In Britain, Anti-Semitism Endures
George Will, Washington Post
Of the fighting faiths that flourished during the ideologically drunk 20th century, anti-Semitism has been uniquely durable. It survives by mutating, even migrating across the political spectrum from the right to the left. Although most frequently found in European semi-fascist parties, anti-Semitism is growing in the fetid Petri dish of American academia and is staining Britain’s Labour Party.
In 2014, before Naseem “Naz” Shah became a Labour member of Parliament, she
shared a graphic on her Facebook page suggesting that all Israelis should be “relocated” to the United States. She seemed to endorse the idea that the “transportation cost” would be less than “three years of defense spending.” When this was recently publicized, “Red Ken” Livingstone, former Labour mayor of London,
offered on the BBC what he considered a defense of her as not anti-Semitic because “a real anti-Semite doesn’t just hate the Jews in Israel.” Besides,
Livingstone said, Hitler was a Zionist (for supposedly considering sending Europe’s Jews to Palestine) “
before he went mad.” As mayor, Livingstone praised as a “progressive voice” an Egyptian cleric who called the Holocaust “divine punishment.”
Labour’s leader, Jeremy Corbyn, says he wants to cleanse Labour of such thinking. But Corbyn hopes to host at the House of Commons a Palestinian sheikh who calls Jews “bacteria” and “monkeys” and has been accused of repeating the “blood libel” that Jews make matzo using the blood of gentile children.
Leftist anti-Semites invariably say they hate not Jews but Zionism, and hence not a people but a nation. Israel was, however, created as a haven for an endangered people. Jonathan Sacks, former chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, refutes the canard that “hating Israel is not the same as hating Jews” by saying:
Criticism of Israel is not necessarily anti-Semitic or anti-Zionist. When Sacks asks his audiences if Britain’s government can be criticized, everyone says yes. But when they are asked, “Do you believe Britain should not exist?,” no one says yes. Then Sacks tells his audiences: “Now you know the difference.”. . . .
