It feels a bit like the cavalry has arrived. A sharp piece by John Lloyd in the Financial Times (subscription only, but see here) considers whether or not anti-Jewish feeling in Britain is a cause for concern and concludes that yes, it is. In particular, he ponders the Church of England’s vote to disinvest from companies supplying equipment to Israel that it uses against the Palestinians:
The Archbishop wrote to the Chief Rabbi, assuring him that the decision isn’t a boycott, and that he believed in Israel’s right to exist and defend itself.(A telling remark: of how many states in the world would a public figure feel it necessary to protest he believes that it should not be rubbed off the map?) Whatever: relations are soured...
No vote then, to disinvest from companies supplying equipment to China, which has a hideous human rights record, including the suppression of Christians. Nor of Russia, which has killed many more Chechens than Israel has Palestinians. Nor Sudan, whose government has been complicit in the massacres of up to 400,000 people in its Darfur region. Nor - to be ecumenical - the US, which continues to operate Guantanamo Bay detention centre amid allegations that its treatment of prisoners amounts to torture. Just Israel. It’s the ‘just Israel’ bit that is the worry. Why is it singled out?
...The 'don’t worry' bit is provided by a number of Jews who support these campaigns, who believe, as do some Israelis, that the state is acting in an oppressive, racist manner. That would dilute my worry, but not disperse it. The worry still is that Israel is singled out because it is the Jewish state. The worry grows as the environment darkens. A Populus poll earlier this month showed that 37 per cent of a sample of British Muslims regarded British Jewry as a 'legitimate target as part of the struggle for justice in the Middle East'. If I were a British Jew, that would worry me.
In the Middle East, Hamas’s victory in the Palestinian elections faces Israel with a governing party that wants to destroy it. In Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood, whose candidates - running as 'independents' because of a ban on the Brotherhood itself - secured eight times more seats than the secular, relatively liberal United National Front for Change. The hope is that possession of, or greater proximity to, political power will force these radically Islamic, strongly anti-Israeli movements towards moderation; but if I were an Israeli, I would worry.
...But the nag at the mind [having criticised Israeli policy] is this: why do their sins cry out for particular punishment? And what do people, with the best of motives, see as the result of such efforts to brand Israelis - scholars, architects or bulldozer traders - as uniquely unfit to be part of their international communities? What’s so especially awful about them, that we have to cease talking to them?
A very good question. Indeed, it is the great question of our time. Only if Britain ever manages to arrive at the correct answer to this question will it finally understand the peril that it itself is in.
Lloyd is one of the few remaining truly independent thinkers in British journalism. A man who probably corresponds to the new definition of the ‘muscular left’ (as opposed to...oh, heck, who cares about these silly categories), he has made significant enemies by courageously supporting America over Iraq and by inveighing against the degradation of journalism into a conspiracy against the truth. Now he has ventured into this most toxic of territory, the scapegoating of the Jews – the prejudice of our time that dare not speak its name. It is very, very rare indeed for a non-Jewish person in British public life to put his head above this particular parapet at present. He is to be applauded for injecting a note of sanity into the politics of the madhouse.
