(Or what your mother doesn’t know about anti-Semitism in Britain)
Michael Goldfarb
This past summer I took my baby daughter for her daily walk in the London park just outside our door and what we saw was the whole world.
The neighborhood where I live is like Brooklyn, only without the racial tension. In the park on a summer’s day, you will find Turks, Greeks, Kurds, Poles and people from a half-dozen different African countries. In the two decades I’ve lived here, London has gone from being capital of the United Kingdom to a world capital.
More germane to the point you will find Jews of all degrees of practice and commitment, from the thoroughly assimilated, like me, to Lubavitchers and other Hasidic groups marked by a bewildering array of head coverings. You will also find Muslims with a similar diversity of dress, from casual to hijab-wearing to women in full burqa and men wearing shalwar kameez. Jewish and Muslim families mingle in the playground without actually interacting; they stand side by side at the wrought iron fences that enclose the park’s two small ponds, feeding the geese and ducks that nest there.
Everyone is respectful. There is no trouble. Even at the height of the summer’s violence between Israel and Hezbollah, when the media was flush with horrendous moment/images from the Middle East and “experts” being interviewed about the conflict spouted violent language, at this major intersection of Jewish and Muslim London there was no spillover. And I, exhilarated with the joy of watching my daughter learn to crawl, climb and play, found the media world that awaited me at home unbearably out of sync with what I was experiencing.
Still it seemed that there are increasingly two realities shaping our world: the traditional one of the senses, what you see and hear with your own eyes and ears; and that which comes from the Internet and media. In London last summer the two seemed to be unhinged from each other. And I was in the middle of these competing versions.
Whenever Israel is involved in some headline-grabbing violence my e-mail inbox fills with circular letters sent by my mother in Philadelphia (who received them from other Jewish mothers). Each contains warnings of the perils awaiting their children, especially those who have chosen to live in Europe.
Last July, when the war in Lebanon began, the e-mail crescendo was worse than usual. It was quickly followed by another slew after the British government uncovered the audacious Al Qaeda plot to hijack up to 10 planes flying from London’s Heathrow Airport to the United States.
These e-mails all fell under the same theme: Jews in danger. Israel was under attack, Muslims in Europe posed a threat to Jewish safety and anti-Semitism was once again on the march. My mother’s friend wanted to know, “Why is no one writing about radical Muslims taking over Britain?” Possibly because they aren’t taking over and radical Islam is a subject that is already well reported. I reminded her that I myself had actually done a radio documentary about the phenomenon two years ago and added that it wasn’t that people weren’t reporting on radical Muslims, it was just that she was hearing about it for the first time.
But I understood her frantic question and the source of her misperceptions. The Internet is not a dispassionate environment and encountering unfiltered views on such topics there can induce panic. The stories about rising anti-Semitism came out of the an evolving Internet tradition—selectively quoted “facts” from the mainstream media posted on blogs and on web sites until they become a torrent of rumor. In this case a report had appeared in several newspapers that 300 Jewish families were decamping from Britain because of anti-Semitism and making aliyah. By the time that news had been taken out of context and mixed with other out-of-context reports about radical British Muslims it was possible to infer that anti-Semitism must be really bad if Jews were leaving the safety and comfort of Britain to emigrate to a country, Israel, that was at war.
Still these messages from the States had a strange impact on me. I found myself briefly questioning whether I was wrong. My year-old daughter, literally finding her feet for the first time in her life, was swept up in the collective excitement that is an urban playground on a warm summer day. Maybe there was a seething cauldron of Jew-hatred around the corner and I was too blinded by the joy of my child to see it.
Then on August 16th, an article appeared in The Guardian about the Jews making aliyah from Britain. From the article it became clear that the origin of the belief that Jews were fleeing rising anti-Semitism seems to have been a Jewish Agency press release which itself was more equivocal. There were many reasons these British families were leaving, according to the Jewish Agency, and while an upsurge of anti-Semitism was mentioned it was not at the top of the list. As Ilan Benjamin, one of those leaving explained to The Guardian, “We are leaving a declining Jewish community in Liverpool. Once it was very big, but now it’s down to under 4,000.”
That was the major motivation for most of the 550 or so British Jews who were expected to make aliyah in 2006. A minority community is growing smaller, and observant Jews are a minority of that minority. For those whose primary identity lies in their Jewishness a move to Eretz Israel, a mere three and a half hour flight from Britain, is a sensible thing. It’s easy enough to come back for visits and to attend to business interests. But 550 out of a community of 276,500, doesn’t seem to indicate a trend in response to rising anti-Semitism.
The response, or lack of one, by British Jews to the threats that so many American Jews perceive on their behalf has a lot to do with something that struck me straightaway when I moved to London in 1985: Being a Jew in Britain is different from being a Jew in America.
Partially this is a question of numbers. Jews aren’t the largest religious minority here as they are in the United States. That numerical honor belongs to Muslims. (Jews aren’t even the second or third largest religious minority in Britain: Hindus and Sikhs occupy those positions). According to the 2001 U.K. census there are over a quarter of a million Jews in Britain but there are approximately 1.6 million Muslims. Similar demographic pictures exist all over Europe. France has 519,000 Jews and 6 million Muslims, Germany 103,000 Jews and 3.1 million Muslims.
Being such a comparatively small group affects the way British Jews see themselves in relation to the wider society. The analogy would be the difference between being a Jew in Manhattan, New York, and a Jew in Manhattan, Kansas.
