Pro-Israel organisations now insist that not only must the perceptions, or feelings, of Jews about racism be accepted without question, and without the need for actual evidence
Pro-Israel organisations now insist that not only must the perceptions, or feelings, of Jews about racism be accepted without question, and without the need for actual evidence, but that these same organisations must alone decide what constitutes racism towards the community.
The result is a massively expanded definition of antisemitism that, unsurprisingly, makes a priority of ring-fencing Israel from meaningful criticism.
This has been formally codified by a preposterously wordy definition from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance that reduces antisemitism to a “perception” that “may be expressed as hatred toward Jews” – but equally, it seems, may not. Jew hatred can also, according to the IHRA, be directed to “non-Jewish individuals”.
The reason for this unnecessary convolution is clarified by a set of 11 potential “examples” of antisemitism offered by the IHRA – the majority of which relate to Israel. Antisemitism, defined in this way, may as often as not be expressed, not as hatred towards Jews, but as opposition to the actions of Israel, such as its current genocidal rampages in Gaza and south Lebanon.
Because “non-Jewish individuals” support Israel and its Jewish supremacist ideology of Zionism, the IHRA makes sure to enfold these individuals prominently in its definition.
All UK police forces, like the main political parties, have adopted the IHRA definition. Which presumably explains why the Met are currently investigating as an antisemitic incident a man being rude to actress Helen Mirren, who is not Jewish, over her support for Israel.
What the Israel lobby has managed to do so triumphantly is, first, wrongly associate a political outlook with an ethnic community – the false, indeed antisemitic, assumption that all Jews identify with Israel and its crimes – and then classify any kind of meaningful criticism of Israel as an attack on the Jewish community. As racial hatred.
This is the Macpherson Principle on steroids. It treats perceived Jewish feelings – a perception entirely confected by the Israel lobby – as proof of a hate crime.
The campaign to corrupt the definition of “race hate”, and thereby criminalise certain kinds of political speech about Israel, was honed by the political and media class during Jeremy Corbyn’s years leading the Labour party. Corbyn and the majority of Labour members who supported him were quickly vilified as antisemitic over their critical stance towards Israel.
Any attempt to push back, rejecting the idea that criticising Israel equates with Jew hatred, was, of course, cited as proof of antisemitism.
The left’s long-standing criticisms of Israel, particularly over its apartheid nature and brutal colonisation of Palestinian lands, have sounded ever more credible in the wake of Israel’s sustained genocidal assault on Gaza since late 2023.
Israel has killed many tens of thousands – possibly hundreds of thousands – of Palestinian civilians there, destroyed almost the entirety of the enclave’s homes, schools and hospitals, and starved the population.
When hundreds of thousands of Britons began regularly turning out to march against British complicity in the genocide, and students organised encampments on university campuses across the country, the logic was already firmly in place to condemn these protests as “antisemitic”.
Soon even anti-genocide chants – calling for Israel’s apartheid rule to end and urging global support for Palestinians as they struggled to liberate themselves – were denounced as hate crimes.
The Met has been visibly taking a leading role, along with the Labour government and rightwing parties, in steadily criminalising expressions of solidarity with Palestinians as they are annihilated with western munitions, intelligence and diplomatic support.
The police force now arrests people over anti-genocide chants, and is using a heavier and heavier hand to disappear the protests, from limiting their regularity to strictly circumscribing permitted march routes.
The direction of travel can be seen in the government classifying as a terrorism offence any support for efforts to stop Israeli factories in the UK from arming Israel’s genocide. Thousands of Britons, many elderly, have been arrested by the Met and other forces simply for holding up a placard.
This is an extract from my latest article. Read more here:
posted by Satish Sharma at
02:38
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