CAA to complain to The Guardian over characterisation of antisemitic conspiracy theory that Israel was to blame for racist killing of George Floyd as merely “anti-Israel”
Campaign Against Antisemitism is to issue a complaint to The Guardian newspaper over the characterisation of an antisemitic conspiracy theory as merely “anti-Israel”.
In an interview with the esteemed Jewish actress and writer, Maureen Lipman, the interviewer, Zoe Williams, referenced recent comments by activist actress Maxine Peake that Israel may have been to blame for the racist killing of George Floyd, writing: “Peake, sure, would be an impossible acquaintance, after her recent comments – which she retracted – were deemed anti-Israel enough to get Rebecca Long-Bailey kicked off the Labour front bench for retweeting her” (emphasis added).
The conspiracy theory in question was not only baseless but, as Campaign Against Antisemitism explained at the time, antisemitic, and the Leader of the Labour Party, Sir Keir Starmer, also recognised it as such and sacked Ms Long-Bailey from the Shadow Cabinet for promoting the article.
As Campaign Against Antisemitism wrote at the time, the conspiracy theory is antisemitic because it observes an evil — police brutality or systemic racism in the United States — and looks to link it with Israel, in order to associate the Jews through the Jewish state with that evil. Moreover, for antisemites, associating a phenomenon with Jews not only makes Jews look bad but can also make the phenomenon itself seem worse.
Moreover, we wrote, the linkage of Mr Floyd’s death to Israel is not criticism of Israeli policy. It is criticism of American police brutality or systemic racism in the United States that unnecessarily and baselessly blames the Jewish state for that evil. It has nothing to do with Israel or Israeli policy and serves only (and deliberately) to tarnish Israel by attaching it to a foreign evil entirely unrelated to it.
To describe the antisemitic conspiracy theory as merely “anti-Israel” is effectively to deny that it is antisemitic. The conspiracy theory is not simply “anti-Israel” because in reality it has nothing to do with Israel at all; it is about gratuitously associating Jews with evil, and that is why it is antisemitic.
Moreover, the article may even be understood as suggesting that it was criticism of Israel that got Ms Long-Bailey fired, an interpretation which misunderstands and demeans the fight against antisemitism. The failure of the far-left and elements of the moderate Left to understand this distinction is why some in those circles can find it so difficult to identify, recognise and eliminate contemporary manifestations of anti-Jewish racism.
Campaign Against Antisemitism will be writing to The Guardian to lodge a formal complaint.
Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer 2019 showed that antisemitism on the far-left of British politics has surpassed that of the far-right.
