Posted on 06/18/2007 5:49:41 AM PDT by SJackson
Britain, which only recently celebrated the 350th anniversary of its Jewish community, is "a lost cause" for Israel, Evelyn Gordon wrote in her June 6 Post column. This assessment follows in the wake of British academics and journalists having instructed their trade unions to adopt policies supporting a boycott of Israel. Groups of architects and doctors are trying to do the same in their professions. And, UNISON, Britain's biggest trade union, is next in line to decide whether to join the bandwagon.
Similar campaigns exist in other countries, but nowhere is boycotting the Jewish state being pursued with the same vigor as in the UK.
Many have been left scratching their head and asking: Why Britain?
The answer begins with two words: Balfour Declaration. British post-colonial guilt is felt more keenly in relation to Israel/Palestine than any other former colony. Balfour was the "original sin," according to George Galloway, "which has been the cause of all the problems in the region," a wrong which must be righted.
If you believe, as much of the British Left does, that Israel was artificially implanted in 1948 by a retreating empire to act as the West's watchdog, then the creation of Israel was just another conspiracy and Britain was the central conspirator.
Britain is now back as an occupying power in the Middle East, and its presence in Iraq generates enormous anger and shame on the British Left. That it was a Labor government that took the country to war is the greatest betrayal. This puts British leftists in a difficult position: They can't boycott themselves, and to call for a boycott of America would be only slightly less ludicrous. So all that anger, guilt and frustration are neatly displaced onto Israel, imperialism's little brother.
Israel also happens to be a Jewish state and Jews, however subconsciously, have been Europe's favored scapegoat for centuries.
THERE ARE more prosaic reasons for "Boycott Britain." The main engine of the boycott campaign is the Socialist Workers Party, which has a disproportionate number of anti-Zionist Jews among its upper ranks, and it is the anti-Zionist Jews who are driving this issue.
It would be wrong to assume, as some do, that they are naive dupes being used by their non-Jewish comrades to make anti-Israel campaigning kosher. This is not the case. Their anti-Zionism is their - admittedly unorthodox - way of expressing their own Jewish identity, by rebelling against the mainstream Jewish consensus.
These are Trotskyite Jews continuing their age-old feud against the Jewish bourgeoisie; an internal Jewish broiges played out in the anachronistic setting of the conference floors of British trade unions.
Anti-Zionist Jews are a small fringe of the Jewish community. For most Jews, a boycott of Israel raises the specter of wider, anti-Jewish boycotts. Calls not to buy Israeli goods can easily slip into a boycott of "Jewish" businesses, as was the case with the Arab boycott of the 1970s and 1980s.
Boycotts of Jews were a ubiquitous Nazi tactic across occupied Europe, as a first step toward separation, deportation and genocide. This is not to accuse any of the current anti-Israel boycotters of being like, or wanting to emulate, the Nazis; but it is significant that Britain was never occupied during the war.
FIRSTLY, IN the narrative of the British Left, there is no historic debt to Jews that would counterbalance the debt to the Palestinians. And secondly, Britain lacks continental Europe's collective memory of boycotts as a profoundly destructive, anti-Semitic measure.
Instead, Britain has a different experience of boycotts, one which is wholly positive: the boycotts of South Africa that formed the core of anti-apartheid campaigning. This has been mythologized as a victory for the use of sanctions and boycotts, pioneered by left-wing groups that forced reluctant governments to take a stand.
Many of the activists from that time are present in the anti-Zionist movement and openly use that experience as a model for the new mass movement they are trying to create.
It is a mistake to assume that the success of anti-Israel campaigns in Britain is because of the sizable Muslim community. This is a campaign by the far Left, led by people who have been saying the same things about Israel since before Britain had a Muslim community of political consequence. The slogan that Israel is the new South Africa, and Zionism the new apartheid, betrays their need, on a personal and organizational level, for a new anti-apartheid movement.
These are people who accuse America of creating an Islamist bogeyman because, after the fall of communism, it needed a new enemy. The same could just as easily be said of their own determination to frame Zionism as the new apartheid. As Baroness Tonge said at a recent anti-Israel rally in London, "a free Palestine means we are on the road to world peace."
There is a deep utopian fantasy driving this anti-Zionism.
TRYING TO portray Israel as the new South Africa also reveals the true motives of the boycott campaigners. Boycotting Israel is both an expression of, and a tool for, the rejection of Israel's basic legitimacy.
It creates a framework for the dismantling of Zionism itself as an illegitimate, racist ideology, and the removal of the State of Israel from the map of the Middle East. This is about much more than simply the West Bank and Gaza. Anger at the occupation, frustration at the failure to end the conflict and the sense that Israel, as the more powerful protagonist, is responsible for finding a solution, have brought inchoate anti-Israel sentiment to the British mainstream. Fully formed anti-Zionism, on a mass scale, may not be far away.
The writer is deputy director of communications for the Community Security Trust, which works to ensure the safety and security of the Jewish community in Britain. www.thecst.org.uk
High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]
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The British Union of Fascists, led by Oswald Mosely, were very popular in Britain right up to the outbreak of war..Anti-semitism runs deep in the British ethos
The Sabbateans strike again, so to speak.
Sorry, that is nonsense. Anti-semitism runs deeply in the British left wing - and therefore among a certain class of academics and unions. You will also notice this in the American left, the Canadian left and the French left.
