Leap of faith: when anti-Zionism turns to antisemitism

Britain remains a good place to be a Jew. Our synagogues are active and inviting, our cultural organisations are thriving, our community is able to go about its daily life at all levels of observance unhindered and we have the protection of the law through the Equality Act 2010. Jews are thoroughly involved in all aspects of the nation’s economy, services and government.

But there is undoubtedly a worse atmosphere of antisemitism right now than at any I have experienced since the days of the National Front in the late 1970s.

A parent in our community was harassed by two boys shouting “Heil Hitler” as she left our synagogue building with her children a couple of weeks ago. A young woman at a local mainstream secondary school was subject to nasty antisemitic bullying a month ago, for which, despite repeated contacts from her parent and our synagogue, the school has still not followed through on its promised programme to address the offenders. A parent in our nursery has requested that we do not detail the Jewish education of their child in their application to a local primary out of the fear, hopefully and almost certainly unfounded, that the school might discriminate against a Jew.

The atmosphere of unsafety in the UK is of course stoked up further by the incitement to violence publicly broadcast from Glastonbury. Bob Vylan’s illegal chant calling for the death of all members of Israel’s army is of course completely unacceptable, whatever he may think of the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza, as it would have been had he chanted for the death of the Russian army, were he to have opposed the invasion of Ukraine.

The use in a rapidly deleted tweet by Diane Abbott MP of the false title ‘Jewish Defence Force’ for ‘Israel Defence Force’, accusing Israel’s army of genocide, was rightly decried by fellow Labour MP David Taylor who said: “Language like this fans the flames of antisemitism and puts Jewish communities in the UK at risk.”

Some of the experiences of our community are of old tropes of antisemitism. Some are based on the idea that condemning Zionism is fair game for someone who otherwise does not consider themselves to be antisemitic.

But when a rapper calls for death to the IDF, he means that my cousin Yossi, an IDF paramedic in his early 20s, should be killed. When we hear chants that a Palestinian state should extend “from the river to the sea” we hear that our Israeli family, friends and colleagues should have their rights and country their taken away from them. Today’s Jewish state is bound up with the identity and ideals of the vast majority of Jews.

Violent and unthinking anti-Zionism is antisemitism.

We need to campaign for the opposite of the Glastonbury chant. We could use the words of the Prophet Isaiah (57:19): “Peace, peace to the far and near.”

That is a message we can all get behind.

Rabbi Mark Goldsmith is Senior Rabbi of Edgware and Hendon Reform Synagogue