[rad-green] Chief Rabbi Mirvis is helping stoke antisemitism

*https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2019-11-27/chief-rabbi-mirvis-antisemitism/
<https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2019-11-27/chief-rabbi-mirvis-antisemitism/>27
November 2019*



*Chief Rabbi Mirvis is helping stoke antisemitismMirvis has given succour
to white nationalist discourse both because he has spoken out against
Corbyn without offering evidence for his claims and because those entirely
unsubstantiated claims have been echoed across the media.*

*By Jonathan Cook*

Chief rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has not only misrepresented the known facts
about Labour and its supposed antisemitism crisis. He has not only
interfered in an overtly, politically partisan manner in the December 12
election campaign by suggesting that Jeremy Corbyn – against all evidence
<https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/smoke-without-fire-the-myth-of-a-labour-antisemitism-crisis/>
–
is an antisemite.

By speaking out as the voice of British Jews – a false claim
<https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1199243954836983808> he has allowed the
UK media to promote – his unprecedented meddling in the election of
Britain’s next leader has actually made the wider Jewish community in the
UK much less safe. Mirvis is contributing to the very antisemitism he says
he wants to eradicate.

Mirvis’ intervention
<https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/chief-rabbi-launches-unprecedented-attack-on-mendacious-corbyn-over-jew-hate-1.493585>
in
the election campaign makes sense *only* if he believes in one of two
highly improbable scenarios.

The first requires several demonstrably untrue things to be true. It needs
for Corbyn to be a proven antisemite – and not just of the variety that
occasionally or accidentally lets slip an antisemitic trope or is
susceptible to the unthinking prejudice most of us occasionally display,
including (as we shall see) Rabbi Mirvis.

No, for Mirvis to have interfered in the election campaign he would need to
believe that Corbyn intends actively as prime minister to inflame a wider
antisemitism in British society or implement policies designed to harm the
Jewish community. And in addition, the chief rabbi would have to believe
that Corbyn presides over a Labour party that will willingly indulge
race-hate speeches or stand by impassively as Corbyn carries out racist
policies.

If Mirvis really believes any of that, I have a bridge to sell him. Corbyn
has spent his entire political career as an anti-racism campaigner, and his
anti-racism activism as a backbencher was especially prominent inside a
party that itself has traditionally taken the political lead in tackling
racism.
Rising tide of nationalism

The second possibility is that Mirvis doesn’t really believe that Corbyn is
a Goebbels in the making. But if that is so, then his decision to intercede
in the election campaign to influence British voters must be based on an
equally fanciful notion: that there is no significant threat posed by
antisemitism from the right or the rapidly emerging far right.

Because if antisemitism is not an issue on the right – the same
nationalistic right that has persecuted Jews throughout modern history,
culminating in the Nazi atrocities – then Mirvis may feel he can risk
playing politics in the name of the Jewish community without serious
consequence.

If there is no perceptible populist tide of white nationalism sweeping
Europe and the globe, one that hates immigrants and minorities, then making
a fuss about Corbyn might seem to make sense for a prominent Jewish
community leader. In those circumstances, it might appear to be worth
disrupting the national conversation to highlight the fact that Corbyn once
sat with Hamas politicians – just as Tony Blair once sat with Sinn Fein
leaders – and that Corbyn’s party has promised in the latest manifesto to stop
selling weapons
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-uk-labour-manifesto-calls-to-ban-arms-sales-to-israel/>
to
Israel (and Saudi Arabia) of the kind that have been used to butcher
children in Gaza. Mirvis might believe that by wounding Corbyn he can help
into power a supposedly benevolent, or at least inoffensive, Tory party.
[image: image.png]

But if he is wrong about the re-emergence of a white nationalism and its
growing entry into the mainstream – and all the evidence suggests he would
be deeply wrong <https://fpif.org/the-rising-tide-of-the-populist-right/>,
if this is what he thinks – then undermining Corbyn and the Labour party is
self-destructiveness of the first order.

It would amount to self-harm not only because attacking Corbyn inevitably
strengthens the electoral chances of Boris “watermelon smiles
<https://www.businessinsider.com/boris-johnson-record-sexist-homophobic-and-racist-comments-bumboys-piccaninnies-2019-6>”
Johnson. It plays with fire because Mirvis’ flagrant intervention in the
election campaign actually bolsters a key part of the antisemitic discourse
of the far right that is rapidly making inroads into the Conservative party.
Succour to white nationalists

White nationalists are all over social media warning of supposed Jewish
global conspiracies, of supposed Jewish control of the media, of supposed
Jewish subversion of “white rights”. It was precisely this kind of thinking
that drove European politics a century ago. It was arch-antisemite
<http://www.balfourproject.org/the-other-arthur-balfour-protector-of-the-jews/>
Arthur
Balfour who signed off the Balfour Declaration of 1917 that sought to end
Britain’s “Jewish problem” by encouraging European Jews to move far away,
to a part of the Middle East then known as Palestine.

