Thread by @YairWallach

I think there's some things to learn from Glyn Secker's comments and the reaction to them about the current discussion on antisemitism in the UK. You will find a transcript here, as well reactions.
jamiesternweiner.wordpress.com/2019/05/12/rem…

Secker and his defenders appear genuinely outraged and dismissive of the criticism. Their view: Secker was railing against a Jewish communal leadership which remained silent on the extreme right in the UK, on Israeli atrocities, on Israel's alliance with the global hard right >>

... while the same Jewish leadership is exaggerating the AS problems within Labour in a damaging way. (Secker's language was far more polemical, but that's more or less what he said). It's an attack on Jewish leadership, not on Jews. >>

There are two serious problems with this argument. (1) The address repeatedly used terms such as "they", "them", "their" in a generalised manner that could easily be understood as referring to all Jews or the bulk of the Jewish community >>

It may be clear to Secker that he was talking about "the leadership", but "leaders" is far too vague, could easily be taken as a metonymy for "Jews". Lumping together various Jewish groups and repeatedly moving to an unnamed "they" totally invites such understanding >>

When he said "what are Jews doing in the gutter with these rats", it's unspecified. He later insisted he meant "these Jews" but I cannot see how it's better. Could the audience understand this as referring to the bulk of the Jewish community? Yes. Whether he meant this or not >>

The second point is about the language, which was not just polemical. It was the allusions of betrayal, the language of dehumanisation, a language that is very familiar to us and should not be used.

Such is the reference to 119 Labour MPs "friends of Israel" as a "fifth column" led by Hodge and Watson and JLM. (- How can half of Labour Parliamentary party be considered a "fifth column"? Like it or not, they are representative of Labour's historical positions on Israel >>

far more than Corbyn. They're not a fifth column - they are the old establishment. Also the comparison to US Trump Republicans does't hold. Why then use of such charged term of the "traitor within"? With all that it invokes? >>

Similarly, to speak of Jews in the gutter with rats, whether the speaker was aware of this or not, invokes a dehumanisation of Jews with terrible resonance. >>

One of the interesting and dispiriting elements of Labour's antisemitism saga was the central role of a small group of Jewish activists/intellectuals in a discourse of consistent denialism, a discourse which sometimes used antisemitic language. >>

None of us are immune to using such tropes, Jews included. We see them from the Jewish right wing in the description of Soros and liberals. We see them in some Israeli depictions of the diaspora. And we hear them here from a Jewish left-wing activist. >>

Jews as fifth column, gutter and rats, "they, their, them": this language is dangerous. If your aim is to stand in solidarity with Palestinians, and the daily injustice they suffer, you should not sully their struggle with such language. >>

As I said yesterday: if your entire involvement in the Labour saga is to downplay and deny examples of antisemitism, and there is no track record of you speaking out against obvious cases of AS in Labour, then you have no credibility. I am not interested in your views. >>

Criticism of the Jewish BoD and JLC is legitimate and is made by many inc. myself. Of their dealing with Labour AS, on their positions on Israel/Palestine. I don't think a Palestine demonstration is the right context for this criticism; and certainly not in this manner. /End