered from “entrenched” and “depressingly persistent” lung cancer and developed a nasty cough – chances are it’s because of the cancer, not because I sang too loudly in church!

What ‘Costa’ means, of course, is 'the Zionists jew the Palestinians’.

Isn’t that “entrenched [… and] depressingly persistent” antisemitism a much more likely explanation for the visceral animus, unique in its nature and intensity, that “some voices” exhibit towards the Jewish state – and only towards the Jewish state?  Isn’t this why the oppression of Palestinians was so often and emotionally cited at the Labour Conference, while none of the ‘progressive’ leaders cared to mention the plight of Saudi women – those 51% of the country’s population that had to wait until 2018 (2018!) to be allowed to drive (by law, though still not in practice)?

Prof. Almond views as outrageous that

"The IHRA code considers any description of the Israeli State as a ‘racist’ institution to be anti-Semitic."

But – leaving aside the fact that his interpretation of “The IHRA code” is tendentious – which other state is called “a ‘racist’ institution”?  The Labour Party claims that Hungary’s current government is antisemitic and Islamophobic – yet it does not call Hungary “a ‘racist’ institution”.  Jeremy Corbyn politely frowned at Myanmar’s ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya; yet he did not call the former British colony of Burma ‘a racist endeavour’ as a result.

But Prof. Almond appears convinced that Israel should be called a racist institution.  He explains why:

"[I]n 1948, three-quarters of a million Palestinian Arabs were forcibly evicted, with British backing, off their own land. To recognise this as racist, in the words of the IHRA code, would be ‘anti-semitic’."

That the “Palestinian Arabs were forcibly evicted, with British backing” would be shocking news to the 1948 British Mandate officials, as well as to the Jewish inhabitants of Kibbutz Ein Hamifratz, bombed by British artillery, apparently in order to ‘assist’ the Arab town of Acre.  But that’s by-the-by.

However, you know what?  Let’s be generous with Prof. Almond: let’s adopt his version of history – however specious.  Let’s assume that indeed the “Palestinian Arabs were forcibly evicted” – though the reality was considerably more complex than that; let’s ignore that that ‘eviction’ occurred in the midst of a civil war that soon morphed into a war of survival against attack by all neighbouring states; let’s even forget that the Arab side perpetrated their own ‘evictions’ – in fact more thorough ‘evictions,’ since no living Jew remained in the territory they even temporarily controlled.

But what I fail to understand, even after all those assumptions, is why and how is that ‘Jewish misbehaviour’ more terrible than dozens of other cases of ‘forced eviction’ that occurred elsewhere, both before and after the establishment of the State of Israel.  ‘Evictions’ that are very rarely – if ever – described as ‘racist’.

Immediately after the defeat of Nazi Germany, borders were re-drawn – and accounts settled.  The ethnic German population of Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary (people that had lived there for centuries) was driven out.  So was the population of territories that had been part of Germany, but were now ‘given’ to the USSR and Poland.  In total, 14 million ethnic Germans were driven out of their homes and lands, with the agreement and connivance of the victorious powers.  Circa 1 million died in the process: some at the hands of local soldiers, policemen and civilian vigilantes; others, due to exposure and exhaustion; many died of starvation either before or after reaching war-ravaged Germany (or, rather, territories of the former German Reich, now occupied and governed by the Allies).  The 13 million survivors – and their descendants, accounting these days for almost a quarter of Germany’s population – were never allowed to return and were never granted any compensation.

Ethnic German refugees fleeing westwards 

Ethnic Germans were not the only population ‘evicted’ at the time: so were ethnic Poles living in Ukraine – many of whom were Soviet citizens.  Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Ukrainians and Lemkos were forcibly expelled from Poland into the Soviet Union; and when the latter closed its border, the remaining Ukrainian and Lemkos villagers were forced to ‘resettle’ in the west of the country, in the former German provinces ‘transferred’ to Poland.  Conditions were harsh and human life was cheap – so many died or were killed on the way; molested women and girls had nobody to complain to: they typically picked up the small children or younger siblings and continued their journey – that is, whenever they and their families escaped being murdered out of sheer sadism and gratuitous brutality.  Those Ukrainians and Lemkos who survived this ‘resettlement’ ordeal were forcibly dispersed, with no regard to family and community ties; the Polish authorities forbade any expression of native language and culture, in a deliberate attempt to assimilate them into the prevalent Polish ethnicity.  (To those wishing to learn more of the terrible history of Europe in the immediate aftermath of World War II, I recommend Keith Lowe’s excellent book ‘Savage Continent’.)

