By Melanie Phillips
Why are so many diaspora
Jews doing the dirty work of their mortal enemies for them?
In the United States, most Jews still
support the Democratic Party despite the refusal by some politicians — namely,
the four freshmen congresswomen who call themselves “the Squad,” and have made
anti-Jewish and anti-Israel remarks — to distance themselves from the
Jew-baiting Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
American Jewish leaders are also deeply reluctant to speak out
against black or Muslim Jew-hatred, of which there have been some shocking
recent examples.
Immediately
after the New Jersey atrocity where three civilians and a police officer were
murdered in a kosher supermarket, local black people were videoed blaming the
Jews for the shooting and calling on them to get out of the neighborhood.
A
school-board member then bizarrely accused local Jews of selling body parts and
attacking the black community. This was followed by a physical attack on a
Jewish woman in the New York subway by a black woman ranting “Allahu akbar!”
and “It’s good they killed Jews in New Jersey; they should have killed all of
you.”
In
Britain, there’s an even worse problem. Not only are there horrific anti-Jewish
attitudes on the left that have all but consumed the Labour Party, but in a political
equivalent of auto-immune disease some leaders of the Jewish community are
attacking its defenders and siding with some of its foes.
This
week, I found myself at the sharp end of that phenomenon when I was attacked
over a column I wrote for Britain’s Jewish Chronicle, with
Jewish leaders helping fuel the frenzy against me.
I
had argued in my column that, while real prejudice against Muslims should be
condemned, the charge of Islamophobia was a concept developed by Islamists to
silence any criticism of the Islamic world. I further argued that it was
terribly wrong to equate antisemitism with Islamophobia, the accusation of
which provided cover for Muslim antisemitism.
Twitter
and social media then erupted into a firestorm, accusing me of “peddling Islamophobia”,
supporting “conspiracism” and being an “Israeli regime propagandist.”
This
conflagration was ignited by Daniel Sugarman, a former Jewish
Chronicle journalist who currently works for the community’s
main representative body, the Board of Deputies.
Writing in a personal capacity, he tweeted in response to my
column that while working at the paper, his “favorite four words ever to appear
in print were ‘Melanie Phillips is away.’ Her presence as a monthly columnist
diminishes a wonderful paper. She is a disgrace.”
All
this could have been brushed aside as just customary Twitter abuse. Far more
important and disturbing, however, was the reaction of the Board of Deputies
itself. For rather than disavowing Sugarman, it actually tweeted its own attack
on me thus:
“The
publication of this piece was an error. Anti-Muslim prejudice is very real and
it is on the rise. Our community must stand as allies to all facing racism.”
So
in response to my argument that the accusation of Islamophobia was being used
to silence those telling the truth about Islamic extremism and Muslim
antisemitism, the board said I should have been silenced. It has thus become
the patsy of those wishing to harm the Jewish people and the West.
Other
Jewish establishment types also piled in against me.
Dave
Rich, policy head at the Community Security Trust that does essential work in
guarding the security of British Jews, tweeted that my column “mirrors the
worst writing from antisemitism-deniers in recent years … replicating some of
the nonsense written about antisemitism and directing it at Islamophobia.”
His
argument was shallow to the point of absurdity. The difference between
“antisemitism-deniers” and those rejecting the term “Islamophobia” is that
Jew-hatred is real, indisputable bigotry—and while there is certainly real
anti-Muslim prejudice, Islamophobia is a concept that is often used for
sinister ends.
This
was well understood by the French philosopher Pascal Bruckner, who has called
Islamophobia a “semantic racket.” Two years ago, he wrote in Tablet that it was
developed as a weapon to silence both Westerners and liberal Muslim reformers.
More than that, claiming equivalence with antisemitism was an
attempt to enable Muslims to replace the Jews as the apparent prime targets of
global bigotry.
“Once
the equivalence between Judeophobia and Islamophobia is established,” wrote
Bruckner, “the next step is to put in place the principle of elimination—a
subtle but effective process of symbolic expropriation. It is our turn, say the
Islamic fundamentalists.”
They
could then present themselves as the people to whom the entire Christian and
Jewish world was indebted to repair the wrongs done to the world of Islam.
Rich’s
claim is also in direct contradiction to remarks made at an Oxford conference
last summer by Haras Rafiq, chief executive of the Muslim anti-extremist
Quilliam Foundation. A practicing Muslim himself, Rafiq warned against using
the term “Islamophobia” which he said was invented by the Muslim Brotherhood
and was the wrong way to describe anti-Muslim prejudice.
Which
is pretty well what I wrote. By equating me ludicrously with people denying
Jew-hatred, Rich merely revealed he understands neither “Islamophobia” nor why
antisemitism is unique.
Nor
is all this toxic froth confined to the community’s lay leadership. On his
Facebook page, a London Chabad rabbi, Herschel Gluck, responded to my column
with defamatory remarks including calling me “a hate preacher.”
This
was bizarre. I am a journalist and, arguably, one of Britain’s most prominent
defenders of Israel and the Jewish people. “Hate preacher” is a term used by
the British police, among others, to describe Islamist fanatics who inspire
others to blow people up.
Gluck
is said by those who know him to have devoted his life to good works. So it’s
not surprising that he’s committed to interfaith initiatives, in which Jews and
Muslims try to build bridges around shared experiences.
Indeed,
it would appear that Gluck’s commitment to interfaith initiatives is so
profound that he has now actually transposed the characteristics of Islamic
jihadi fanaticism onto a Jew.
Belief
in interfaith within the British rabbinate is so unshakeable that Orthodox
rabbis are in the forefront of equating antisemitism with Islamophobia. They
have thus become the useful idiots in the Islamist extremists’ strategy of
religious war.
The
distinction between antisemitism and Islamophobia is as crucial as it is poorly
understood. People think Islamophobia is just a word for prejudice against
Muslims. It’s not. It’s a term used specifically to silence people who
criticize the Muslim world.
After
all, the term “phobia” isn’t applied to prejudice against Sikhs or Hindus or
anyone else. “Islamophobia” deliberately appropriates the key aspect of
antisemitism — that it is truly deranged — and falsely turns all criticism of
the Islamic world into a psychological disorder, thus making that world
unchallengeable. The difference between antisemitism and Islamophobia is
between truth and lies.
The
Muslim world is deeply jealous of the unique status of Jew-hatred as the
ultimate bigotry. Some in the wider community are similarly jealous because
they think it confers ultimate impunity for misdeeds. And that is a
fundamentally antisemitic belief.
But
the Jews who equate it with Islamophobia can’t bear the uniqueness of
Jew-hatred either. That’s because in the diaspora, many Jews don’t want to be
unique. They want to be just like everyone else.
They
are frightened that uniqueness will make them the targets of hatred. So they
deny the uniqueness of antisemitism, and thus its true evil.
And
that’s why, although Jeremy Corbyn has now been defeated, the leadership of
Britain’s Jewish community is itself marching it towards the edge of the
cultural cliff.
***
My comment:
Melanie
Phillips is right. "The leadership of Britain’s Jewish community is itself
marching it towards the edge of the cultural cliff". The first thing they should
do is educate themselves and read Ibn Warraq. The Webster definition of the word phobia is “an exaggerated usually inexplicable and illogical fear of a
particular object, class of objects, or situation”. After reading Ibn Warraq’s The Islam in Islamic Terrorism: The
Importance of Beliefs, Ideas, and Ideology they should reassess the
validity of the word Islamophobia