That is, of course, why today’s white supremacists love Israel, why they
see it as a model, why they call themselves “white Zionists
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/white-nationalist-richard-spencer-tells-israelis-that-jews-are-over-represented/>“.
In creating a tribal democracy, and one heavily fortified, land hungry,
belligerent and nuclear-armed, Israel has done for Jews exactly what white
nationalists hope to do again for their white compatriots. The white
supremacists’ love of Israel is intimately bound up with their hatred and
fear of Jews.

Mirvis has given succour to white nationalist discourse both because he has
spoken out against Corbyn without offering evidence for his claims and
because those entirely unsubstantiated claims have been echoed across the
media.

There is good reason
<https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2019-11-11/antisemitism-smears-corbyn/> why
the billionaire-owned print media and the Establishment-dominated BBC are
happy to exploit the antisemitism smears – and it has nothing to do with
concern for the safety of Jews. The corporate media don’t want a Labour
leader in power who is going to roll back the corporate free-for-all
unleashed by Margaret Thatcher 40 years ago that nearly bankrupted the rest
of us in 2008.

But that is not what those flirting with or embracing white nationalism
will take away from the relentless media chorus over evidence-free
antisemitism claims.

Mirvis’ intervention in the democratic process will drive them more quickly
and more deeply into the arms of the far-right. It will persuade them once
again that “the Jews” are a “problem”. They will conclude that – though the
Jews are now helping the right by destroying Corbyn – once the left has
been dealt with, those same Jews will then subvert their white state. Like
Balfour before them, they will start thinking of how to rid Britain and
Europe of these supposed interlopers.

This is why Mirvis was irresponsible in the extreme for meddling. Because
the standard of proof required before making such an intervention – proof
either that Corbyn is an outright Jew hater, or that white nationalism is
no threat to the UK – is not even close to being met.
The left’s anti-imperialism

In fact much worse, all the evidence shows the exact reverse. That was
neatly summed up in a survey
<https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/criticism-of-israel-and-antisemitism-shades-of-prejudice/>
this
month published by The Economist, a weekly magazine that is no friend to
Corbyn or the Labour party.

It showed that those identifying as “very left-wing” – the section of the
public that supports Corbyn – were among the least likely to express
antisemitic attitudes. Those identifying as “very right-wing”, on the other
hand – those likely to support Boris “piccaninnies
<https://www.businessinsider.com/boris-johnson-record-sexist-homophobic-and-racist-comments-bumboys-piccaninnies-2019-6>”
Johnson – were three and a half times more likely to express hostile
attitudes towards Jews. Other surveys show even worse racism
<https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-48912065> among Conservatives towards
more obviously non-white minorities, such as Muslims and black people.
That, after all, is the very reason Boris “letterbox-looking Muslim women
<https://www.dumptheguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/26/javid-refuses-to-condemn-pms-slurs-against-muslim-women>”
Johnson now heads the Tory party.

The Economist findings reveal something else of relevance in assessing
Mirvis’ meddling. Not only is the real left (as distinguished from the
phoney, centrist left represented by Labour’s Blairites) much less
antisemitic than the right, it is also much more critical of Israel than
any other section of the British public.

That is easily explained. The real left has always been anti-imperialist.
Israel is a particularly problematic part of Britain’s colonial legacy.

Elsewhere, the peoples who gained independence from Britain found
themselves inside ruined, impoverished states, often with borders imposed
out of naked imperial interest that left them divided and feuding. Internal
struggles over the crumbs Britain and other imperial powers left behind
were the norm.

But in a very real sense, Britain – or at least the west – never really
left Israel. In line with the Balfour Declaration, Britain helped to
establish the institutions of a “Jewish home” on the Palestinians’
homeland. British troops may have departed in 1948, but waves of European
Jewish immigrants were either encouraged or compelled to come to the newly
created state of Israel by racist immigration quotas designed to prevent
them fleeing elsewhere, most especially to the United States.

The west helped engineer both the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and
Israel’s creation to solve Europe’s “Jewish problem”. It provided the
components necessary for Israel to build a nuclear bomb that won it a place
at the international top table and ensured the Palestinians were made
Israel’s serfs in perpetuity. Ever since, the west has provided Israel with
diplomatic cover, military aid and special trading status, even as Israel
has worked relentlessly to disappear the Palestinian people from their
homeland.

