A well-respected comrade wrote as he left the Party in despair last month, “it’s more than distasteful for non-Jews to dictate what views Jewish people may or may not express.” I think those operating the party’s disciplinary apparatus really should reflect on that. In the service of a partisan and disputed version of what classifies as ‘antisemitic’ you have arrogated to yourselves the right to determine what it is kosher to say about Israel, Palestine, the Board of Deputies, Jews, Jewish history and more besides.
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Being Jewish is or was a wall-to-wall experience. It’s an identity that you acquire and keep. Add in Zionism and it is a strong brew. I celebrated every Israeli military victory from 1948 through 1956 and 1967. And then with a viable state territory established I waited for Israel to make peace with its Palestinian neighbours and internal Palestinian population. But that didn’t happen. As Israel’s reprisals grew heavier my in-principle support for the state of Israel became increasingly overlaid with my criticisms of its actual behaviour. Even my mother by about 1990 and in her eighties was saying that this wasn’t the state that she had thought she was working for. (She had held many offices in Zionist organisations, as had both my maternal grandparents.)
This is a journey that those who are not Jewish have not had to make.
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I am telling you all this to give you a take on how outrageous it feels, in effect, to be accused of antisemitism. Outrageous. It actually gives me the sense that whoever drafted this Notice has quite simply failed to grasp the enormity of antisemitism as a concept or practice.
