“You are here on sufferance and if you make a fuss, these people may turn on you. Don’t stand out. Talk nice, even if inside you feel not nice at all.” And that was a big part of Jewish community thinking in Britain as well.
All of a sudden I understood it. Because, and this is a terrible thing to have to say, I think the stand the community took — loudly and proudly — against antisemitism has actually had the effect of increasing it. I look around and I see that there are many more people on the Left who now believe that there is a conniving Jewish/Zionist lobby, out to smear their heroes in order to defend their interests (in this case, Israel) than there were before the Enough Is Enough protest took to Parliament Square. Put simply, in a choice between JC and the Jews, a significant number of people on the Left have chosen JC.
Quite a few of them, of course, don’t know many Jews and even fewer know what you might call “community” Jews. It’s been all too easy for Jewish protests against Labour antisemitism to be depicted as a vendetta by a powerful and frankly slightly exotic group against a Christlike figure. It’s going too far to suggest a deep and almost medieval Christian symbolism to all this, but you do wonder sometimes.
Loud Jews, noisy Jews, demanding Jews are not the Jews people like. People like soft Jews, quiet Jews, oppressed Jews to weep over.
The Jewish community’s stand against antisemitism has actually increased it
ForLoveFromFear 