Like 9/11, the massacre in southern Israel changed everything. From the great movements of Middle Eastern geopolitics and international alliances to the sweep of modern Israeli and Arab history, life has been split into the before and the after.
In Britain, nowhere has this been felt more keenly than the Jewish community. There have been a great many bitter lessons, but one overshadows all the others. Before the massacre, we thought we had many more friends here.
In the aftermath of the massacre, it is finally dawning on Jewish progressives that their oldest friend doesn’t care for them at all
I’m talking about the political left. In recent decades, the Jewish electorate has been drifting rightwards. Perhaps, to borrow a phrase from the 20th century German diarist Victor Klemperer, Jews are a ‘seismic people’. Did they sense it coming? When Corbyn came, in 2015, Jewish voters abandoned the left in droves, and the question of whether it was safe to return has preoccupied many a Shabbat table since.
To his great credit, Sir Keir Starmer vowed to ‘root out’ antisemitism from Labour and – despite the fact that he had been one of Corbyn’s longest-serving shadow cabinet members and campaigned hard to put him in Number 10 – it seems like he meant it. The parliamentary party has largely been purged of the cranks and many Jewish former Labour figures, including Louise Ellman and Luciana Berger, have come back.
British Jews on the left spoke of their relief that sanity had been restored. When several radicals entered Israel’s government, these progressives hoped that their vocal criticism would win them full re-entry into the bosom of the left. As it turns out, however, they were always seen first as Jews. The response to the butchery of October 7 has proved it. Many British Jews been left drowning in desolation and possessed by a sense of the profoundest betrayal.
I’m not talking about Keir Starmer here. The current crisis has been his first true foreign policy test, and so far he has refused to give in to those siren calls for a ceasefire. These demands use the force of emotion to overbalance morality, and wrap appeasement in the language of human rights. This is the man whose face appeared on a pair of flip-flops at the Tory conference; he may yet U-turn on his principles, but his stoicism so far must be applauded.
Step away from the Labour frontbench, however, and in terms of morality, the left is in the bleakest position it has been for years. In fact, the truly disturbing thought is not that it has become this way, but that this is how it has always been. In the aftermath of the massacre, it is finally dawning on Jewish progressives that their oldest friend doesn’t care for them at all. They suspect it never did.
Take the commentariat. In their darkest hour, British Jewish liberals have looked to the left and been greeted with crickets at best. Which left-wing commentator has rivalled Douglas Murray in support for the Jewish state and the liberal ideals it embodies? Which paper has compared to Allister Heath’s Sunday Telegraph? Which columnists have spoken of Israel’s right to self-defence with anything other than lip-service? The left talks of Israel’s right to defend its citizens with as much conviction as it talks of the country’s right to exist. And of course, the more you soften the former, the more you undermine the latter. The silence, as they say, has been deafening.
The silence should be the worst problem. Aside from Jonathan Freedland’s excellent columns, a piece by Howard Jacobson, another by the chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust and perhaps one or two others, the Guardian has allowed a sewer to spread slowly onto its pages, culminating in a piece which accused Jews of ‘weaponising’ the Holocaust.
For those on the right, it has been a little easier. The right-wing press has been filled with loud expressions of support for Jews and Israel, horror at the depraved butchery in southern Israel and despair at the scenes unfolding on our streets. The Spectator, the Telegraph and the Mail have been exemplary. But in the world at large, these remain minority voices. Every weekend, Jews are being asked to accept the open calls for their genocide in British cities. ‘From London to Gaza, globalise the Intifada,’ the mob chanted last weekend. The main weapon of the last Intifada was the suicide bomb. Is that what they are demanding now? Has society really arrived at this point?
Now more than ever, British Jews need their friends. A recent YouGov poll showed that the Israel-Palestinian conflict has become more than ever a marker of political identity. While 39 per cent of Conservatives back Israel, among Labour voters that figure stands at just 9 per cent. We have seen this all too vividly as masked activists have marched alongside young liberals whose views on sexuality, gender and identity would see them pushed off the tops of buildings in Gaza. What has happened to our country? Why does it fall to the political right to support the Jews? Why has the left abandoned us?
Comments