Tara Todras-Whitehill / AP/Press Association. All rights reserved.The idea that Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party and the left generally in the UK are becoming increasingly antisemitic is gaining momentum. Predictably, the Israel lobby as well as other supporters of Israel have sought to capitalise on this supposed rise and turn it to their advantage.
Nick Cohen’s ‘Why I’m becoming a Jew and you should too’ sees criticism of Israel by those who oppose Israel’s policies and actions against the Palestinians as somehow implicated in this rise. The article hinges on his broader view of the left and its supposed connections to antisemitism. For Cohen antisemitism has always been a way of fighting progress – human rights, worker’s rights, democracy and so on – in countries like Tsarist Russia and Nazi Germany.
Arab dictators and Saudi clerics today, who oppose all these freedoms, continue to do so because they see them as, “nothing but swindles that hide the machinations of the secret Jewish rulers of the world”. The left – activists, institutions, academics – buy into a "politer" version of this. They believe that, “western governments are the main source of the ills of the world. The 'Israel lobby' controls western foreign policy. Israel itself is the 'root cause' of all the terrors of the Middle East, from the Iraq war to Islamic State”.
