In his desperation to defend the IHRA Definition of anti-Semitism against the Jerusalem Definition, Rich prays in aid the support of anti-Semites
I am always pleased to be proved correct in my analysis! When a group of academics issued the Jerusalem Declaration on Anti-SemitismI gave it a critical welcome as I saw immediately that it could be a weapon in the fight against the IHRA’s conflation of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.
Almost immediately the Zionists went on the attack. To the notorious David Collier from the fascist wing of Zionism the JDA is ‘harmful to Jews’.
Dave Rich, the Deputy Director of the CST, an organisation that was set up by Mossad, Israel’s MI6 and the Board of Deputies, arguesthat the JDA ‘risks setting back genuine efforts to tackle antisemitism.’ Whereas in fact it is the IHRA, by defining anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism which does that.
When I submitted a Subject Access Request to the CST some years ago I got back a file containing over 300 pages. Indeed so copious was the file that there were things in it that I could not recall. When I come to write my autobiography the first thing I will do will be to submit another SAR to the CST! In reality the CST is in the business of monitoring the opponents of Zionism and Israeli Apartheid.
Why you might ask should the CST spy on fellow Jews if their purpose is, as they claim, simply to protect Britain’s Jewish community? Or are they saying that anti-Zionist Jews pose a threat to British Jews?
David Schraub, an Assistant Professor no less, was on the attack against the JDA in Ha'aretz. Being a senior academic however doesn’t stop Schraub from getting even the most basic facts wrong. Contrary to his assertion Jackie Walker was not expelled from the Labour Party for anti-Semitism. Schraub is one of those cheap imitation academics who reproduce the lies of others and dress it up as profundity. It is a form of political plagiarism.
Dave Rich wrote an articlein the Jewish Chronicle ‘We don’t need another definition of Jew hate’. Which is of course true. What he omits to mention is that the IHRA isn’t a definition of anything let alone anti-Semitism. As the Jewish former Court of Appeal Judge Stephen Sedley said, the IHRA isn’t a definition because it’s indefinite! David Feldman, a Zionist whom I’ve criticisedoften enough, describedthe IHRA as ‘bewilderingly imprecise.’
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The reason that Rich is opposed to the JDA is that it is, despite its flaws, a definition of anti-Semitism. Consider the central 38 word core of the IHRA, it definesanti-Semitism thus:
“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
What is this ‘certain perception’? If it ‘may be expressed as hatred’ what else may it be expressed as? The IHRA is a model of obscurity and obfuscation. And deliberately so.
Compare this with the JDA’s core definition:
Antisemitism is discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish).
Not only is it less than half the IHRA definition it is crystal clear and explicit as to what anti-Semitism is. That is the real Zionist objection. Thelast thing Zionist zealots want is a definition which is actually a definition. They want it to be obscure, obfuscatory, hazy and open to interpretation because then they can, by a process of political osmosis, infect every area of criticism of Zionism and Israel with the charge of ‘anti-Semitism’.
Zionists want to respond to criticism of Israel, not with intellectual or reasoned arguments but ‘feelings’ of threats to their ‘welfare’ and ‘safety’. Even an 84 year old film producer, Ken Loach, was a threatto the Zionist snowflakes at St. Peter’s College Oxford.
And if, like David Miller, you point to the fact that the students attacking him belong to a Zionist organisation, the Union of Jewish Students, which receives its funding direct from the Israeli Embassy, then you are even more of a threat. And 100 stupid right-wing MPs, including Caroline Lucas, will sign a statement demanding that you are sacked.
The reason for this is obvious. It is impossible to defend Apartheid Israel and the Zionists have to resort to identity politics.
In the face of the big Goebbels style lie, we need to reiterate that anti-Semitism is about discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence directed at Jews because they are Jews.
How does Dave Rich, a fake academic who has written a rubbish book The Left’s Jewish Problem, get over this? *
Rich decides to use the anti-Semitic attacks on George Soros, the philanthropic Jewish billionaire who is portrayed as the typical international Jewish financier, as the reason for not adopting the JDA. He saysthat the JDA
‘risks missing all but the most overt cases.’ The Hungarian government’s campaign against George Soros never mentions the fact Soros is Jewish but it derives its resonance and force from the use of antisemitic language.
In fact it was blindingly obvious that the Hungarian Prime Minister , Viktor Orban’s target was Jewish. Orban, won the 2018 General Election in Hungary by basing his campaign on the demonisation of George Soros. He didn’t need to explicitly mention that Soros was Jewish because this was so well known and his supporters made it explicit.
Orban’s campaign was backed by right-wing Zionists including Netanyahu’s son Yair, who producedan anti-Semitic cartoon praised which was praisedby neo-Nazis. Orban was quotedas saying during his campaign:
“We are fighting an enemy that is different from us. Not open, but hiding; not straightforward but crafty; not honest but base; not national but international; does not believe in working but speculates with money; does not have its own homeland but feels it owns the whole world,”
It doesn’t take many brain cells to work out that Jews are the object here. It is a recitation of standard Jewish conspiracy theories. But here is the problem? Among those countries who have adoptedthe IHRA is Hungary! Indeed it was under Viktor Orban that Hungary adopted the IHRA definition. Orban is a big supporter of the IHRA as is fellow anti-Semite Donald Trump.
And let us not forget that in 2018 Conservative MEPs votedto support Orban against a censure motion in the European Parliament. I don’t remember the Zionists, who were so taken up with Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘anti-Semitism’ protesting that the Tories were anti-Semitic. Strange that.
And for over a decade the same Tory MEPs were in the same European Conservative Reform Group as Latvian and Poland anti-Semites. Again without any criticism from the Zionists. Indeed as we know, the Zionist Board of Deputies totally ignored the far greater Tory anti-Semitism for the simple reason that the campaign waged against the Labour Left had nothing to do with anti-Semitism.
Indeed when Jonathan Freedland criticisedthe Tories for getting into the same sewer as Roberts Zile, the Latvian MEP who marched with the veterans of the Latvia Waffen SS each year and with the equally repugnant Michal Kaminski, who had defended the pogromists of Jedwabne who had the blood of up to 1600 Jews on their hands, who defended these fascists? None other than the Editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Stephen Pollard in an article Poland's Kaminski is not an antisemite: he's a friend to Jews. Pollard’s reasons were that Kaminski was ardently pro-Zionist which is true for many anti-Semites.
Genuine anti-Semites have no difficulty supporting the IHRA because it isn’t about anti-Semitism but about shoe horning anti-Zionism into the anti-Semitism mould. But Dave Rich is too dishonest to admit this. Instead he thinks that the readers of the Jewish Chronicle are too stupid to ask questions (and he is probably right about that!).
Another fact is that under Benjamin Netanyahu Israel too has adopted the IHRA definition. This is not surprising since the whole purpose of the IHRA is to protect the Israeli State from criticism. But who is it that has close and friendly relations with the anti-Semitic Orban? Netanyahu!
As the Times of Israel said, quoting a Hungarian official: ‘Netanyahu and Orban belong to same political family’. This if nothing else demonstrates the hypocrisy of the Zionist claque who will stop at nothing to conflate anti-racist and anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism with Dave Rich leading the charge. Rich should ask how it is that Israel elects a Prime Minister who maintains such friendly relations with an anti-Semitic regime and leave the question of what is anti-Semitic to those who have some understanding of it.
Tony Greenstein
* When Rich expressed is delight that I had read his book on Twitter I had to suggest that he reign in his pleasure. After all, I told him, I have also read Hitler’s Mein Kampf!