For the second week running, BBC Radio Four's Any Questions last weekend reinforced the sense that decency in this country is simply dying. Dr David Starkey, the noted historian, wit and larger-than-life personality who made his name and his fortune as 'the rudest man in Britain', suddenly came out with a piece of the ripest and most ancient prejudice. Musing about the war in Iraq, he said:

'The action in Iraq was driven by one thing, and it was a very understandable desire for vengeance. Americans again are a little bit like Jews (murmur from audience)...no, let me please, I'm being really serious, I'm not calling names but calling for us to understand a different mindset. Here the notion of vengeance is on the whole regarded as deplorable... In Judaism, Islam and American Protestantism vengeance is a wholly acceptable notion (audience murmur) ... that's the truth, and after 9/11 they wanted to strike back. And that is it. End of story'.

Well I don't know enough about the theology of Islam or American Protestantism, but I doubt whether either regards vengeance as 'wholly acceptable'. What I do know is that in Judaism this is the very opposite of the truth. It is an ancient prejudice that the Jews 'do vengeance', based on an ignorant misunderstanding of the Biblical injunction to take 'an eye for an eye'. In fact, for Jews this doctrine is a limitation on any action that is taken after an offence is committed to ensure that any response is no more than proportionate. In other words, it is all about fairness and justice, not vengeance at all. The claim that for Jews 'vengeance is wholly acceptable' is totally untrue and a racial smear.

This idea that the Jews are vengeful is, in fact, one of the most deeply entrenched, vicious prejudices about the Jews -- and one that currently surfaces again and again in the language used to describe Israel's defence against terror. In other words, whenever the Jews try to prevent themselves from being murdered, this is presented not as self defence but vengeance. When the Americans tried to prevent another 9/11, this was not self-defence but vengeance. (Starkey's inclusion of Islam appeared to be a lame attempt to camouflage the outrageous prejudice of his opinion).

Clearly, in his world view there are certain categories of people who are not entitled to defend themselves against mass murder by removing from the scene those who would perpetrate it. They are instead, it seems, people apart, incapable of the instinct that Starkey himself would presumably have if threatened with annihilation to try to prevent it happening. And note also how subliminally he implied that the Americans were only doing the Jews' bidding in this display of primitive and uncivilised instinct.

So let us not call names but try to understand a different mindset -- the dynamics of ugly prejudice, which reveal that in the most educated of company barbarism may be masked by the thinnest of polished veneers.

Posted by melanie at September 20, 2004