OPINION: Jews have always been allies to others against racism

Last Thursday’s counter-protest against surging violence and criminality was welcome in many ways. It followed several nights of rioting that had seen mosques and immigration centres come under attack in the most despicable fashion, much of it spurred on by disinformation about the Southport attacker.

Some of that disinformation came from social media influencers who have made no secret of their malevolent and distorted perspectives. It is surely right that the organs of Anglo-Jewry condemned far right extremism and showed solidarity with the country’s Muslims, and other minorities.

But last week’s counter-protests were marred by anti-Zionist tropes, wrapped around the conflict in Gaza, which had the effect of marginalising and intimidating the Jewish community.

The group Finchley Against Fascism produced a poster which called for the expulsion of “Fascists, Racists, Zionists and Islamophobes”, as part of its defence of the area’s immigration services. Far from encouraging unity and solidarity, this was a divisive call to depict Jews as an enemy within.

This was reinforced by the presence of so many Palestinian flags and keffiyehs at the anti-racist marches. At one anti-racist rally in Newcastle, a speaker blamed the “squatter entity of Israel”, and its “racist, apartheid policies” for the ongoing attacks on British  Muslims.

Others attempted to link Israel’s perceived actions in Gaza to anti-Islam activity in the UK. Thus, Clive Lewis, the MP for Norwich South, claimed on Twitter/X that the “daily inhumanity being meted out to Palestinians and rising Islamophobia in the UK” were “not unconnected”. Israel’s perceived “inhumanity” gave “permission” for the other, he declared.

Blaming Israel for Britain’s Islamophobes was also a staple of David Miller’s anti-Zionist broadsides. Britain, he once said, was “in the grip of an assault on its public sphere by the state of Israel and its advocates” and its lobby used the language of black liberation to “justify ethnic cleansing, racism and apartheid.”

The website Open Democracy said that there was “an undeniable overlap” between right wing Zionism and Islamophobia while elsewhere, far right groups in Europe were said to have taken their inspiration from Israel’s purportedly inhumane assault on Muslims. For these people, it is somehow all about the Jewish state.

None of this is a surprising development. The war in Gaza, presented in a one-sided way by mainstream broadcasters, has dominated much of the last year’s news. It has fuelled the anti-Zionist marches of left-wing groups such as Stop the War and the PSC, all of whom readily lend their support to the anti-racist cause. In turn, they have been allied to Muslim anti-Zionist groups for over two decades in the so called ‘red green alliance’.

The modern social justice movement, which has captured the hearts and minds of many in the younger generation, has added a sinister twist. Its acolytes picture society divided into oppressors and the oppressed, with white heterosexuals at the apex of oppression and people of colour serving as the chief victims. Jews, who are depicted through racist tropes of control, power and privilege, are lumped in with racist white oppressors.

A fusion of all these movements has led to Palestinian symbols being turned into an enduring icon of the struggles against racism and white supremacy. In turn, Jews, as Zionists, are depicted as the enemy of the good, a malevolent people who need casting out of society in order to purge it of its ills. It is a disturbing example of ‘antisemitism as anti-racism’.

The irony in all this is that Jews have long been at the forefront of anti-racist struggles in the West. Whether as lawyers, activists, academics, philanthropists or communal leaders, Jews were highly prominent in challenging the egregious policies of segregation and discrimination during the American civil rights era.

They also played  a major role in confronting South African apartheid and formed important alliances with several black leaders. The Judaic message of liberation from slavery resonated with Martin Luther King, a truly outstanding orator who used Biblical phrasing in his speeches.

True, not all Jews have supported these movements, while a small number have even sympathised with far-right figures. But the mainstream Jewish desire for humane and liberal values is hard to miss. It ought to serve as a salutary lesson for those who deem Jews a threat to the good society.