Is it us, or them, or Israel?

This scene was posted in Mail Online and is one of hundreds of photos published in newspapers and online, and thus very widely seen, on August 5th, 2014 showing the devastation in Gaza caused by Operation Protective Edge.

New antisemitism, or new alarmism?

These letters appear in the January 15 edition of The Independent

As a practising orthodox Jew, I am beginning to wonder whether I am alone in not feeling uncomfortable being a Jew in the UK and not questioning whether it can be my home for many years to come (“The new antisemitism”, 14 January).

Yes, there is antisemitism in this country, just as there is Islamophobia, homophobia and gender inequality. Yet the media’s apparent need to portray the Jewish community as victims so enthusiastically is increasingly troubling.

 The Chanukiah / menora in Trafalgar Sq, December 2014

Many Jewish people have forged successful careers in the UK and found their heritage to be absolutely no impediment. We have a government that supports faith schools, a Prime Minister who hosts a Chanukah party at his residence, a 20ft Chanukiah in Trafalgar Square, thriving synagogues, kosher restaurants, coffee shops and book stores.

Isn’t it time to focus a little more on celebrating the great things about the Jewish community rather than wallowing in a negativity that might well sell newspapers but cannot be healthy for the United Kingdom?

Shimon Cohen
London NW5

The current social discourse allows many British people to feel more comfortable admitting they don’t like Jews. But they never did. The monster of antisemitism had been subdued for a very long time, but it had never died nor lost strength, it just lost the ability to express itself.

UK Jews always knew it was there and felt its presence just under the surface, even as they were reluctant to talk about it or even admit it to themselves. The monster has been woken by the media’s unhealthy and unhelpful obsession with the Middle East conflict.

Killing the obsession would subdue the monster. Of course, the biased reporting that goes on is clearly a driver of antisemitism in the UK and elsewhere, in particular the depiction of moral equivalence between the sides for the sake of a better story, reluctance to call terror by its name, and the wholesale buying into the Hamas propaganda which demonises Israelis.

But that pales in comparison to the damage done by the sheer weight of attention to the issue. The media should simply stop reporting the Israel/Arab conflict so much, and report instead on many, many areas of the world where injustices are taking place on an exponentially larger scale. Too many causes have been overlooked, too many other critical issues ignored. At least, find another story to misrepresent!

The Palestinians will never make peace for as long as they know that they have the world’s attention. The day a deal is cut and the conflict is solved, and the Palestinians have a state, they would become as significant in world affairs as say, Micronesia.

Even if the discourse does change, of course many British people still won’t like Jews. But at least they might go back to keeping it to themselves.

Daniel Grodner
Tel Aviv

I was most confused recently to find a survey in my inbox, full of leading questions directing me to express fear about the growth of antisemitism and inviting me to agree that as a result my thoughts had turned to emigration to Israel. This struck me as odd, because Israel constantly promotes itself as a country surrounded by enemies, surely making Israel one of the least safe places for Jews.

Vigilance against antisemitism is important, but manufactured fear is in no one’s interests.

Diana Neslen
Ilford, Essex

Jonathan Fenby writes about antisemitism in France (8 January). There are regular attacks on religious establishments and amenities, physical attacks on those going about their daily lives.

Jews are victims in France daily and they are leaving the country in their droves. France will be Judenfrei before 2020 thanks to the Islamic terror campaign and the inertia of successive governments. This campaign is achieving what even the Nazis failed to do.

Wake up, Europe, before it’s too late.

Stephen Spencer Ryde*
London N3

Your report that record numbers of British Jews are making aliyah to Israel should be viewed in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict. If Islamic anti-Semitism is driving Jews to leave Europe in increasing numbers, then a solution to Palestinian aspirations for an independent state will be far less likely to be realised.

As Israel has to accommodate many more immigrants from Europe, so the West Bank will be needed for new settlers. Where does that leave the prospect for an independent Palestine?

Peter Beyfus
Amesbury, Wiltshire

Muslims aren’t guilty by association

The brutal slaughter at the Charlie Hebdo office was nothing but base criminality. But it was committed by three men, not a community – still less a religion. But the Muslim community as a whole is being charged with collective guilt by association.

I do not recall white Norwegians being asked by the media to scrutinise their values and beliefs in the same way following the murderous rampage by the neo-Nazi Anders Breivik in 2011, in which he murdered 77 young people. Such an argument would have been absurd. It is equally absurd to condemn millions of people because they happen to be the co-religionists of three brutal murderers.