Making sweeping generalisations about entire nations from the behaviour of their left-wing seems to be a hallmark of Freepers. With respect, please don't do this.
You’re absolutely correct..I meant to state the left-wing in GB..my bad...thnnks..
You Sir are a gentleman, and a better man than I am. FReegards.
The Jewish Community in England is far older than 350 years - but not continuously.
There were Jews already well established in England by the reign of Richard Plantagenet but they were expelled in 1290, though some managed to remain by “special permission” (the king needed them).
England was, as I recall from my reading, the first of the European nations to expel its Jewish population.
When Richard was coronated, the Jewish community arrived at the celebration bearing gifts to give to the king. Seeing the Jews, the rest of the celebrating party decided that killing Jews would add to the fun.
The killing spread throughout London and York and then into the rest of the country and hundreds were killed. After a while Richard decided to stop it because he needed them.
So, anti-semitism has an old history in England.
A certain type of rather mild anti-semitism is indeed traditional in Britain, as John Derbyshire has discussed often in his columns.
But then the British traditionally didn’t like anybody outside Britain, the various British nationalities (English, Scots, etc.) didn’t like each other, those from one part of England disdained those from other areas, etc. Anti-semitism may thus have been largely just another variety of anti-foreignerism.
Certainly Britain has been more pro-semitic in its actions over the past 300 years than any other European nation, except perhaps the Netherlands. (OTOH, the Netherlands behaved abominably in this regard during WWII).
In later days, he was successful in America as a middle class cloth and fabric shopkeeper, would always refer to the English as “Anti-semitten” (anti-semites), and refuse to sell or stock English products, fingering the scars in his eyebrows. The engraved reminder of his day in London.
I thought this was a hockey thread....
I thought this was a hockey thread....
So we can debate whether England has been - or is - against Jews or not, but there isn’t any argument that Britain has not had a similar problem letting in - welcoming - moslems.
Jews were never a danger to England.
Moslems are a danger to England.
Not logical, is it?
The British record in Palestine is not as one-sided as you state. They were under vicious attack from Jewish terrorists during much of this period, and the Balfour Declaration stated that the Jewish homeland was not to be established at the expense of existing occupants of the land.
At least at first the Brits appear to have tried to balance the interests of the various groups, thus ticking off all sides. However, when one side is trying much more actively to kill you, it tends to affect your viewpoint of which side is in the right.
Somewhere around 600,000 Jews immigrated to Palestine from 1920 to 1947, some illegally. This was into an area inhabited by about 1,000,000 people, mostly Arab Muslims, in 1920.
As far as population change goes, this would be roughly equivalent to 120,000,000 people immigrating into the US since 1970. You may have noticed how upset some around here are at the present much lower rates of immigration into the US. It would be irrational to expect such levels of immigration not to generate resistance.
There is plenty of fault to go around. Brits, Jews, Arabs, everybody. The difference is that most Jews today want to live at peace with their neighbors and very darn few Arabs want to do anything but kill all the Jews.
BTW, the US accepted very few Jewish refugees during this period, other than scientists and others that would be useful to us. Couldn’t have a massive influx upsetting racial balances in a country of 100M+, but apparently the same number of refugees going into a country of <1M shouldn’t have upset them.
An obvious expression of the Religion of Peace. There is a plethora of written historical material on the entire subject, a substantial deal of it in my personal library, and sufficient data to take up eons supply of bandwidth, if we let it get away from us.
Suffice it to say that the Brits do not have a shining history dealing with it’s perceived colonial possessions and in it’s dealings with Jews, a particularly inflamed area which appears NOT to have softened over time.
As the last motor cutter left the harbour at Haifa, and the Senior British officer watched the Union Jack lowered and the blue and white Magen David raised, I am sure his revulsion at the defeat of the Bevingrads galled and twisted in his guts on behalf of himself and every Englishman in their “shriveling empire”.
I have spent some years in the UK, and attuned to such “music” have on more occasions than I care to toll, picked up the unconcealed anti-Jewish sentiment in casual conversation from many persons I came into daily contact with.
There is an ancient expression of thought in Jewish oral history saying that he who saves one life saves the world. Great Britain, if the saying is correct, is responsible for the loss of entire solar systems, so much damage did its prevention of escape of European Jewry from the Nazis, before, during and after WWII, and there is no modifying element of Englands abysmal behavior in the bright light of history. Facts are funny things. They annoy but never change, and do not biodegrade. As I wrote in my initial response, the history of the USA in the pre WWII era and during the war itself is a separate matter, and NOT a source for any particular pride.
My pleasure to discuss this matter with you.
As stated, your perspective is understandably one-sided.
But that does not mean other perspectives do not exist or are completely invalid.
Members of distinctive groups often identify themselves with those groups, and then to justify, rationalize and ignore the bad behavior of other members of their particular group while obsessing about the inherently evil nature of any opponents of their group.
Generally speaking, it’s tough for group members to view the history of their own group and its opponents objectively.
Very human and very understandable. Carried to its logical conclusion, you get the Holocaust.
Most of the most violent and vigorous activities took place, as I am sure you aware between 1943 and 1947.
My apologies if I belabour you with this issue.
It has been my interest and pleasure.
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