Since the end of Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure as its leader, the British Labor party has sought to take a firm stand against the anti-Semitism that had overtaken its ranks in recent years. To succeed in this effort, argues David Hirsh, the party must cease to tolerate Jewish Voice for Labor, a pro-Corbyn and anti-Israel group that has persistently used its members’ identity as Jews to provide cover for anti-Semites. Hirsh writes:
Anti-Zionist Jews are not the useful idiots of left-wing anti-Semitism, they are among its pioneers. They . . . taught Jeremy Corbyn that Zionism was racism and they taught the University and College Union that Israelis should be excluded from UK campuses and journals. They arm contemporary anti-Semitism with little particles of fact and with plausible arguments, dressed up as legitimate Jewish opinion.
Anti-Semitism is frightening because it is irrational. Some Jews are tempted to believe that they live in a world where anti-Semitism is a rational response to the bad behavior of Jews. It is tempting because then Jews could make things better by being good. Sometimes taking on anti-Semitic logic saves Jews from the fear of living in an [irrational] world. Jewish anti-Zionism is one way of dealing the stress of living in an anti-Semitic world. It is understandable as such, but it makes things worse, not better.
Viewed in this frame, the organization Jewish Voice for Labor serves to kosherize Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-Semitic politics and to smear any who say they have experienced anti-Semitism in the party. That is its function; that is why it exists. It is there to pretend that Labor Jews are split on the question of anti-Semitism.
More about: anti-Semitsm, Jeremy Corbyn, Labor Party (UK), United Kingdom
