Howard Jacobson is an English novelist, and a very funny man, in a Larry-David sort of way. His protagonists are, like himself, English Jews. Recently he delivered himself of some observations — he’s an observant Jew — on the subject of Jeremy Corbyn. He was taking part in a debate on whether the Labour leader is “unfit to be prime minister.”
Something tells me you’re expecting me to call Jeremy Corbyn an antisemite. There’s been a bit about it in the press, and I… well, you know…
But I’m not going to call him anything. He says he isn’t an antisemite, Hamas says he isn’t an antisemite, the white supremacist David Duke says he isn’t an antisemite, and that’s good enough for me.
Am I being ironical? Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m incapable of irony.
We know what an antisemite look like. He wears jackboots, a swastika arm-band, and shouts Juden Raus; Jeremy Corbyn wears a British Home Stores vest under his shirt and is softly spoken. Antisemites accuse Jews of killing Jesus; Corbyn is an atheist and seems not to mind if we did or didn’t. Whether that’s because Jesus was Jewish and killing him meant one less Jew in the world, is not for me to say. And – and – he doesn’t deny the Holocaust…
Mind you, he knows a man who does. In fact he knows a surprising number of men who do. That he denies ever having been in their company – until photographs turn up of him rubbing noses with them at the gravesides of mass murderers, offering to show them his belief systems if they’ll show him theirs – ‘Gosh, they’re the same size!’ – should come as no surprise. You can’t spend your whole life in the company of blood-libellers and holocaust-deniers and expect to remember them all by name.
If I may quote from Oscar Wilde’s missing play The Self-Importance of Being Jeremy– ‘To associate with one antisemite you don’t know to be antisemitic, Mr Corbyn, may be regarded as a misfortune, to associate with antisemites on a regular basis looks like a predilection.’
Look – when I think of the scoundrels I’ve hung around with, I know how easy it is to get people wrong, even when they turn up to meet you wearing hoods and holding burning crosses. And Jeremy – is it OK if I call him Jeremy? – has never exactly been what you’d call observant.
Take that mural he championed, showing bankers playing Monopoly on the naked backs of the world’s oppressed. You and I, ladies and gentlemen, would look at those greedy, grasping, hooked-nosed, syphilitic, Zionistic financiers and recognize them at once as straight out of the Julius Streicher I-SPY BOOK OF JEWS. But so innocent of antisemitic caricature is Jeremy, that he didn’t see anything remotely offensive. “I didn’t look closely,” he explained later. How many times does he have to say it, for God’s sake! I might have been there but I don’t think I wasinvolved. I don’t remember… I didn’t look closely….
If this reminds you of those who lived downwind of the chimneys of Bergen Belsen claiming never to have smelt anything out of the ordinary, I say you have suspicious natures. Corbyn is a busy man. Busy men must take emotional shortcuts. There’s an image of a bloodsucking Jew. It’s identical to the image of the bloodsucking Jew I already carry in my head. Snap!
Could there, I wonder, be such a thing as an inadvertent antisemite? Jeremy claims to be a peace-maker. A peace-maker brings warring parties together. Why then do we only ever see him taking Palestinians to tea? Could it be that he just can’t remember to ask the Israelis? “Oh, bugger, I’ve forgotten to invite the Jews again.”
Unless – perish the thought – it isn’t peace he wants after all, but the triumph of those he calls comrades and the destruction of those he doesn’t.
According to his supporters, Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t have a racist bone in his body. Just a question, but what is racist bone and how do you know whether another person has one? There are 64 bones in the human arm alone. Can one be absolutely certain that Jeremy doesn’t feel even the tiniest twinge of bone ache, somewhere between the scapula and the humerus, when he sees an alien figure such as I am, coming towards him on Islington Green, carrying the collected speeches of Benjamin Disraeli and humming My Yiddishe Mama?
And what are we to make – speaking of Corbyn’s unconscious – of his inability ever to disavow antisemitism without reminding us of his lifelong opposition to all forms of racism? Which is like answering the question ‘Are you a wife-beater?’ with an assurance that you always buy The Big Issue.
Because antisemitism isn’t quite a racism. It’s closer to a superstition: embedded in theology, shrouded in medieval irrationality, updated to suit leftist economics, and exhumed whenever a single explanation for all the evils of the world is sought. To talk of antisemitism as a racism is a contradiction in terms for Jeremy Corbyn, since in his eyes Jews are neither downtrodden nor exploited but are – as usurers, colonialists and conspirators – the very source and fount of racism themselves. Once hold Jews to be racist, and Zionism a racist endeavour, then no antisemite can ever be a racist himself. And any definition that says otherwise must be amended….
Read the rest here.
Malcolm Jackson says
Nigel Farage is an ardent supporter of Islam. Would I be correct in assuming Nigel Farage is anti-semitic?
Politically the Muslim vote dwarfs the Jewish vote in the UK. Any treacherous politician would sell out to Islam in the hope of winning Muslim votes.
What Farage and Co do not seem to realise is that Imam’s always tell their people to vote for Corbyn’s Islam loving Labour Party, so the likes of Farage, pandering to the Muslim vote, are wasting their time by their betrayal of the indigenous British population.
James Lincoln says
Gerard Batten, as current leader of UKIP, is a breath of fresh air regarding how the UK needs to deal with Islam.
Nigel Farage was critical for Brexit but, for various political reasons, is completely unable to deal with Islam head-on.
StellaSaidSo says
Good points, James Lincoln and Malcolm Jackson.
Buraq says
Howard Jacobson was a learned, educated contributor for The Independent when that rag could be described as indeed, independent. But the fascist left got rid of him and the paper took a dive, in terms of quality.
He is a brilliant writer and should have been snapped up by any self-respecting newspaper. Sadly the days of quality British journalism are a thing of the past. The Independent is now fascist left rag that whores itself for Islam.
Peter Buckley says
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Mdo74o7Sp4
Georg says
“Unless – perish the thought – it isn’t peace he wants after all”
As goes for leftism. It isn’t reconciliation they want, but retribution–no matter how deluded; they hide this but not very well.
gravenimage says
Howard Jacobson on Jeremy Corbyn: “Spiteful, Sanctimonious, and Obdurate”
………………..
Brilliant stuff.
Harold Armitage says
Let’s get our fact right.
Jesus was not Jewish. He spoke Aramiac and therefore could be considered to be a Palestinian.
http://www.land-of-the-bible.com/node/855
Buraq says
@ Harold Armitage
You’re a five-star clown! Palestine did not exist until the Roman Emperor Hadrian re-named Judea as Palestine. And as Hadrian lived between 24th January, 76 AD and 10th July, 138 AD, *AFTER* the life and death of Jesus, how could Jesus be described as ‘Palestinian’?
It’s idiots like you that make my blood boil. Get an education, you cretin!
Baucent says
I think you’ve got Corbyn’s problem.
yohanan says
to Harold Armitage.
Denying historical, ethical Jesus his Jewishness is your own anti-semitism.
But on Aramaic, get facts (and spelling) right.
Read wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramaic_language
carpediadem says
Another antiSemite. Gee, Jihadwatch is really getting clogged with this most spiteful, myopic population.
mark says
@ Harold Armitage
You still here muhamad?