1/ A thread on “existential” threats.
Apologies for another long one. Trying to sort my feelings out on this one.
Apologies for another long one. Trying to sort my feelings out on this one.
2/ This is something I have been flip-flopping over for a while. Were three Jewish newspapers right to say that there was an “existential threat to Jewish life in this country that would be posed by a Jeremy Corbyn-led government”? Two things have made me think further on this. 
3/ First was @margarethodge’s nuanced interview (please read it all) about her feelings of anxiety over the disciplinary charges brought against her, and second was the Evening Standard’s attack on Sadiq Khan. Both have something to teach us about this issue.
4/ I should say at the outset that I am trying to be open and honest about what I feel is the right answer. If you have made your mind up that the Jewish community is a nest of Tories terrified of a socialist government, or that Corbyn is Hitler reincarnated, then stop here
5/ First, a quick intro to my family’s background, for context. I am Jewish. My mother’s and father’s families both emigrated, as far as I can tell, in the late 19th century to the East End of London and Manchester, where I grew up.
6/ Both sides of my family were dirt poor until my grandparents’ generation when they started to climb into middle classes. Poverty and antisemitism - i.e. insecurity - cast a shadow over their experiences though they only ever spoke in terms of proudly having made it up and out
7/ Like most British Jews, my grandparents self-image was British. They all served in WW2. They kept Yiddish quiet. My maternal grandfather was a Labour 20-year councillor and ultimately Lord Mayor of Manchester. Civic *and* Jewish pride was his watchword and I inherited that.
8/ And there was the Holocaust. My immediate family were safely in the UK well before it began - like many British Jews they escaped the pogroms in the 1890s. But the Holocaust was still the mother of all shadows. It hangs over every British Jewish life.
9/ It’s still a living memory for many people - because they lived through it or their families did. And it is worth recalling, even though you may know this, how it happened. Jews across Europe were rounded up from their safe and integrated homes and murdered, in the millions.
10/ The lesson I was always taught, like @margarethodge who’s father escaped in the 30s, was no matter how integrated you feel you are, you will always be an outsider. Your neighbours, no matter how friendly, may turn on you and your family just as they did throughout Europe.
(as an aside, I made a film recently with survivors of three different genocides and they all reported the same feeling )
11/ Don’t forget it wasn’t just the “Jewish looking” Jews, it was fully assimilated Jews too, the ones who denied they were even Jewish. Hitler didn’t care and neither did most of Europe. This lesson is one the Jewish community has rightly internalised. *Look for the signs*
12/ The Holocaust for Jews is a mixture of a practical lesson based on real history and a kind of mass post traumatic stress disorder. The latter description may be literally true (edition.cnn.com/2017/04/25/hea…) but it also works as an analogy.
13/ Think of the Jewish community as an individual who mostly hides their PTSD. They can appear strong, settled, *fine*, but they never really are. That’s what Jews are like. I’m sorry it is that way, but it is. I’m not making it up and it’s not exaggerated.
14/ And Israel. Israel for many people, especially the left, is a mighty colonial oppressor. The Jewish community is not unsophisticated about Israel and its politics.But Jews see Israel as a safe haven (which is what the UN set it up as) and an important part of Jewish identity
15/ As Jews are close to the conflict with Palestinians, I think we have a pretty good understanding of its complexities. We know it isn’t straightforward and even the left of the community don’t accept the “Israel is the evil oppressor” narrative, though it is sometimes true.
16/ To return to the lesson above, we are not naive. We take Hamas, PFLP, PLO etc at face value when they espouse genuine and 1930s-style anti-semitism. Why wouldn’t we? What else are we meant to think? This is from Wikipedia about Hamas’s charter:
17/ So along comes Jeremy Corbyn 3 years ago. He’s not an antisemite. But his career has been dominated by his support for the Palestinian cause. And not, it seems, for a peaceful resolution (though he says that a lot) but a kind of noncomplex support for all Palestinian groups.
18/ To unpack that: my reading of Corbyn is that he hasn’t, like many on the left, encouraged the peace process. He doesn’t seem to speak to Israelis. He has *taken a side* and the side he has taken is that which has regularly espoused and perpetrated violence against Jews.
19/ To go back to my PTSD analogy - here is a politician who has taken up the cause of groups which perpetrated violent attacks on Jews. e.g. Watch watch One Day in September (imdb.com/title/tt023059…) to understand how triggering the 1972 Munich attacks were in the Jewish world.
20/ Here was the mutilation and murder of Jewish athletes, representing a nascent Jewish state (less than 25 years old), 30 years since the Holocaust, *in Germany*, and played out in front of the world’s media. And Corbyn appears to have honoured the killers, or alleged killers.
(I accept there are nuances around exactly who he was or thought he was honouring - it seems clear that he accepts himself that he was there whilst wreaths were laid over the graves of the men accused of carrying out the attacks)
21/ The Jewish Chronicle reports this week that Corbyn campaigned for the release of the two men *convicted* of two 1994 bombings of British Jewish communal buildings (thejc.com/news/uk-news/c…). I missed this story as I didn’t realise this was *separate from* the wreath stuff.
22/ I remember those bombings as one of the vans apparently parked outside the Jewish youth movement I was a member of just before it was moved on down Finchley Road to Balfour House. It was terrifying for the Jewish community. And Corbyn defended the perpetrators.
23/ I am not questioning Corbyn’s motives - I think he sees himself as a man of peace and justice. But the impression the Jewish community has of him - even amongst lefties - is that the cause of his life is Palestine and as Prime Minister he may pick Palestine over British Jews
24/ So back to “existential threat”. I think Margaret Hodge and the Jewish newspapers are speaking from the heart. In a way I wish they were trying to smear Corbyn as that would mean I, as a Jew and (mostly) Labour supporter, have nothing to worry about.
25/ Look at the situation without my bias, I think it unlikely that Corbyn’s Labour would be any kind of existential threat to the Jewish community. In reality, his views on Israel may make it uncomfortable for Zionists to live in the UK but that’s about as far as it will go.
26/ But what keeps coming back to me is Corbyn’s support over the years for movements and individuals which want to hurt and kill Jews. What else are we meant to think about that? How are we meant to go forward from that starting point?
27/ Pulling back again, I mentioned @sadiqkhan and I think that if there is a route through all this, he is the model. See my thread from yesterday . It's not about politics, really, its about empathy. That requires openness and humility. Sadiq has it.
28/ I have said before this isn’t going to be resolved by disciplinary processes (though these are important) or nice words, the real hope is for Corbyn to go on a journey. Where he learns to empathise with British Jews in all their complex, contradictory and conflicted reality.
29/ Here is my route for that - and I’m going to be proposing it directly at a meeting with Corbyn’s office in a week or two as part of the consultation on the IHRA definition.
30/ My take home here is that if you think that British Jews are hopeless right-wingers, or against socialism, or inherently anti-Labour, you are misunderstanding a community which desperately wants to fit in and get on, and for which the shadow of persecution is long.
31/ And nothing will change unless the community can be convinced - and it will take years of trust building - that Corbyn will be a prime minister for all of the UK and not be overwhelmed by his international politics.
32/ Again, I apologise for a long thread. I wanted to give you an insight into how I, as a lefty Jew, feel about this. I am confused. We are complex. If we take the viciousness out of this debate then hopefully people will realise that and act accordingly. /end
