February 26, 2006

By John Lloyd, Financial Times

I’m not Jewish, though some of my best friends are, but if I were I would be worrying about whether or not I should worry… about being Jewish.

The first worry is about whether or not it’s worth the time to worry.

When Jewish friends discussed their worries, I would always say: don’t worry! In no state in the west is the Jewish community other than honoured, its religion freely practised, its rights protected, its sufferings remembered. A Jew can be secular, indifferent to old customs and religion, dissolve ethnicity into that of his or her homeland - especially where it’s a catch-all- ethnicities designation such as British or Canadian. Don’t look at the present and future through Nazi-tinted spectacles! From the horrors of the Holocaust has come a prophylactic against murderous anti-Semitism.

I wouldn’t say that with such confidence now. I wouldn’t say the reverse - that is, worry! - with confidence either. It is just not clear what the state of anti-Semitism is in the west. And that is worrying.

Last week in the UK, the Church of England General Synod passed a motion which called for the church commissioners to withdraw investment in Caterpillar and other companies, because they supply equipment to Israel, which uses it to build the security fence between it and Palestinian territory, and in doing so destroys Palestinian homes.
Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, agreed with the decision. The chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, blasted the Synod and the archbishop in a piece in The Jewish Chronicle last week, saying that the decision would have “the most adverse repercussions on… Jewish-Christian relations in the UK”.
The archbishop wrote to the chief rabbi, assuring him that the decision isn’t a boycott, and that he believed in Israel’s right to exist and defend itself.

(A telling remark: of how many states in the world would a public figure feel it necessary to protest he believes that it should not be rubbed off the map?) Whatever: relations are soured.

The vote of the Synod may well never be acted on. Neville White, secretary of the church’s Ethical Investments Advisory Group, told me the group was not bound by the Synod’s deliberations - though its next meeting would discuss the decision. He also said, however, that, as far as he knew, this was the first such recommendation to disinvest in a company because of the country that buys its goods (according to Caterpillar, indirectly, through the US government).

No vote then, to disinvest from companies supplying equipment to China, which has a hideous human rights record, including the suppression of Christians. Nor of Russia, which has killed many more Chechens than Israel has Palestinians. Nor Sudan, whose government has been complicit in the massacres of up to 400,000 people in its Darfur region. Nor - to be ecumenical - the US, which continues to operate Guantanamo Bay detention centre amid allegations that its treatment of prisoners amounts to torture.

Just Israel.

It’s the “just Israel” bit that is the worry. Why is it singled out?

The worry doesn’t lessen when you remember that the British Association of University Teachers voted for a real boycott of Israeli academics (not Chinese, Russians, Sudanese or Americans) - though it later reversed the policy; and that a group of British architects led by Lord (Richard) Rogers is discussing an economic boycott of Israel and the possible expulsion of Israeli architects from the International Union of Architects (China, Russia, Sudan and America are all affiliated to the IUA).

The “don’t worry” bit is provided by a number of Jews who support these campaigns, who believe, as do some Israelis, that the state is acting in an oppressive, racist manner. That would dilute my worry, but not disperse it. The worry still is that Israel is singled out because it is the Jewish state.

The worry grows as the environment darkens. A Populus poll earlier this month showed that 37 per cent of a sample of British Muslims regarded British Jewry as a “legitimate target as part of the struggle for justice in the Middle East”. If I were a British Jew, that would worry me.

In the Middle East, Hamas’s victory in the Palestinian elections faces Israel with a governing party that wants to destroy it. In Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood, whose candidates - running as “independents” because of a ban on the Brotherhood itself - secured eight times more seats than the secular, relatively liberal United National Front for Change. The hope is that possession of, or greater proximity to, political power will force these radically Islamic, strongly anti-Israeli movements towards moderation; but if I were an Israeli, I would worry.

Doesn’t the widespread support for Jewish communities and America’s unwavering support for Israel trump all these? Isn’t the fact that, for example, Tony Blair began a recent speech on Europe by invoking Anne Frank’s courage, adding that “out of the immensity of the evil that was fascism came a new vision, in every sense a rejection of the values of the Nazis and an affirmation of the human will to do good”, an antidote to foreboding? After all, nobody can think that the archbishop and Lord Rogers are anti-Semites - or, for that matter, dupes of anti-Semites. They are concerned with human rights; perhaps even particularly concerned with Israel’s suppression of them because they hold it - as it does itself - to a higher standard than other states. And there is no question that Israel does behave oppressively to Palestinians, has killed non- combatants and does deserve criticism.

But the nag at the mind is this: why do their sins cry out for particular punishment? And what do people, with the best of motives, see as the result of such efforts to brand Israelis - scholars, architects or bulldozer traders - as uniquely unfit to be part of their international communities? What’s so especially awful about them, that we have to cease talking to them?