Writing of the antisemitism controversy in the Jewish Chronicle on 5 May, Tony Klug warned that,
this whole saga might generate a resentment against Jews…. It is time to calm down, end the hysteria and restore a sense of proportion…. While antisemitism is monstrous – and, like all forms of racism, should be vigorously dealt with – false accusations of antisemitism are monstrous too.
The groups orchestrating the controversy, in our universities and the Labour Party, including the Union of Jewish Students and the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM), are unaffected by this reasoning. Indeed, in the case of JLM, the controversy has become an effective recruiting tool.
The saga – and accompanying hysteria – has seen people committed to universal human rights being charged with being antisemites, and suspended from the Labour party. It has also seen Labour members who consider themselves anti-racists joining the Jewish Labour Movement out of a mistaken wish to show ‘solidarity with Jewish people.’ A move that centre-left think tank, Progress has encouraged. JLM considers itself to represent the interests of ‘Jewish people,’ and has characterised non-Zionist Jews as imposters and ‘contrary’ for perversely disagreeing with what is expected or desired of them: loyalty to Israel.
JLM derives its legitimacy from being a formal affiliate of the Labour Party. But it also organises within the pro-settlement World Zionist Organisation, and alongside its sister party in Israel, Havodah – the pro-apartheid and anti-Arab Israeli Labor Party.
JLM is committed to undermining the Palestinian civil society, human rights movement that seeks an end to Israel’s serial violations of international laws, through the non-violent tactic of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).
JLM is also affiliated to the Board of Deputies of British Jews (BOD) and the Zionist Federation of the UK. BOD and the Jewish Leadership Council launched the Fair Play Campaign group in 2006 that works to ‘coordinate activity against boycotts of Israel and other anti-Zionist campaigns.’ For the last ten years these organisations have sought to portray BDS as antisemitic and to smear as antisemitic or ‘self-hating’ anti-Zionist Jewish human rights defenders. Their clear objective is to maintain the total impunity Israel currently enjoys.
Israel has launched a desperate and dangerous campaign of intimidation against BDS human rights defenders. At Israel’s request, governments in the US, UK, France, Canada and elsewhere are introducing anti-democratic legislation and taking other repressive measures to undermine the movement. The most powerful apologist for Israel in the UK is the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, Michael Gove. Israel has placed an effective travel ban on BDS movement co-founder Omar Barghouti, following thinly-veiled threats of physical violence against him by Israeli government ministers that prompted Amnesty to express concern “for the safety and liberty of Palestinian human rights defender Omar Barghouti”.
It’s not hard to see parallels between South African apartheid rule and Israel’s decades-long military occupation, land grab and segregationist policies. The anti-apartheid movement struggled for decades before it gained legitimacy and the support of western governments. Neither is it hard to imagine how it was mocked by white supremacists, who rightly feared its growing effectiveness as a threat to ethnic-supremacist rule in Africa.