Sasha Simic
London N16
Below: guilty by association, Madiha and Afsha outside a west London mosque, 2014. Photo by Olivia Harris/Reuters

A modest proposal to ensure community harmony in this country would be for the Government to issue a list of historical personages who may not be lampooned, caricatured or criticised, on pain of a fine for a first offence, imprisonment for a second and perhaps, especially if the infringement involved one of the more revered religious figures, for a third, death.

Your readers could doubtless add more to the list, but my suggestions would include Jesus, Mohamed, Guru Nanak, Buddha, Odin, Henry VIII, Oliver Cromwell, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Mother Teresa, Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee, Nelson Mandela and Margaret Thatcher.

Nick Wray
Derby

Many of the British politicians who claim to support Charlie Hebdo in France are opposed to secularism in the UK. Thus we still have compulsory religious worship in state schools, discrimination against non-Christians (whether teachers or pupils) in those same schools, bishops in our legislature, and atheists banned from the BBC’s Thought for the Day. What hypocrisy!

Robin Paice
Southsea, Hampshire

***

Letters sent to Guardian, unpublished

From Richard Kuper (JfJfP)
Despite what Joseph Pearlman and Yiftah Curiel write (Letters 14 Jan) Deborah Maccoby did not “blame the victims” for antisemitism. Rather, she was asking what could be done about the conflation of Jews with Israel, this blaming of Jews everywhere for what Israel does, which is at the heart of the antisemitism being discussed.

Is this conflation reinforced by claims that Jews naturally support Israel, whatever it does, a view the Board of Deputies of British Jews encourages? Is it enhanced by Netanyahu’s statement “I wish to tell to all French and European Jews – Israel is your home.” Yes, and yes.

Can we do anything about it? Yes, by saying loudly and clearly, that Israel’s war on Gaza and its relentless undermining of Palestinian lives and rights more generally is “Not in our Name”.

And, pace Jonathan Freedland (Charlie Hebdo: first they came for the cartoonists, then they came for the Jews, 9 Jan), Jews who have taken this stand have done so not to ensure that “our place in polite society is … secure”, but because it is the right thing to do.

From Heinz Grunewald (JfJfP signatory)

Readers of the Guardian are intelligent enough to understand that the embassy’s letter did not deal with the real issue: Israel’s false claim that Jews everywhere support its criminal behaviour.

Israel’s outrageous violation of accepted norms of humanity combined with its widely propagated claim of support from Jews the world over has the inevitable consequence of increasing antisemitism. Netanyahu and his government are not stupid: this outcome suits them well as it causes panic amongst Jews abroad and promotes immigration into Israel.

The real antisemites are directing operations from Israel.

From Ian Macdonald

I suppose the letters on behalf of the Israeli Embassy and the Board of Deputies of British Jews (14 January) were inevitable distorted reactions to the letter from Deborah Maccoby the previous day, on behalf of Jews for Justice for Palestinians (JfJfP). I am not jewish but I know the group’s members, and support their reasoned views, predictably misrepresented subsequently by these other fierce critics. Even the Israeli Government would claim a vague policy of support for “jewish-arab dialogue” and “a two state solution”, which the Board of Deputies’ president proudly claimed was also the policy of Peace Now UK branch (which he formerly chaired), but this tolerance is not found in some of the Board’s other statements. In any case it is support for the “oppressive policies” and actions of the Israeli Government that JfJfP are targeting, not the theoretical policies. These include bombing Gazans in their thousands, unpunished soldiers shooting children who stray too close to the 20 ft high “Separation Wall”, treating  Palestinians like animals at the numerous checkpoints, allowing violent settlers to attack shepherds and destroy Palestinian farmland, and preventing essential food, medical and building supplies reaching Gazans, demolishing hundreds of Palestinian homes, and taking over West Bank land for building new Israeli settler homes. Deborah Maccoby rightly accuses the wider jewish diaspora of failing to say “not in my name” when these atrocities occur, as most muslim groups have done this week at the attacks by extremists in the name of islam. On top of that we have seen Netanyahu hijack the grief of the jewish families in Paris by persuading them to bury their loved ones in Israel, and invite as many French jews as possible to migrate to Israel, while present as a leading guest of the French President!

* A previous letter of alarm from Stephen Spencer Ryde, NW3, about antisemitic incidents in Britain was published by The Independent on August 15, 2014, during the Operation Protective Edge onslaught on Gaza (July 8th – August 26th, 2014) in which around 2150 Palestinians, about a third of them children, were killed. Might that Israeli attack may have played a role in the incidents he describes?