We know what “From the river / to the sea” means now: an Israel without Jews. The Palestinian Solidarity Campaign (PSC), a group of Muslim fundamentalists and affluent socialists, protests across Britain and this is its song. It will be at the Israeli embassy in Kensington tonight because it is not enough to hate Jews. Jews in mourning must hear it. Celebration of Jewish death is implicit in this activism: they do it now, on Twitter and in life. In Brighton one speaker called the pogrom in Israel “a victory… so beautiful and inspiring”. Child abduction, murder, rape, terror: they call it resistance. No political solutions are offered, or desired.
They say they love the Palestinians. Rather, they are using them. From their affluent liberal democracy, they wish war on them, and they will not pay for it. They have nothing to say to Palestinian moderates, liberals, or gays — they treat them as a mass — and no bombs will drop on Crouch End or Hackney. They are dilettantes and, in their way, I think they are as haunted by the Shoah as Jews. According to the novelist Howard Jacobson, their hatred is a yearning for absolution. If Jews are demonic, the Shoah is nothing to fear: we brought it on ourselves. They are unconscious of this, being stupid, but I find it comforting, this addled search for sense in what they cannot understand.
The Palestinian Solidarity Campaign say that they love the Palestinians. Rather, they are using them
Some members of London’s Jewish community would suppress these protests. I welcome them for a bad reason — that I must face what Israeli Jews face, for fellowship — and a better one: they remind me I live in Britain — a fraying liberal democracy. This space must be protected, or it will be destroyed. I would ban them from the Labour Party — PSC should be a proscribed organisation — but give them the streets.
I have a better reason yet. For years the Corbynite Left said they don’t hate Jews. Rather, it is Jews who are anti-Semites. This is explicable only if you understand anti-Semitism as Sartre did: as a passion. The Jew is the mirror onto which they project everything they fear. Ask them what their solution to Israel/Palestine is and they don’t answer. They can’t or, until now, they haven’t.
Let them shout slogans and expose themselves as Hitler’s children. Their joy in murder has outed them. A new book called Israelophobia by Jake Wallis Simons, the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, tells the story of the Nazification of Arab lands. The Mufti of Jerusalem adored Hitler. He was on his payroll: 900 marks a month. Did he get expenses? Adolf Eichmann promised a Final Solution in Palestine but lost the war before he could begin. Moderate Arabs wanted the 1947 UN partition plan — two states — but were outnumbered by lunatics and cynics. Jewish scapegoats were too useful, as they had been in Europe for centuries. They could be blamed when Arab leaders failed. A million Jews left the Arab world for Israel, many fleeing for their lives: more than half of Israel is non-white. So much for colonialism.
So let them march and let moderates despise them. They are no friends to sane Palestinians, democrats, or any Jews. We have heard what they want, and it cannot be unheard. Now, perhaps, a new beginning.
BBC are telling the wrong story
The BBC is proud of its glossy new drama about Jimmy Savile which stars Steve Coogan, a former user of sex workers. It shouldn’t be. The BBC was more complicit in Savile’s crimes than anyone: there is convincing evidence in Dan Davies’s book In Plain Sight that the BBC repeatedly repressed testimony about Savile’s crimes. Still, they monetise him. In life, they lauded him. After his death — the drama ends there — two Newsnight reporters, Liz MacKean and Meirion Jones, nailed the story: as a child Jones had been a visitor to a home where Savile abused children and he couldn’t forget. Their report was repressed in favour of laudatory coverage of Savile, and MacKean and Jones were cast adrift. If the BBC were contrite this would be the story they tell. Understanding collusion is more useful than understanding psychopathy, about which there is nothing to understand.