All of the above (and much, much more) happened in what was by then peacetime.  The allied armies ruled in Berlin and over a subdued Europe.  Those 'evicted' did not pose any security risk to the remaining population.  In Czechoslovakia and Hungary, they did not even endanger the demographic supremacy of the majority population.  It can be argued, on the other hand, that this was the making of the new Poland: historically, Poland had been a geographic and demographic patchwork whose existence as an independent nation between the German and Russian ‘spheres of influence’ had been intermittent; the post-war bout of ruthless viciousness gave birth to a completely different country — a Poland with utterly changed borders and a demographic eerily uniform from an ethnic perspective.

The making of modern Poland: new borders and homogeneous ethnicity

Europe isn’t the only ‘savage continent’.  In 1947, even while the newly-formed United Nations was debating the fate of the Mandate of Palestine, an additional former 'British' territory was being partitioned: the former Jewel of the Crown – the British Raj.  Like most colonies, this was not a country – but an artificial contraption made up of numerous faiths and ethnicities, held together (but often also set against each other) by colonial interests.  There was, however, one major fault line, between the Hindu population and the Muslim one.  Both groaned under the British colonial yoke, but also resented and feared each other.  To ‘pacify’ the place long enough to wash its hands of it, the British government implemented a territorial partition into two states.  It was hardly a fair deal: the Hindu-majority state – India – incorporated the vast majority of industrial assets and agricultural land; it also ‘inherited’ most of the former colony’s financial reserves.  The Muslim-majority state – Pakistan – initially comprised just one fifth of the former colony (the Muslim population accounted in 1947 for circa 30%).  Even that consisted of two non-contiguous pieces of territory – West Pakistan and East Pakistan (later to become Bangladesh) – separated by 1,000 miles of Indian territory.

Nations may draw borders, but borders don’t create nations.  Despite the partition, inter-communal violence continued and intensified.  When all is said and done, circa 1 million people are estimated to have lost their life.  15 million were forced to leave their ancestral homes and lands and go into exile – never to return.

A convoy of refugees fleeing West Pakistan in 1947. 

Not even that was enough to defuse the tensions: India and Pakistan have since fought several wars and continue to face each other with relentless suspicion and barely contained hostility.  Since both are armed to the teeth – including nuclear arsenals – this remains a potential source of catastrophic conflagration.

Pakistan officially calls itself an Islamic Republic (Article 1 of the Constitution) – and is recognised under that name by the United Kingdom.  Article 2 proclaims:

"Islam shall be the State religion of Pakistan."

Yet I have yet to hear protests from Prof. Almond or from other Corbynites.  Why aren’t they worried about the impact of such constitutional arrangements upon the status of Pakistan’s non-Muslim minorities (Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, etc.)?  And by the way, the official languages of Pakistan are Urdu and English, despite the fact that Punjabi is the native tongue for more than 40% of the population.

As for India, the Muslim minority in the predominantly Hindu country has long complained of discrimination – and independent reports tend to support those claims.  If anything, complaints of oppression and marginalisation have intensified under Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government.

I would assume that Prof. Almond is familiar with the birth of India and Pakistan – after all he claims Post-Colonial Studies as one of his specialisms.  Unless the good Professor is one of those ‘progressives’ for whom the study of post-colonialism always boils down to one small country in the Middle East…

Despite Prof. Almond’s protestations, the Labour Party did adopt the IHRA Definition – after numerous subterfuges and under huge public pressure.  But Jeremy Corbyn attempted to ‘supplement it’ (read: subvert it) with a proviso ‘protecting’ those who regard

"the circumstances around [Israel’s] foundation as racist."

But why?  How were those “circumstances” different from those that led to the formation of Pakistan?  Or of India?  Or of modern-day Poland?  Or of Croatia – the latest addition to the European Union – the “circumstances”of whose “foundation” included the ethnic cleansing of circa 400,000 Serbs?  Why is it that Corbyn and his supporters never call those countries ‘racist endeavours’?

