Anti-Zionism is Just Anti-Semitism in a New Disguise

As the debate over anti-semitism in the Labour Party rages in France, President Emmanuel Macron has made a decisive intervention. In a speech to representatives of the France’s 600,000 strong Jewish community, Macron said: “France like the rest of Europe and most western democracies is experiencing a resurgence of anti-semitism not seen since the second world war."

Macron said it was time to recognise that “anti-zionism is one of the modern forms of anti-semitism”. He said France would pass laws for all hate references that frighten Jews and spread hate of Jews and their identity to be taken down from social media sites and those posting them to be identified.

Macron was speaking after more than 20,000 staged a rally in the heart of Paris against anti-semitism with thousands also meeting in France’s main cities to affirm opposition to modern anti-semitism.

Macron also flew to Alsace in eastern France where a hundred Jewish grave-stones were daubed with swastikas and other anti-Jewish slogans. This followed a violent attack by a Yellow Vest demonstrator upon 69-year-old Alain Finkelkraut, one of France’s best known intellectuals and a member of the French Academy – the 40 strong body of France’s top philosophers, writers and historians who act as the guardian of the French language.

It was a chance encounter as Finkelkraut was leaving his apartment near Montparnasse as group of Yellow Vests in Paris for their now declining Saturday protests saw him and one of them launched himself into the face of Finkelkraut screaming that he was a “dirty Jew who should get back to Israel.”

Extremists of the far right and racist movement have infiltrated the Yellow Vests which had the backing of Finkelkraut to begin with and used the amorphous movement to spread hate against Muslims and Jews. In Britain, as Newsnight’s Katie Razell, reported, the far right racist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, whose latest alias is “Tommy Robinson”, now encourages his followers to wear Yellow Vests as they organise anti-Muslim and pro-Brexit demonstrations. Yaxley-Lennon is an adviser to the UKIP leader, Gerald Batten. The man who aggressed Anna Soubry shouting she was a “Nazi” outside the Commons also wore a Yellow Vest.

In France, the Jewish cemetery desecrations and Finkelkraut assault came after other Yellow Vest slogans against Jews, the spraying of swastikas over pictures of Simone Weil, a Holocaust survivor who was one of France’s most loved senior political figures as well as the desecration of a memorial to a young Jew captured and tortured to death by Islamist fanatics in Paris. The anti-Jewish terror attacks on a kosher supermarket and the murder of a 85 year old Jewish woman a year ago are still part of France’s recent lived memory.

Macron is also making a point aimed at other European states where a blind eye is turned to anti-semitism. In Hungary, there are government posters going up everywhere now attacking George Soros, the Hungarian-born Jewish billionaire who pays for campaigns defending European liberal values.

The posters have photos of Soros and the EU Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, a catholic, as the ruling Fidesz party and its strident leader, Viktor Orban, seeks to attract votes by saying he is defending Christian white Europe against all other faiths and immigrants.

Here in Britain, Labour remains plagued by anti-semitism accusations. MPs who support the right of Israel to exist - like Luciana Berger and Mike Gapes who left to form the Independent Group and other Labour MPs like Margaret Hodge - are deluged by tweets and facebook messages denouncing them as “Zionist lackeys of Israel” and other insults clearly aimed at either their Jewish heritage or their support for Jewish causes.

Few modern anti-semites of right, left or Islamist backgrounds any longer use the word “Jew” or “Jewish” as an insult as they know it is a toxic turn-off. Instead the code word is “Zionist” which has a double meaning. 19^th and early 20^th century Zionism was a classical version of European nationalism – seeking to create a nation for Jews much as Europeans went off to found nations far away from a Europe of reactionary monarchies and empires.

But by definition, the Zionist was and is also Jewish. According to the American political scientist, Seymour Lipset, who was at a dinner discussion with Martin Luther King, the US civil right campaigner, slapped down someone who used the word “Zionist” thus. "When people criticise Zionists, they mean Jews. You're talking anti-Semitism."  

King and today Macron are quite right. "Zionist" has replaced  “Jew” in anti-Semitic political discourse. The most famous example is the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. If that had been called the Protocol of the Jews (to take over the world) it would have been laughed out of court as Jews in that era could barely survive in territories where they lived. The poet Tom Paulin, angry about the bad behaviour of the Israeli army, referred to the "Zionist SS" - again if he wrote "Jewish SS" it would have been unacceptable.  

The BNP's Nick Griffin wrote in a BNP magazine called Rune of the "final victory over those who seek to destroy us so that they can rule unchallenged forever over a mass of mongrel slaves". Asked to whom he was referring, Griffin replied: "International capitalism and international Zionism."

The fight-back in France is impressive. It was the Socialist Party who organised the giant rally against anti-semitism in the Place de la République. Other parties joined with the former right-wing president, Nicolas Sakozy making a powerful speech. It is currently unthinkable that Labour here in Britain could organise a similar demonstration. It is not that Jeremy Corby is anti-semitic but he has never shown the slightest sympathy for Israel or other Jewish causes. To the contrary his support for Hamas and Hezbollah and other movements dedicated to weakening the right of a Jewish state to exist as the one utterly safe nation for Jews to live in has upset many. It has also given the impression that attacks on Jewish Labour MPs who oppose other aspects of Corbyn’s leadership, notably his support for Brexit, are not really much a problem for the Labour leadership.

If the same hate was directed at Labour MPs because they were black or Muslim or gay, the Labour Party machine would move swiftly with condign disciplinary action, including expulsions and suspension of constituency parties which tolerate such anti-Semitism/anti-Zionism.

Macron has taken a brave stand in updating the definition of anti-Semitism to include anti-Zionism. If Labour wants to regain support it should do something similar. And the British government should work with the French government to adopt laws to make it illegal for Facebook, Twitter and Google to propagate such hate.

Denis MacShane is a former Labour MP and Minister for Europe who writes on European policy and politics. His book, "Globalising Hatred: the new Antisemitism",was published in 2008.