“I think people are missing the point about what is fuelling this [i.e., the upsurge in what is called Anti-Semitism in recent times]. Anti-Semitism is always with us, will always be with us, has been with us since the Jewish people first emerged. To that extent it is a contagion which at best is kept down. And, if not being kept down, it has been released, and what is frightening is it has become normalised…” (Melanie Phillips, Trevor Phillips Show, Sky News, 3.5.26).
That explanation of the matter was given by Melanie Phillips, a well-established right-of-centre journalist on the British media who, by her own account, has two national loyalties as a Jew—one to the British state and the other to the Jewish state. It is inconceivable to her that her two national loyalties should come into conflict but, if they did, she said that her loyalty would be to the Jewish state.
In stating frankly that she was primarily a Jewish nationalist and secondarily a British subject, Melanie Phillips only stated what was the case—a case plainly asserted by the founders of the Zionist organisation, and assumed to be the case, on the basis of observation, by the Gentile masses amidst which the segments of the Jewish nation in its dispersion lives.
The Jewish nation, which existed without a territorial base, claimed the right to acquire a territorial base so that the Jews could become a normal people. Living as a separate people amidst other peoples, on the territories of other peoples, required the abnormal development of certain qualities and the decline of others, and it always generated hostility towards them on the part of the normal peoples amidst which they lived.
The founders of Zionism did not deny that Jewish national life in dispersed segments amidst other peoples produced distortions. The host nations had to provide the general framework of social life in which they lived, while they engaged in specialist activities. Settling the Jews in a territory of their own would enable them in the course of time to become like other peoples.
That, at least, was the Zionist case presented to the Gentiles. But, in the working out of things, that did not prove to be the case.
The Jewish State was established three generations ago in Palestine by terrorist action to which the British Labour Government surrendered. The new State quickly established its military dominance over the Palestinian majority and over the surrounding Arab states—which were the stunted creations of the British and French Empires.
It is the least normal State in the world.
It acted in the first instance as a British proxy against the Egyptian independence movement, and, as the British Empire wilted in the shade of the US, it became an American proxy.
In all of this the Diaspora—the segments of the Jewish nation in other countries—was necessary to it. It could hardly have survived without the energetic activity of the Diaspora in support of it.
Its problem as a State is that it is a process of conquest which, three quarters of a century after the founding act of destruction, the Nakba, has still not been completed.
The things that it must do to native populations in the process of re-establishing the Mosaic system appears to Gentile understanding to be sufficient reason for the increasing hostility towards Israel and the whole Jewish nationalist project. But Melanie Phillips insists that hostility towards Jews has nothing to do with what the Jews as a collective body are doing to others. Jews are hated by others simply and entirely because they are Jews. Anti-Semitism is a disease that is inherent in Gentile existence. It appeared in the world along with the Jews, before there could be any empirical ground for it. In that sense, it has no cause and therefore no cure. The only thing to be done about it is muzzle expression of it!
It was a remarkable thing that an argumentatively intellectual interviewer like Sir Trevor Phillips let Melanie Phillips’ blunt statement of the Jewish case pass without question or comment—But perhaps not!
Sir Keir Starmer, who succeeded Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party, gained the leadership by posturing as a Corbynite. On becoming Leader, he branded Corbyn as an Anti-Semite and expelled him from the Party by withdrawing the Whip from him in the House of Commons.
Corbyn was charged, under Starmer’s authority, with having infected the Labour Party with Anti-Semitism. A purge of the Party was instituted, with the assistance of the Government of Israel. Private communications and Internet Posts, some many years old, were raked over and members were expelled on the slightest whiff of suspicion. Many more Labour Party members gave up on the Party and let their memberships lapse in disgust.
After a couple of years of McCarthyism, the Party was declared free of Anti-Semitism—which meant effectively muzzled.
Corbyn, the most consistently anti-racist politician in British politics, made little effort to defend himself. He accepted a definition of Anti-Semitism drawn up by the Jewish authorities, but said that definition did not rule out criticism of Israel over its action against the refugees it had made. The Jewish authorities said that this spoiled his acceptance of their definition—he had accepted the letter of it, but not the spirit!
(The Chief Rabbi had said repeatedly that, while it was possible in theory to condemn actions of the Jewish State without being Anti-Semitic, it was not possible in practice.)
The main thing that happened in the run-up to the 2024 General Election was the purge! The Purge stifled the expression of opinion, and therefore stifled thought on the particular subject at which it was directed, and the Party was therefore said to have made itself electable again. It was elected, even though there was a drastic reduction in its vote, compared with the vote when Corbyn was leader.
The Labour Party gained a landslide victory with a third of the vote, because of the peculiarities of the First-Past-The Post system. Sir Keir won a crushing majority and had five years to do as he pleased with it. He lasted less that two years. He was crushed by his own majority—which he had prepared for power by indoctrinating it against Anti-Semitism.
When he set about governing, he was thwarted by his voluminous back-benches which, throughout the irrelevant purging, had remained largely Corbynite—which is to say, traditional Labour Left—in outlook.
And this coincided with the Israeli slaughter in Gaza, which generated an upsurge of anti-Jewish opinion in society at large—about which Labour leaders said nothing for fear of saying the wrong thing!
And, when Israel said it intended to stop the entry of food, fuel and medicine to Gaza, Sir Keir said that seemed OK.
So crass was he that he shocked the large Muslim population in Britain into beginning to organise itself politically. And he left his Foreign Office without a Middle Eastern policy.
When the United States and Israel launched combined bombing raids on Iran, in the expectation of destroying the State, Britain did not comment. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said the US saw it as being in its national interest to do what it was doing, and that was that!
Brendan Clifford
