The far left cannot abandon antisemitism
It would rather embrace Iranian reactionaries
This is an updated and extended version of an argument that originally appeared in the Jewish Chronicle. It takes antisemitism seriously but is written from the perspective of an opponent of the Netanyahu. Believe me when I say that long experience has taught me that this position provokes attacks from all sides. If you want to join in the comments section, be my guest, attack away. But you must sign-up as a subscriber to do it.
On Saturday 31 January a grotesque spectacle presented itself to Londoners. Elements of the pro-Palestinian left welcomed supporters of the Iranian state to their demo against Israel.
Bystanders watched as apologists for a regime that has killed thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators in the past few weeks – up to 35,000 according to the highest estimates—trooped by without a squeak of condemnation from their fellow marchers.
They were not merely opposing American military intervention against Iran, but actively celebrating a theocracy, which is against everything the left pretends to support.
The Iranian state is violently misogynist, it oppresses the Kurds and every other ethnic minority, and persecutes gay men – killing some, forcing others to undergo gender reassignment surgery. Like religious bigots all over the world the regime is fantastically corrupt, and, like the fascists before it, uses antisemitic conspiracy theory to maintain its power.
A left that once believed in secularism and the Enlightenment now hails the cheerleaders of a reactionary and obscurantist theocracy as being on “the right side of history.”
Imagine trying to explain Saturday’s protest to Iranians mourning their dead. The only way you might do it is by saying that the radical left – or to be fair, its worst elements – are happy to go along with misogyny, homophobia and anti-Jewish racism because Iran hates Israel.
Talk like this and you meet a familiar objection, which I want to take seriously and not dismiss with a polemical flourish.
“We are not antisemites,” activists say. “We are anti-Zionists.”
Should we believe them? Or is the distinction between an antisemite and an anti-Zionist a distinction without a difference?
These questions are not just theoretical. Islamists are murdering Jews in the UK. Fighting antisemitism is a matter of life and death. A failure to confront it also leaves Muslims and white leftists prey to the conspiracy theories of tyrannical regimes and movements.
From a strategic point of view, accusations of left-wing antisemitism reinforce the power of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu – they are a gift that keeps on giving for the right.
I happily accept that most people who call themselves “anti-Zionists” simply abhor the mass killings of civilians in Gaza. They look at Netanyahu and his crew and are repelled by their attacks on freedom of the press and the independence of the judiciary at home and their support for Trump and Orban abroad.
It’s their prerogative to call themselves “anti-Zionists”. But that is not what the label means – as the sinister men who egg them on know all too well.
