Why Anti-Semitism Matters by Denis Macshane

The first political pamphlet I ever wrote was in 1978. It revealed and denounced the indifference of British newspapers and television to the problems facing the black and Asian communities in the UK. It asked why there were no Afro-Caribbean or Asian broadcasters, reporters, news-readers or by-lines in our papers. I cited the anti-Semitism of the Daily Mail and Daily Express in the 1930s when they told readers that too many Jews were being allowed into Britain from Germany and that our small island could not face any more aliens arriving to disturb social harmony or compete for professional jobs. I argued that in some respects the media treatment of the then BME communities in the 1960s and 1970s had some similarities.
The pamphlet provoked outrage in the press. How dare this upstart young activist from the National Union of Journalists tell editors who they should and should not employ! How dare he insist that the racism and anti-Semitism of the National Front (1970s forerunner of today’s British National Party) should be exposed as pernicious evil! How dare he suggest that the xenophobia and attacks on Asians in the Daily Mail and Daily Express should be linked to those papers’ anti-Semitism of pre-war years! Bernard Levin devoted a whole column in The Times to trashing my pamphlet, denouncing my ‘Noddy language’ as unworthy of consideration.
Today everything has changed utterly and I feel vindicated. Some of our finest TV and press reporters and news stars are from the BME community and the appointment of community relations correspondents and investigation of the racism and discrimination that non-white British citizens face is now a norm.
And rightly so. But there is one discrimination that hardly dares spell out its name, and that is the return of anti-Semitism as a powerful political force. I leave to others to debate the rights and wrongs of Israeli government policy and I have no strong views on Jewishness as culture, history, faith or any of the many discussions of Jews and Judaism which fill the pages of this journal or can be found in books galore in many languages. However, I am passionate about politics, about the power of ideology and the strength of the words that shape ideas and meaning into political engagement, organisation, and action.
Neo-anti-Semitism is a new and pernicious twenty-first-century ideology that has steadily gained ground since the century began. Just because Jew-hatred is ancient and anti-Semitism since the nineteenth-century has produced noxious waves of political organisation it is important to recognise that twenty-first-century anti-Semitism is different. Just as there have been different forms of anti-capitalist, or anti-state ideologies so to there are different forms of anti-Semitic ideologies. An ideology provides a picture of the world that explains what is wrong and what needs to be done. It justifies harsh decisions in the search for a greater end which always justifies the means. So the ideology of  twenty-first century neo-anti-Semitism seeks to provide a political rationale for attacks on Jews and on Israel. It is true that not every critic of Israel is anti-Semitic. But every anti-Semite hates Israel.

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