This period of Holocaust remembrance is not the best time to keep a stiff upper lip on British anti-Semitism.
Published: Friday, May 06, 2016 7:30 AM
Suddenly, Hitler is back in the picture, and quite popular too.
If you’ve been following the news trending from Britain’s Labour Party, you know that’s where anti-Semitism has been making a comeback with a vengeance, if it ever left, and where some 50 Labour members have been suspended and others have been censured for tasteless remarks against Jews and/or the Jewish State.
All that, but they can’t seem to suspend anti-Semitism.
Several of these rascals have been named, including the lady who forcefully suggested that Israel ought to be cleansed of Jews and moved to the United States. Quite a few of these names sound foreign and nothing like what we’ve been used to over the centuries, like Winston, Clive and Ken.
Instead, Mohammed ranks near the top for names given to newborns in the UK.
Yet the biggest headline comes from the former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, who’s been quoted as saying that Hitler was a Zionist.
Dare we call that anti-Semitism – that, plus the resurfaced obsession with Jews in the first place? Well, anti-Semites come in a variety of sizes.
But, as we see, one word fits all.
From my findings I have concluded that there are people who are full-time anti-Semites, they go to bed and wake up like that -- and people who are part-time anti-Semites, I call them weekend anti-Semites, acting on the impulse when it’s slow around town and there’s nothing better to do than hate Jews.
That’s when people like Ken Livingstone awaken themselves to the sunny side of Adolph Hitler.
We have them here, too, in the United States, like author Michael Chabon who gets double credits; he is Jewish and a full-time anti-Semite. Impressive!
“I know it when I see it,” and that is precisely how it works for me when I am asked to pin it down on anti-Semitism.
Back to Britain, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, himself with shaky credentials as a Zionist, says, who me?
He claims that there’s no anti-Semitism going on in his back room worthy of the label.
He wants it defined. Let me try. True, there is no such thing as an official anti-Semite. We trust our instincts when we come across one.
Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart explained it like this when he was asked to rule on pornography, “I know it when I see it,” and that is precisely how it works for me when I am asked to pin it down on anti-Semitism. We know who you are, period, and if that sounds too harsh, imagine how we feel when out of the blue we are Topic A all over again.
For what reason? Who knows? Anti-Semites, they know.
Truths is, I never liked using the term and have avoided it as much as possible in my books and columns, first because it is shopworn, overused, too simple, and it is the ultimate putdown. So here, however, is the problem. There is no substitute. An anti-Semite is an anti-Semite and no synonym will do.
I checked the Thesaurus and nothing doing; it keeps sending me back to anti-Semitism, and back to Britain and the rest of Europe.
If I sound touchy about the anti-Semitism roiling Labour this very day, well we’re in a period of remembrance for the Holocaust that wiped out more than half my family, so now is not the best time for keeping a stiff upper lip, which anti-Semites seldom do anyway, being ever so quick to speak freely about their intolerance.
For me, as a novelist, Israel is the perfect love story – the Romance of a Land and its people.
At the moment when Britain’s left – and who knows about the right? – is so busy with the Jews, thank God we have this blessed Land.
We know what anti-Semites can do once they get their hands on us – but now it’s not so easy, is it?
New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author of the international classic “Indecent Proposal” now followed by the prophetic newsroom thriller “The Bathsheba Deadline.” Engelhard is the recipient of the Ben Hecht Award for Literary Excellence. Website: www.jackengelhard.com
If you’ve been following the news trending from Britain’s Labour Party, you know that’s where anti-Semitism has been making a comeback with a vengeance, if it ever left, and where some 50 Labour members have been suspended and others have been censured for tasteless remarks against Jews and/or the Jewish State.
All that, but they can’t seem to suspend anti-Semitism.
Several of these rascals have been named, including the lady who forcefully suggested that Israel ought to be cleansed of Jews and moved to the United States. Quite a few of these names sound foreign and nothing like what we’ve been used to over the centuries, like Winston, Clive and Ken.
Instead, Mohammed ranks near the top for names given to newborns in the UK.
Yet the biggest headline comes from the former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, who’s been quoted as saying that Hitler was a Zionist.
Dare we call that anti-Semitism – that, plus the resurfaced obsession with Jews in the first place? Well, anti-Semites come in a variety of sizes.
But, as we see, one word fits all.
From my findings I have concluded that there are people who are full-time anti-Semites, they go to bed and wake up like that -- and people who are part-time anti-Semites, I call them weekend anti-Semites, acting on the impulse when it’s slow around town and there’s nothing better to do than hate Jews.
That’s when people like Ken Livingstone awaken themselves to the sunny side of Adolph Hitler.
We have them here, too, in the United States, like author Michael Chabon who gets double credits; he is Jewish and a full-time anti-Semite. Impressive!
“I know it when I see it,” and that is precisely how it works for me when I am asked to pin it down on anti-Semitism.
Back to Britain, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, himself with shaky credentials as a Zionist, says, who me?He claims that there’s no anti-Semitism going on in his back room worthy of the label.
He wants it defined. Let me try. True, there is no such thing as an official anti-Semite. We trust our instincts when we come across one.
Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart explained it like this when he was asked to rule on pornography, “I know it when I see it,” and that is precisely how it works for me when I am asked to pin it down on anti-Semitism. We know who you are, period, and if that sounds too harsh, imagine how we feel when out of the blue we are Topic A all over again.
For what reason? Who knows? Anti-Semites, they know.
Truths is, I never liked using the term and have avoided it as much as possible in my books and columns, first because it is shopworn, overused, too simple, and it is the ultimate putdown. So here, however, is the problem. There is no substitute. An anti-Semite is an anti-Semite and no synonym will do.
I checked the Thesaurus and nothing doing; it keeps sending me back to anti-Semitism, and back to Britain and the rest of Europe.
If I sound touchy about the anti-Semitism roiling Labour this very day, well we’re in a period of remembrance for the Holocaust that wiped out more than half my family, so now is not the best time for keeping a stiff upper lip, which anti-Semites seldom do anyway, being ever so quick to speak freely about their intolerance.
For me, as a novelist, Israel is the perfect love story – the Romance of a Land and its people.
At the moment when Britain’s left – and who knows about the right? – is so busy with the Jews, thank God we have this blessed Land.
We know what anti-Semites can do once they get their hands on us – but now it’s not so easy, is it?
New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author of the international classic “Indecent Proposal” now followed by the prophetic newsroom thriller “The Bathsheba Deadline.” Engelhard is the recipient of the Ben Hecht Award for Literary Excellence. Website: www.jackengelhard.com
No comments:
Post a Comment