THE LIGHT SLEEPER
Antisemitism is stirring again. Understanding what it is – and what it isn’t – is essential for our common humanity

It has been suggested that we should reduce the number of MPs who represent us in Parliament. Denis MacShane provides a good reason why we should think twice about this. There are many decent, intelligent MPs devoted to public service whose perspective would be sorely missed in a smaller House. In 2006 MacShane chaired the All Party Commission of Inquiry into Antisemitism. As a non-Jew he came to this issue with an open mind but was so horrified by the findings that he felt the balanced and dispassionate language of a parliamentary report would not do justice to the acuteness of the problem and so wrote a book about it, Globalising Hatred (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2008), which was published in paperback in September 2009.

 

Antisemitism is a peculiar and troubling phenomenon. Even the way it is spelt is disputed. As there is no such thing as a Semitic race, the preference among some Jewish and other thinkers is to drop the hyphen and the capital letter which otherwise imply there is (i.e. anti-Semitism should be termed antisemitism). Christian antisemitism has a long pedigree. The tensions between the early followers of Christ and the Jewish synagogues soon gave way to overtly hostile views among some of the Early Church Fathers. Marcion in particular drew insidious distinctions between the Old and New Testament which are still prevalent in the Church. The concept of the Jewish people as ‘Christ killers’ has long influenced popular Christian perceptions: Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez has spoken in public recently of ‘the descendents of those who killed Christ’. Yet modern antisemitism is more political than religious in its flavour. The Tsarist secret police’s forging of a document entitled The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, purporting to show a global Jewish conspiracy to take over the world, still has credence in the Arab world, which also contains an alarming number of people who think that 9/11 was a Jewish conspiracy, proven by the number of Jewish employees who allegedly stayed away from the World Trade Center on that fateful day.

 

Despite the tireless work of Christian leaders like Pope John Paul II, European antisemitism is deeply rooted. It is easy for non-Jewish Europeans to suggest that their continent is a vastly different place to a generation ago, but the legacy of suspicion and distaste towards Jewish people is enduring. In a recent study, a fifth of all German students agreed with the statement ‘Jews in Germany have too much influence’ and 17 per cent of all those surveyed agreed that ‘Jews have odd and peculiar qualities and are not really the same as us’. This is in spite of the considerable achievements of post-war Germany to build an inclusive and understanding society.

 

A swifter resolution to the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict would help, but important distinctions should be made here. On one side there are people who provocatively argue that opposition to Israeli policy emerges from a culture of antisemitism. This is little more than an expedient smokescreen behind which policies cannot be assessed without allegations of racism. No other government is afforded this protection and those who gift it to Israel’s do the nation no service in the long term if it wishes to be judged like everyone else. On the other side there are those who say that Jewish people bring antisemitism on themselves by campaigns like those waged by Israel in Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2009. Here distinctions should be made between Israeli government policy and Jewish people. The Republican presidency of George W. Bush was disapproved of by many non-Americans who were sufficiently nuanced in their thinking to understand that a lot of Americans were disappointed by US policy too. Would racism against Americans have been justified by George W. Bush? In the same way it is lazy to excuse antisemitism due to the position of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government. In a sense these two opposing views both feed off an unhealthy linking of antisemitism and Israeli policy.

 

One thing does disturb me as I look into the future and it is the suspicion that Holocaust denial will grow. It is a source of concern that this curse exists even now, when we still have living testimony from survivors, perpetrators and liberators of the concentration camps. What will happen when these human links are severed and we must rely on other forms of testimony? For most people this will not pose a problem because they are used to relying on historical records. Others may prove more gullible. It is said that antisemitism is a light sleeper. As the war generation fades from this world, it may stir again in its bed.