The list of unpleasant “circumstances”, of course, is not limited to the countries mentioned above.  In fact, such “circumstances” are the rule, rather than the exception: more often than not, countries are born in conflict and strife; frequently, that strife includes numerous deaths, injuries, displacement and suffering of innocents.  That is (to use a British understatement) very unfortunate; but unusual it ain’t.  What's unusual – unique actually! – is the attempt to deny a country its legitimacy in the present and its existence in the future, because of “circumstances” in its past.  What's uncommon – extraordinary actually! – is calling an entire country ‘a racist institution’.  Hey, what an astonishing coincidence: the state subjected to this type of unique and extraordinary assault just ‘happens’ to be the Jewish state!  Surprising, 'innit?? (Note the attempt at English irony!)

No, Prof. Almond: I am not worried about “conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism”: they are one and the same.  You must have learned the wrong lesson from your childhood experience: singling Jews out for 'special attention' is just as wrong, even when you use politically-correct words.  Dear Professor of World Literature, antisemitism is not a matter of vocabulary; it’s not the words you utter – it’s the prejudice you harbour.  You see, the “IHRA code” is more than just a definition.  It’s a test – and you failed.

Corbyn: end of truce

Hardly a week goes by without a new revelation regarding Jeremy Corbyn’s very questionable past exploding in the news.  His current antisemitism-related actions are – shall we say – hardly redeeming (I’m trying to learn English irony – you see…)

It is therefore understandable that Corbyn and his immediate clique attract most of British Jews’ outrage and anger.

Yet in the heat of that anger, we might forget that Jeremy Corbyn has been elected Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition by a large majority of (the now half-a-million-strong) Labour Party membership.  That membership proceeded to re-elect him – with an even larger majority – after the antisemitism issue had hit the front pages.  What’s more, all the revelations alluded to above did not seem to hurt Mr. Corbyn’s popularity too much: current opinion polls place him as a strong contender to the post of Prime Minister.

And it’s not just that.  During a (by now famous) meeting of the Labour Party brass, National Executive Committee member Peter Willsman dismissed accusations of antisemitism as malicious fabrications by “Jewish Trump fanatics”.  This elephant-in-china-shop moment caused even the hard-core Momentum party-within-a-party to drop Willsman from their list of ‘endorsed candidates’ for election to the NEC.  And yet, Peter Willsman got elected to Labour’s top forum; more than 70,000 Party members voted for Mr. Willsman despite (or perhaps thanks to?) his outburst.  For comparison, the most popular candidate (Yasmine Dar) got elected with 88,000 votes.

The conclusion is, I’m afraid, inescapable: Jeremy Corbyn did not ‘create’ the antisemitism that we witness – on- and off-line – in 2018 United Kingdom.  In fact, the opposite is true: Corbyn was catapulted to the top on (among other things) a wave of ‘anti-Zionism’ fuelled by antisemitic prejudice.

That antisemitic prejudice (revealed also in a recent survey) has been lurking under the surface.  Albeit weighted down by a ballast of  British reserve, fear and political correctness, the prejudice was there all along.

According to ‘Antisemitism in contemporary Great Britain A study of attitudes towards Jews and Israel’ (September 2017); published by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, a London-based independent research organisation, consultancy and think-tank.

That does not exonerate Corbyn and his junta.  True, these ‘socialists’ did not invent antisemitism – nor did the national socialists in the 1920s.  But they rode the wave of antisemitic prejudice, some even whipped it on; even worse, they legitimised it – they turned latent antisemitism into an overt, brazen, self-righteous, mainstream, ‘socially-acceptable’ phenomenon.

One of the 'contributions' that the Corbynistas brought to the debate: it's fine to express prejudice, as long as you say 'Zionists'.

I’m sorry if this sounds disheartening to some.  But we need to recognise that this is not just a battle against Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and Seamus Milne.  No, this is part of a never-ending war – one that antisemites have been waging for centuries, long before their hatred had a name.  In recent decades, most British Jews have had little personal experience of antisemitism.  But that, my friends, was not peace; in history’s big picture, it was just a short-lived truce...