Dave Rich: We will fight tooth and nail for a better way of thinking

“What is anti-Zionism for, exactly?” The question was posed by Dr Dave Rich in his trenchant Robert Fine Memorial lecture to supporters of the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism.

And Rich, director of policy at the Community Security Trust, in a complex and detailed analysis of the thinking behind present-day anti-Zionism and antisemitism, had a simple and chilling answer.

“If we strip away the political sloganeering and academic ambiguities, it is a plot to kill a nation. That’s it. Anti-Zionism is a campaign, across decades and continents, to kill the nation of Israel, erase its name and its national identity from history, and replace it with something non-Jewish…Anti-Zionism is utterly unique, and fundamentally anti-democratic.”

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In his searing lecture, Rich broke down the levers of anti-Zionism and antisemitism, using references ranging from the Star Wars Death Star to even more prosaic examples of everyday Jewish hatred. His audience laughed and shivered at much the same time.

He cited Loose Women’s Nadia Sawalha, who “took to social media to defend Louis Theroux, after his interview with Bobby Vylan, from what she called the ‘group of people’ who ‘live by their pound of flesh rule…So many of us are sick and tired of being bullied…the threat that has hung over our heads for years and years that we may be antisemitic — you’ve worn it out.” Rich commented: “There’s a brashness, a daring sense of freedom in finally saying what needs to be said about the Jews”.

He ran a coach and horses through support for Britain’s Tommy Robinson, reminding his audience that Robinson had “recently tried to position himself as Israel’s new best friend” but that “when Kanye West went on his antisemitic rant three years ago, Robinson wrote a long essay, called ‘The Jewish Question’, supporting Kanye West. Jews do control Hollywood and the music industry, Robinson wrote, Kanye has a point, and these Jews need to change their behaviour.

“So his supposed support for Jews and Israel is very conditional. He is completely open about this. He has a fixed idea that Jews should behave only in ways that support his politics and his aims, and will attack — not just abandon, but attack — any Jews who behave in a way he disapproves of…Robinson is very happy to divide Jews into good and bad, and set each against the other.”

He ridiculed the academic Dr Samar Maqusi, “who gave a talk to the Students for Justice in Palestine Society at UCL, in which she included an actual blood libel. Dr Maqusi told the story of the Damascus blood libel of 1840, except she told it as fact, that Jews really do use non-Jewish blood in our religious rituals”.

But Maqusi, “an educated woman who was teaching the blood libel as fact”, had got it wrong, Rich said. “Instead of saying that Jews use non-Jewish blood to bake matzah at Passover, she said we use it to make pancakes at Shavuot”. And well-meaning Jews had taken to social media to correct her. But Rich observed: “That’s hardly the problem here! When we analyse antisemitism, we fall into the mistake of being too rational, too analytical”.

Rich concluded that antisemitism was “based on conspiracy theories, myths and lies. It is fundamentally illiberal and undemocratic.” What the LCSCA was doing in academia also needed to be done “in politics, education, arts and culture, and beyond”. Though he felt that most “silent masses” did not subscribe to these beliefs, and were “on our side”, Rich warned: “They won’t lead this fight. That job falls on all of us”.

Earlier, LCSCA’s founder director-Dr David Hirsh told the audience, who included novelist Howard Jacobson and former Labour MP Dame Louise Ellman, of the aims and ambitions of the organisation. He said that regrettably there was “a proud tradition of antisemitic professors in academic life and we are not prepared to concede defeat in universities. But we also need to challenge the underpinnings of antisemitism in public life. We will fight tooth and nail for a better way of thinking.”