(Jewish Group) Society exposes us all to anti-Jewish tropes and attitudes. Notice them.

Society exposes us all to anti-Jewish tropes and attitudes. The first step is to notice them

For a week now, I’ve been bombarded with variations on the same question: “So what do you think about that cartoon?” The cartoon in question being the depiction of the outgoing BBC chair, Richard Sharp, which appeared on these pages last Saturday in a drawing swiftly denounced as loaded with age-old antisemitic tropes and then removed from the Guardian website later that same day. I didn’t want to sound off about the work of my colleagues on Twitter or on the radio, but I also thought it was a fair question to ask. After all, when other progressive institutions have committed similar offences I have not exactly held back. So here, on the pages of the Guardian itself, is what I think.

When Labour was grappling with antisemitism in its ranks, I was careful to refer to not only the party but also “the wider left”. Few British Jews kidded ourselves that this was a problem confined to one political group. Rather, I and others argued that what had surfaced, admittedly in vivid form in Labour, was a cast of mind, a way of seeing Jews, that had long existed in corners of the left, with roots that went decades – if not centuries – deep, and which stretched far beyond these shores. That view of Jews drew, in turn, on cultural ideas almost as old as civilisation itself, embedded in the core texts and artworks of Christianity, as well as in the words of our canonical writers: Chaucer, Shakespeare and Dickens.

All this stuff informs how people see Jews, including even some of those who pride themselves on loathing racist prejudice. Which is why, although there was disappointment and hurt, there was no great surprise when, to pick just one example, the Royal Court theatre announced in 2021 a new play about a predatory, manipulative billionaire named … Hershel Fink. (We’ll come back to him later.) So long established are these lines of thought, no institution is immune. Not even the country’s finest liberal publications.

Nearly a fortnight ago, the Observer published a letter from the veteran Labour MP Diane Abbott. In it she rejected the view that Jewish, Irish or Traveller people suffered racism. “Prejudice”, of the kind endured by white people with red hair, sure. But actual racism? No, the only people who faced that were people of colour, whether in the Jim Crow American south or apartheid South Africa.

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