Ah, yes, J.A. Hobson of The Guardian, who was praised to the skies by Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Philip Gould, David Marquand and Tony Robinson. Only Brown and perhaps Robinson will have read him, of course. As for Daniel Finkelstein, who had never heard of Hobson until his handlers gave him this column to file on the eve of the local elections, he is a Churchill enthusiast. Say no more.
Not unusually for him, Jeremy Corbyn has been far too soft. It is time to double down. Starting with the fact that of course the international finance houses were fundamental to imperialism, and of course several of those were Jewish-owned. Facts are just facts.
An Edwardian Liberal critique of imperialism is hardly in the same league as the words of Edmund Burke, who called the Jews, “usurers, money-jobbers ... housebreakers, and receivers of stolen goods, and forgers of paper currency, more than we can conveniently hang.” If the Conservative MP Jesse Norman included that in his fairly recent biography of Burke, then I must have missed it.
It is wrong to tell Israelis to “go home” when the State of Israel was founded in the year that the Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury. There are now fourth generation Israelis. There is a right to engage in Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, and that right is enjoyed by public bodies as well as by private individuals. But academic and cultural boycotts are contrary to the fundamental character of scholarship, art and science. Sporting boycotts, like wars, tend to have a disproportionate impact on very young people with no public policy-making role, and it is not clear that they made any difference against apartheid in South Africa.
The definition of anti-Semitism in the Oxford English Dictionary is perfectly sufficient: “Hostility to or prejudice against Jews.” The adoption of a far more extensive definition by the Crown Prosecution Service, effectively criminalising dissent from it without reference to Parliament, is constitutionally monstrous. Equally reprehensible is that adoption by local authorities in order to discipline the trade union representatives of their workers.
Every critique of the divisive and anti-democratic role of “community leaders” is applicable to the Board of Deputies of British Jews, to the Jewish Leadership Council, to the Community Security Trust, to the Campaign Against Antisemitism, and to the Chief Rabbinate. The Liberal Establishment has imported the New York practice of branding as “anti-Semitic” any uppity black or other criticism of its hegemony and hypocrisy, be that its hypocrisy towards integration at home or its hypocrisy towards white settler colonialism abroad.
Israel was founded by anti-British terrorists of exceptional viciousness, and Israel armed Argentina during the Falklands War as an act of anti-British revenge. The expulsion of 700,000 people from Palestine on ethnic grounds in 1948 was as much a racist endeavour as any of the several other mass expulsions of the same period, notably those from the new states of India and Pakistan, and those of ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe. The attack on the USS Liberty has never been properly explained. Churches are burning in Israel, at the behest of rabbis on State salaries who maintain that the burning of Notre Dame would also have been a religious obligation.
There is nothing wrong with the dream of a single state in which human and civil rights were constitutionally protected while everyone had precisely one vote. But instead, by its enactment of the Nation-State Law, Israel has declared itself to be an apartheid state, while that Law remains in place. Yet anyone may convert to Judaism, so that Jews are no more a “race” than Christians or Muslims are. As my friend, the late Rabbi Lionel Blue, once said to me of the Jews, “You only have to look at us to see that we are all the descendants of converts.” Therefore, anti-Semitism is a form of religious bigotry, and not, in itself, a form of racism. That Hitler thought otherwise is not an argument.
And so on. The Conservative benches and the Labour backbenches may be Israeli Occupied Territories, but another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.
Not unusually for him, Jeremy Corbyn has been far too soft. It is time to double down. Starting with the fact that of course the international finance houses were fundamental to imperialism, and of course several of those were Jewish-owned. Facts are just facts.
An Edwardian Liberal critique of imperialism is hardly in the same league as the words of Edmund Burke, who called the Jews, “usurers, money-jobbers ... housebreakers, and receivers of stolen goods, and forgers of paper currency, more than we can conveniently hang.” If the Conservative MP Jesse Norman included that in his fairly recent biography of Burke, then I must have missed it.
It is wrong to tell Israelis to “go home” when the State of Israel was founded in the year that the Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury. There are now fourth generation Israelis. There is a right to engage in Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, and that right is enjoyed by public bodies as well as by private individuals. But academic and cultural boycotts are contrary to the fundamental character of scholarship, art and science. Sporting boycotts, like wars, tend to have a disproportionate impact on very young people with no public policy-making role, and it is not clear that they made any difference against apartheid in South Africa.
The definition of anti-Semitism in the Oxford English Dictionary is perfectly sufficient: “Hostility to or prejudice against Jews.” The adoption of a far more extensive definition by the Crown Prosecution Service, effectively criminalising dissent from it without reference to Parliament, is constitutionally monstrous. Equally reprehensible is that adoption by local authorities in order to discipline the trade union representatives of their workers.
Every critique of the divisive and anti-democratic role of “community leaders” is applicable to the Board of Deputies of British Jews, to the Jewish Leadership Council, to the Community Security Trust, to the Campaign Against Antisemitism, and to the Chief Rabbinate. The Liberal Establishment has imported the New York practice of branding as “anti-Semitic” any uppity black or other criticism of its hegemony and hypocrisy, be that its hypocrisy towards integration at home or its hypocrisy towards white settler colonialism abroad.
Israel was founded by anti-British terrorists of exceptional viciousness, and Israel armed Argentina during the Falklands War as an act of anti-British revenge. The expulsion of 700,000 people from Palestine on ethnic grounds in 1948 was as much a racist endeavour as any of the several other mass expulsions of the same period, notably those from the new states of India and Pakistan, and those of ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe. The attack on the USS Liberty has never been properly explained. Churches are burning in Israel, at the behest of rabbis on State salaries who maintain that the burning of Notre Dame would also have been a religious obligation.
There is nothing wrong with the dream of a single state in which human and civil rights were constitutionally protected while everyone had precisely one vote. But instead, by its enactment of the Nation-State Law, Israel has declared itself to be an apartheid state, while that Law remains in place. Yet anyone may convert to Judaism, so that Jews are no more a “race” than Christians or Muslims are. As my friend, the late Rabbi Lionel Blue, once said to me of the Jews, “You only have to look at us to see that we are all the descendants of converts.” Therefore, anti-Semitism is a form of religious bigotry, and not, in itself, a form of racism. That Hitler thought otherwise is not an argument.
And so on. The Conservative benches and the Labour backbenches may be Israeli Occupied Territories, but another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.
Where do you think Finkelstein's handlers are from?
ReplyDeleteI imagine you'll be joining him in the Lords before long. Last time I spoke to Jeremy and those in his office he was very warm about you.
Very droll. But George Galloway once said live on air that he would take a peerage if I did. So be careful what you wish for.
DeleteYou might be able to convert but the right of return favours atheist people like me from a Jewish family.
ReplyDeleteThe point still stands, though.
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