Like Simon Lincoln Reader, I have always been impressed by the family values evident in Jewish communities. In my case, I have even been treated like a member of the community, with kind-hearted, generous Jews bringing food to my Sea Point home and praying for my child when he was gravely ill as a five-year-old. Jews don’t seem to brag about their good deeds, either; they just get on with them. Sadly, Jews remain a target of attack and prejudice, and it is distressing to see pockets of anti-semitism everywhere, from London to Cape Town. In his weekly diary, London-based Saffer Lincoln Reader picks up on the nasty scourge of anti-semitism and reminds us that we should try harder to eliminate discrimination against Jews, just as we work so hard to counter discrimination against others. – Jackie Cameron
One day in December
By Simon Lincoln Reader*
I was always eager to move to (what is a considered) “a Jewish area”, but my experiences over the past three years have surpassed expectations. As a friend to Israel and an admirer of its free markets, resourcefulness and ingenuity, I’ve always believed that whilst we in the agnostic west talk of family values and order as the foundations of a fulfilling, successful life, Jewish communities live them.
On weekends families led by bearded men wearing shtreimels quietly walk the streets. When they walk alone the men stare at the ground, as if irreversibly lost in thought. Golders Green High Street, a 15 minute walk north from my house, features some of the best and most underrated restaurants in the city, along with Kosher delis and travel agents with El Al paraphernalia and posters of Tel Aviv at sunset plastered onto the windows.
And since December last year an overwhelming sense of relief has filled the neighbourhood. On the 13th of that month the anti-semitic Labour Party lost the general election, consigning themselves to another decade in opposition.
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When Jeremy Corbyn, aided by the unions, swept to power in 2015, his inner circle made a calculated trade: the traditional Jewish Labour vote for the emerging Muslim one. For them it was the convergence of numbers, contemporary social justice studies and most importantly, consistency: throughout his own career Corbyn disguised a mild subscription to the great conspiracy theories of this age by associating with extremists, terrorists and other enemies of the free world, most of the time with impunity.
Whether his feelings on Jews are occasional or accidental became irrelevant. His own poor leadership and coupled to bad advise permitted hard left, brazenly anti-semitic supporters to seize ground vacated by terrified moderates with a view consisting of two parts: society is made up of layers of intersectional suffering and, within that model, Muslims account for the majority of this generations’ persecuted.
It was always perfectly reasonable to criticise foreign policies that destabilised regions within the Middle East. But Corbynism demanded the inclusion of wild, offensive and ahistorical hearsay to the crises, all of which predictably led to Israel and Jews.
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Like many of the more extreme subjects within the LGBT debate, the renewed beliefs that accompanied Corbyn (and were to define much of his term as leader) should never have achieved the prominence they did. These things are not for the real, sensible, working world, and should have been confined to student squats in Venice Beach or the mad fringes of Portland.
In 2017, about the time I moved near to Golders Green, Roni’s bakery in West Hampstead was repeatedly vandalised, its windows smashed, and swastikas were graffitied onto walls in the surrounding neighbourhood. Other suburbs with Jewish inhabitants suffered similar incidents: 22 violent anti-semites were arrested in Stamford Hill that year – a number that has since grown. The invective was such that in 2018, then Labour MP Luciana Berger arrived at a party conference in Liverpool flanked by police. She later resigned.
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Labour’s response was extraordinary. Instead of admitting to the problem, it manufactured a counter allegation against its critics and political opponents: “Islamophobia” (it is still unclear as to what this word actually means, as “phobia” is defined as an irrational fear. It is not technically irrational to fear the enforced subjugation of women or homosexuals).
The party hoped that this riposte would interrupt the growing number of cases handed to its dispute directorate, but what it was really doing was Corbyn’s work: inventing a new scale of grievance wherein anti-semitism would be classified as a more acceptable form of racism.
It failed. Instead an investigation into anti-semitism was ordered by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), a body that rarely involves itself in politics.
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All of which brings to Media24’s subsidiary News24, an undoubtedly popular source of information particularly for the youth.
This week it was announced that Mcebo Dlamini has been convicted of public violence relating to his participation in the Fees Must Fall protests. But Dlamini is just as known for his admiration of Adolf Hitler. Despite his documented anti-semitism, he has enjoyed significant exposure in the Voices section of the website.
News24, in the manner of Corbynism, could theoretically dismiss these concerns on the basis the website provides an equal platform to Howard Feldman, a Jewish commentator, however, Howard has never expressed admiration for someone like Baruch Goldstein.
The lessons that have emerged from the past three years from my neighbourhood could benefit the editorial policies of News24. There is no scale of prejudice – no one form of discrimination better or worse than another. This analysis extends beyond censorship, and speaks to judgment itself: if the website wants to pursue the line of Iqbal Surve, then it should, but I don’t believe its heart is as corrupted.
- Simon Lincoln Reader works and lives in London. You can follow him on Medium.
