Anti-semitism is a global plague. Starmer cannot afford to lose this fight
When Sir Keir Starmer became Leader of the Opposition on April 4, he apologised to the Jewish community and clearly signaled his intention to break with the culture of anti-Semitism that had pervaded the Labour Party under his predecessor. Whether he grasped the difficulties of the task was initially in doubt. That he does has just become clear. By sacking his Shadow Education Secretary, Rebecca Long-Bailey, for disseminating an article that peddled an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, Sir Keir has picked a fight with the Corbynite far-Left.
The latter’s reaction to the removal of their standard-bearer from the Shadow Cabinet was swift. Jon Lansman, the hard Left NEC member and founder of the grassroots organisation Momentum, described it as “a reckless over-reaction”. Revealingly, he said that there was nothing in the offending article that a Labour anti-Semitism panel would consider grounds for expulsion. The bar has been set so high that only the crudest manifestation of prejudice would suffice. Another Corbynite former shadow Cabinet member told the Times: “People are leaving as we speak. It’s a nightmare.”
If the prospect of an exodus of Labour’s lunatic fringe is not enough to encourage Sir Keir to persist, a closer look at Ms Long-Bailey’s sinister allegation and its context just might. She retweeted a claim in the Independent that the lethal practice of “neck kneeling”, the restraint technique used by the American police who killed George Floyd, had been “learnt from seminars with Israeli secret services”. In the Manichaean world view of the far-Left, the most potent symbol of American racism and police brutality, which had unleashed global protests, was laid at the door of the Jewish State. The Independent has now apologised for publishing an “unfounded” smear, but this does not alter the fact that the offending article, an interview with the actress Maxine Peake, has been trending on social media ever since the story broke. If the lie is big enough, it cuts through.
The “neck kneeling” conspiracy theory is part of a wave of anti-Semitism that has flooded social media since the outset of the coronavirus pandemic. Jews are being blamed for spreading the virus, especially in the Muslim world, and these classic anti-Semitic tropes are now mutating to incorporate other global phenomena, such as the Black Lives Matter protests. As usual, such propaganda has consequences: assaults on Jews are rising, even in places which have not normally been seen as hostile.
In New York City, home to the largest Jewish community on earth, the Democratic Mayor has a problem with Jews — but only the Orthodox minority. Jews have been attacked there on an almost daily basis over the past year. Yet the Mayor, Bill de Blasio, has fed the flames. In a notorious tweet in April, at the height of the pandemic, he told “the Jewish community” that “the time for warnings has passed” and that the NYPD would arrest anyone gathering in large groups, for example for funerals. By singling out Jews, the Mayor fuelled conspiracy theories.
He has subsequently targeted Jews in public on several occasions, for example by closing down a “dangerous” Orthodox Jewish yeshiva (school) and sealing the gates to parks in Jewish neighbourhoods, while leaving others open. The public hostility of Mayor de Blasio for the most visible Jews in the largest urban Jewish community on earth might seem self-defeating: why deny himself their support? The reason is that religious Jews are among the few unashamed conservatives in New York, the most liberal city in America.
And, as a non-Orthodox Jewish New Yorker tells me, the Mayor’s “handling of the Covid-19 crisis is recognised by all as a disaster. Orthodox Jews would be a natural target for him to lash out at in his threatened self-regard.” He explains the Mayor’s electoral calculation thus: “Liberal and secular Jews no more identify with Orthodox Jews than secular gentiles identify with Jesuits.” So De Blasio is not risking the vast majority of Jewish votes by bullying the Orthodox minority. Nor is he jeopardising his credentials as a national leader of the radical wing of the Democratic Party, with presidential ambitions.
Keir Starmer is right to stand up to the hard-Left of the Labour Party on anti-Semitism. He must reckon with a long struggle if he wants to prevail, just as predecessors such as Neil Kinnock and Tony Blair once did. But there can be no place in Labour for those who indulge in “the socialism of fools” (“der Sozialismus der dummen Kerle”) as the German social democratic leader August Bebel dubbed anti-Semitism when it emerged in Germany more than a century ago. For the Labour Party, this is a fight for survival. It is a fight that Starmer knows he cannot afford to lose.