Even now, our most prized rights, such as free speech, are being eroded and
subverted to protect Israel from criticism. In the US, the only
infringements on the American public’s First Amendment rights have been
legislated to silence
<https://theintercept.com/2018/12/17/israel-texas-anti-bds-law/> those
seeking to pressure Israel over its crimes against the Palestinians with a
boycott – similar to the campaign against apartheid South Africa. In the
UK, the Conservative manifesto similarly promises to bar
<https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/.premium-u-k-s-conservative-party-vows-to-ban-councils-from-boycotting-israeli-products-1.8168796>
local
councils from upholding international law and boycotting products from
Israel’s illegal settlements.
Rewarding war crimes

The real left focuses on this continuing colonial crime against the
Palestinians not because it is antisemitic (a claim the Economist survey
amply refutes), but because the left treats Israel as emblematic of British
and western bad faith and hypocrisy. Israel is the imperial west’s
Achilles’ heel, the proof that war crimes, massacres and ethnic cleansing
are not only *not* punished but actively rewarded if these crimes accord
with western imperial interests.

But ardent friends of Israel such as Mirvis are blind to these arguments.
For them, one western antisemitic crime – the Holocaust – entirely obscures
another western antisemitic crime: seeking to rid Europe of Jews by forcing
them into the Middle East, serving as pawns on an imperial chessboard that
paid no regard to the Palestinians whose homeland was being sacrificed.

In his state of historical and political myopia, Mirvis cannot begin to
understand that there might be political activists who, in defending the
Palestinian people, are also defending Jews. That they, unlike him,
understand that Israel was created not out of western benevolence towards
Jews, but out of western malevolence towards “lesser peoples”. The real
left in Britain speaks out against Israel not because it hates Jews but
because it holds dear a commitment to justice and a compassion for all.

Mirvis, on the other hand, is the Zionist equivalent of a little Englander.
He prefers particularist, short-term interests over universalist, long-term
ones.

It was he, remember, who threw his full support
<https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/israel-has-no-choice-but-to-use-force-in-gaza-says-chief-rabbi-s6ld2p3kcsb>
behind
Israel in 2014 as it indiscriminately bombed Gaza, killing some 550
children – a bombing campaign that came after years of an Israeli blockade
on the Palestinian population there. That siege has led the United Nations
to warn that the enclave will be uninhabitable
<https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2019-10-13/uninhabitable-gaza/> by next year.

It was Mirvis, along with his predecessor Jonathan Sacks, who in 2017
endorsed
<https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/you-were-never-my-chief-rabbi-bruv>
the
fanatical Jewish settlers – Israel’s equivalent of white supremacists – on
their annual march through the occupied Old City of Jerusalem. This is the
march where the majority of the participants are recorded every year waving
masses of Israeli flags at Palestinians and chanting “Death to the Arabs”.
One Israeli newspaper columnist has described
<https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-why-this-year-for-jerusalem-day-i-took-down-the-israeli-flag-on-our-roof-1.5392783>
the
Jerusalem Day march as a “religious carnival of hatred”.

It was Mirvis and Sacks that encouraged British Jews to join them on this
tub-thumping trip to Israel, which they suggested
<https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/rabbi-sacks-why-are-you-cheerleading-for-anti-palestinian-provocateurs-1.5473150>
would
provide an opportunity to spend time “dancing with our brave soldiers”.
Those soldiers – Israeli, not British – occupy West Bank cities like Hebron
where they have locked down life for some 200,000 Palestinians so that a
handful of crazed religious Jewish bigots can live undisturbed in their
midst.

What is so appalling is that Mirvis is blind to the very obvious parallels
between the fearful Palestinians who hastily have to board up their shops
as a Jewish mob parades through their neighbourhood and today’s white
supremacists and neo-Nazis in the west who seek to march provocatively
through ethnic minority communities, including Jewish neighbourhoods, in
places like Charlottesville
<https://www.adl.org/blog/two-years-ago-they-marched-in-charlottesville-where-are-they-now>
.

Mirvis has no lessons to teach Corbyn or the Labour party about racism. In
fact, it is his own, small-minded prejudice that blinds him to the
anti-racist politics of the left. His ugly message is now being loudly
amplified by a corporate media keen to use any weapon it can, antisemitism
included, to keep Corbyn and the left out of power – and preserve a status
quo that benefits the few at the expense of the many.

-- 

--- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sid-l" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected].
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sid-l/CACKppcyBvOeePQszvOSyO3LCtBfOWnxmVn0q9KP37yuOPfesGg%40mail.gmail.com.

---
To unsubscribe: <mailto:[email protected]>
List help: <https://riseup.net/lists>