This different self-image is also a product of history. The Jewish presence in Britain has a long and often painful history. Expelled in the Middle Ages, Jews were invited to return to the country in the 17th century by Oliver Cromwell but were not given equal rights. British Jews had to overcome a long series of judicial and legislative hurdles to achieve their citizenship and weren’t fully emancipated until 1858, a mere five years before Lincoln’s emancipation of American slaves. All the while, Jews had to navigate around legal restrictions and prejudice to build lives and integrate into society. An attitude of caution—treading softly and not calling a great deal of attention to the community—is ingrained here.
Variations of this story were played out around Europe, according to Professor Geoffrey Levey of Australia’s University of New South Wales: “In France, Jews enjoyed a form of ‘state emancipation.’ They were admitted into state institutions at the highest levels—e.g. military captains and prime ministers—while being able to retain their Jewish faith and Jewish names. But, like all minorities, they were expected to confine their particularistic identity to the private sphere, and were discouraged from organizing and operating collectively. Germany was the reverse: Jews enjoyed social emancipation in the sense of being able to organize collectively, but were excluded from state institutions unless and until they converted or least renounced their Jewish identity.”
Levey points out that, “In the U.S., at least at the federal level, the Constitution guaranteed the rights of Jews from the word go. This act helped forge the idea of American exceptionalism—that the U.S. is not merely unique like every country is unique, but uniquely unique.”
According to Oxford professor Brian Klug, who studies the phenomenon of anti-Semitism, that fact has created a more assertive, confident Jewish community in the United States. At least that’s true in its dealings with the wider American society. Klug, who lived and taught in America for several decades, reminded me that Jews in Britain are legally defined as an “ethnic” group. Then I remembered how strange it was for me the first time I filled out a British census form and was asked for my ethnicity and offered the choice of checking a box that said “Jewish.” On the U.S. census, I was used to ticking the “Caucasian” box. This simple act shapes British Jewish identity in a way different from American Jewish identity.
I’m not sure how this accounts for the biggest difference in being Jewish here: a greater willingness to be publicly critical of Israel. At the height of the fighting last summer 300 prominent Jews took out a full-page ad in The Times to express their outrage “at the collective punishment of the people of Gaza.” In the House of Commons, a senior Labour MP, Gerald Kaufman, asked Prime Minister Tony Blair, “In rightly condemning the terrorism of Hezbollah, will my Right Honourable Friend bear in mind that no party in this conflict has clean hands or occupies the moral high ground?” Kaufman added, “Israel’s invasion of Lebanon is not simply immoral; it is futile.” It is hard to think of a Jewish member of Congress who would stand up and say something similar on the floor of either the House or Senate.
This willingness by some British Jewish leaders to be openly critical of Israel may offer a clue to the real origin of the fearful e-mails I was getting last summer. Anti-Israeli feeling is often conflated with anti-Semitism both by Jews and Jew-haters, so when the government of Israel takes action that provokes critical words in the European press and parliaments, by the time these words race through the virtual world of the Web, anti-Semitism seems to be dramatically increasing.
Backing this up is a European Jewish Congress report on an increase in anti-Semitism during the war in Lebanon. Close reading of the report shows that most of these “attacks” were verbal: hate mail, occasional daubing of anti-Semitic graffiti on synagogues and Jewish businesses. Much of the documented rise is related to public discourse in the media: some editorialists and cartoonists made comparisons between the Israel Defense Forces’ operations in civilian areas of Lebanon and the Nazi treatment of civilians, an obnoxious and odious comparison but one that in America would be protected under the First Amendment.
The report confuses legitimate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. Germany’s Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul told Tagespiegel Israel’s attacks on Lebanon were disproportionate and “completely unacceptable.” Her comments, not dissimilar from those of Gerald Kaufman, are cited in the EJC report as an example of anti-Semitism.
On the other hand, it is impossible to listen to the “Zionists are Nazis” comments at some British university student meetings—where the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are being sold openly alongside other radical literature—and not know that the words spoken are anti-Semitic.
Of course, support for Israel is not banned from public discourse in Britain. Jewish columnists more than adequately fight their battles. Melanie Phillips of the Daily Mail, a national newspaper with a circulation of almost two million (that’s around double the circulation of The New York Times in the United States), thunders against what she perceives to be the Islamic take-over of Britain. Daniel Finkelstein edits the comment pages of The Times of London, and overwrought criticism of Israel finds no place there.
On the rare occasions when there is overt anti-Semitism such as vandalism against synagogues, people don’t look away. Clerics from all sides of the community show leadership by unequivocally condemning such desecrations. The response is proportionate to the incidents. Anti-Semitic fear doesn’t stalk the streets of London, where more than half the Jews in Britain live. Radical Islam’s target is western society in general, not the Jewish family down the road.
I suppose fear, sadly, is always a topic for Jews everywhere, not just for Jewish mothers with e-mail accounts. But how Jews deal with that fear is something that varies from country to country. The question among my Jewish friends in Britain is why American Jews, a prosperous, influential, extremely safe community, are so easily scared into believing the worst?
Michael Goldfarb is the author of Ahmad’s War, Ahmad’s Peace: Surviving Under Saddam, Dying in the New Iraq. He is currently working on a history of Jewish Emancipation. He is the former London bureau bureau chief for National Public Radio.
