On 13th September 2018,
Rabbi Lord Sacks spoke in a House of Lords debate on antisemitism in Britain.
TRANSCRIPT
My
Lords I am grateful to Lord Popat for initiating this debate, and I want to
explain why. The greatest danger any civilisation faces is when it suffers from
collective amnesia. We forget how small beginnings lead to truly terrible
endings. A thousand years of Jewish history in Europe added certain words to
the human vocabulary: forced conversion, inquisition, expulsion, ghetto,
pogrom, Holocaust. They happened because hate went unchecked. No one said stop.
My Lords, it pains me to speak about antisemitism, the world’s
oldest hatred. But I cannot keep silent. One of the enduring facts of history
is that most antisemites do not think of themselves as antisemites. We don’t
hate Jews, they said in the Middle Ages, just their religion. We don’t hate
Jews, they said in the nineteenth century, just their race. We don’t hate Jews,
they say now, just their nation state.
Antisemitism
is the hardest of all hatreds to defeat because, like a virus, it mutates, but
one thing stays the same. Jews, whether as a religion or a race or as the State
of Israel, are made the scapegoat for problems for which all sides are
responsible. That is how the road to tragedy begins.
Antisemitism,
or any hate, become dangerous when three things happen. First: when it moves
from the fringes of politics to a mainstream party and its leadership. Second:
when the party sees that its popularity with the general public is not harmed
thereby. And three: when those who stand up and protest are vilified and abused
for doing so. All three factors exist in Britain now. I never thought I would
see this in my lifetime. That is why I cannot stay silent. For it is not only
Jews who are at risk. So too is our humanity.