Suddenly it’s lonely to be a Jew
Something much more than anger at Israel’s campaign in Gaza is behind the rising tide of anti-semitism, writes HUGORIFKIND.
Iwas the only Jew at my Edinburgh boarding school. Honestly. The only one. There was an art teacher for a bit, and that was nice, but the only other non-Christian pupil was a guy two years up and he was a Buddhist. We did not have a bond. There was also this younger, quite unusual boy who was widely reputed to worship the gods of the Vikings. Although in retrospect that seems unlikely.
At first I didn’t really tell people. I mean, I was 13. What are you going to do? Wear a badge? Word got out after I went home for Rosh Hashanah, though, amid fevered speculation about what on earth had happened to me. Some thought expulsion, others disease or death. Some friends knew, but they were brave and noble and had read Anne Frank’s diaries at prep school, so it had to be beaten out of them by the prefects. The Jewish conspiracy was me.
It was fine, though, being the school Jew. Once they actually knew, the prefects weren’t interested and nor was anybody else. And, in many respects, all of this set a template for my experiences thereafter. I have never, really, had Jewish friends or Jewish interests or moved in Jewish circles, and my world has never been a Jewish one. And so, just occasionally, when I have heard fellow Jews talk of a world out there in which it is uncomfortable to be a Jew, I have found myself getting the hump. Because that’s my world they are talking about. And I like it. And frankly, I’ve been comfortable as anything.
Well, that was then. This is now. And do you know what? Suddenly I’m not. Something is afoot. It is creeping and it is tentative, but it is definitely there. And it scares me.
There is a school of thought, I know, that says that now is not the time to be talking about antisemitism. Let us give that short shrift. Now is exactly the time, because now is when it is happening. Burnt synagogues in France, petrol bombs in Germany. The Community Security Trust, which provides protection for Jewish institutions in Britain, recorded more anti-semitic incidents in July than in any month, save one (January 2009) since 1984.
None of this is imaginary. ‘‘Ah,’’ say some, ‘‘but does that matter more than 2000 deaths in Gaza?’’ To which I reply, screw you. Screw you, for even asking the question. Would a war conducted by a Muslim state negate the need to worry about Islamophobia? No. So screw you. You have an agenda. You may not know it, but you do.
Something is different now. Antisemitism has always spiked when Israel deploys the Israeli Defence Force, but this time the ire is not confined to Israelis. Instead, far more than before, protesters are using, and twisting, the word ‘‘Zionists’’. Many, even most, probably don’t mean any harm by it. Perhaps they see it as a narrowing term, a way to specifically not attack all Jews or even all Israelis, but merely those who wish to ethnically cleanse Palestine of Palestinians and put Jews there instead.
The trouble is, ‘‘Zionism’’ doesn’t mean that. It’s a broad term and it refers to the simple fact of there being a Jewish homeland at all. Believe in a two-state solution? You’re a Zionist. Strive for a binational state? Also a Zionist. The United Nations is Zionist. Technically, even the Palestinian Authority is Zionist; that’s what the damn word means. And if that sounds ludicrous, and I suspect it does, then that only goes to show how successfully the term has been tarnished.
Today when Jews hear an attack on Zionists they hear an attack on Israel being not narrowed, but broadened to include them too. ‘‘We have a Scottish-wide tour planned, working to make Scotland a Zionistfree zone,’’ tweeted the former Respect candidate Yvonne Ridley last week. That’s people, she’s talking about. Not a place or an ideology. People. Vile.
But motives drift and those who hold them don’t necessarily notice. I mean, look, it’s not as though I think Israel is doing the right thing. Far from it. In my view, if your only military success entails bombing a country where 50 per cent of people are under 18, then it’s not a military strategy that you should be following. But why should it be this war alone that gets people out on the streets and Baroness Warsi out of office?
‘‘It’s because the West supports them,’’ protesters say. So is it nicer to get crucified by the Islamic State than bombed by somebody who once had awkward, resentful tea with Barack Obama? Is that how it works? No. Israel is special because Israel is special, and that’s just the way it now is. Probably, most people no longer even think about why. But Jews do.
Never before have I had the sense that I have now of a body of people actually itching for Israeli villainy, so that they can scream out the anger they already feel. Never before would I have looked at anti-semitic attacks in Germany, and particularly in France, without being confident that they were merely the short-term consequences of Muslim immigration. Never before have I been so reluctant to write what I really think about Israeli policy towards Palestinians – which is not complimentary, or even nearly – for fear of the slugs and monsters who would crawl into the sunshine to agree.
Most of all, never before have I felt that attitudes towards Jews in Europe – and even, albeit less so, in Britain – could grow far, far worse before a whole swathe of supposedly progressive thought was even prepared to notice.
It is not a nice feeling, this last one. More than anything else it is lonely, and being a Jew has never made me feel that before. Not even when I was the only one.