A blistering piece by Nick Cohen in the New Statesman accurately describes the firestorm of anti-Jewish hatred that now flares across the British cultural landscape. Cohen is one of those brave few on the left who have defied their comrades and supported the war in Iraq. For this they have been vilified and bullied by those same comrades. But Cohen here describes the further twist provided by the racial identity marker of his surname:

'I learned it was one thing being called "Cohen" if you went along with liberal orthodoxy, quite another when you pointed out liberal betrayals. Your argument could not be debated on its merits. There had to be a malign motive. You had to support Ariel Sharon. You had to be in the pay of "international" media moguls or neoconservatives. You had to have bad blood. You had to be a Jew...

'As the months passed, and Iraqis were caught between a criminally incompetent occupation and an "insurgency" so far to the right it was off the graph, I had it all. A leading figure on the left asked me to put him in touch with members of the new government. "I knew it! I knew it!" he cried when we next met. "They want to recognise Israel."

'I experienced what many blacks and Asians had told me: you can never tell. Where people stand on the political spectrum says nothing about their visceral beliefs. I found the far left wasn't confined to the chilling Socialist Workers Party but contained many scrupulous people it was a pleasure to meet and an education to debate. Meanwhile, the centre was nowhere near as moderate as it liked to think. One minute I would be talking to a BBC reporter or liberal academic and think him a civilised man; the next, he would be screaming about the Jews...

'I could go on. The moment when bewilderment settled into a steady scorn, however, was when the Guardian ran a web debate entitled: "David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen are enough to make a good man anti-Semitic". Gorgeously, one vigilant reader complained that the title was prejudiced - the debate should be headlined: "David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen are enough to make a good man, or woman, anti-Semitic"...

'To explain away a global phenomenon as a rational reaction to Israeli oppression, you have once again to turn the Jew into a supernatural figure whose existence is the cause of discontents throughout the earth. You have to revive anti-Semitism.'

It appears that it has taken some time for Cohen to realise the precise nature and extent of this madness that has consumed British public life. However, while he is correct to identify the extraordinary axis between the left and Islamic fascism, he has not spotted the fact that this group-think also embraces much of the right. Conservatively-minded middle-Britons, who start from the premise that there would be no threat to themselves from frightening Islamists if only Britain had pulled up the drawbridge across the Atlantic, fervently believe that the global jihad is indeed a rational reaction to Israeli oppression.

Now Britain’s Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks has at last spoken out about what is happening. He has warned in the Jewish Chronicle of

'a new wave of anti-Semitism, saying that "there have been times, the first in my memory, when it has been uncomfortable to be a Jew in Britain"...

'In the message, Sir Jonathan cites calls, backed by Sir Iqbal Sacranie, the secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, to abolish Holocaust Memorial Day because it is offensive to Muslims. He also refers to remarks with "anti-Semitic undertones" by public figures, the threatened academic boycott of Israel earlier this year and Church debates over divestment from Israel.

'He says that Israel and Jews are being cast into the role of scapegoat for the troubles thrown up by rapid global change, even though they are not responsible for them. The new anti-Semitism differed from the old in being "political rather than racial, focused on Jews as a nation rather than Jews as individuals. But it has adopted and adapted all the old myths, from the Blood Libel to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Although Israel has nothing to do with such events as "the millions of Muslims murdered by their fellow Muslims" in Iraq, Sudan and elsewhere, it is being turned into "the scapegoat of the 21st century," the Chief Rabbi says.'

The Chief Rabbi’s intervention is significant. Hitherto, he has been circumspect, possibly reflecting the fact that, like so many British Jews for whom the illusion of an idyll has now been cruelly shattered, he was reluctant to admit to the destruction of the myth that the Jews of Britain were safe. Moreover, the Jewish community in Britain is polarised; there are many British Jews – mainly on the left – who would line up alongside the very people who have subjected Cohen and the rest of us to this odious vilification, and who resolutely deny the resurgence of anti-Jewish feeling, blaming it all instead on Ariel Sharon, the neocons and George W Bush. But the fact that someone of the stature of the Chief Rabbi has now come out and said it, loud and clear, means that it will no longer be so easy to dismiss as the ravings of a few cranks, paranoiacs and Sharon-groupies. It forces itself onto the mainstream agenda. It requires an answer by the political class.

Posted by melanie at October 7, 2005