Since I started to write about what I see as the trivialisation of antisemitism in recent months, I have been asked many times: “Are you Jewish?”
I’ve tried to ignore the question because I don’t want to encourage idiots into thinking it’s OK to glibly discuss the ‘Jewishness’ of other people when it comes to debating antisemitism, or anything else for that matter. Because it really is not OK.
But it’s got to the stage now where I can no longer ignore it.
So here is my reply:
My father’s Jewish family were murdered in the Holocaust. Three brothers survived – one my grandfather – who were ‘allowed’ to leave Vienna in the 1930s.
In those days, when the Nazis took over Austria, Jews were allowed to leave, if they had enough money to ‘buy’ their way out of the country. The family (we presume) clubbed together to pay for the three youngest members of the family to leave. They left with virtually nothing.
Imagine the pain of having to pay for your children to leave you? Forever. Just so they could survive the coming storm. Within a couple of years, the rest of the Jews who remained in Vienna were deported to concentration camps – the men to camps in southern Germany, women and children in cattle trucks to camps mostly in modern day Poland.
They were nearly all of them brutally murdered.
I remember my grandfather. He was a chemist – a highly-educated man who spoke three languages: Italian, German and English fluently.
But here’s the thing.
He used to take me and my brother to Methodist Sunday School. He never took us to the local Synagogue. In fact, he never spoke of his Jewishness. Why could that be?
Well, one explanation is that he probably (until the Nazis came along) did not ‘feel’ in himself all that Jewish. He was a man of science. He didn’t seem to be religious.
My father was not brought up by my grandfather as being ‘Jewish’ either – in a religious or even cultural sense. People who think these things are important regard ‘Jewishness’ as being passed through the maternal bloodline, so even if my grandfather had regarded himself as Jewish in a serious way, why would my father?
I remember watching the ‘Sound of Music’ when I was a kid. To most people a light musical. But I remember my grandfather saying during the film: That’s your family history. The only time I remember him mentioning it.
Of course, the Nazis themselves would not have been so equivocal about my grandfather’s, or my father’s Jewishness. Or mine, for that matter. So why after all he and his family went through – after the heartbreaking tragedy that had befallen his closest family members – was my grandfather so quiet about his Jewishness?
The answer is Fear.
He’d been brought up at a time and place when being Jewish was something to feel afraid about. And I mean really afraid. Not the invented so-called ‘fear’ people like Margaret Hodge have been talking about when she said recently she feels like people felt who were fleeing the Holocaust.
No Margaret. This is a trivialisation of the fear felt by people like my grandfather and all the other Jews who were forced to flee for their lives from the firestorm that was to become the Holocaust.
All of the people trivialising the tragedy of antisemitism – belittling the Holocaust – to attack a party leader, just because they don’t like his policies on nationalisation, or taxation or whatever, should be ashamed of themselves.
It is time for this to stop.
And when people start to question my or anyone else’s Jewishness, just because of differences in political opinion or whatever, they are on VERY dangerous ground.
Because we’ve been there before. And there is VERY bad precedent for this kind of investigating the Jewishness, or religious and ethnic backgrounds of others.
I think of my grandfather, and his fear.
His Jewishness was important only to his enemies – to the people who wanted to destroy him – because they couldn’t see past his Jewishness to the human being ‘underneath’.
So please, never question my ‘Jewishness’ – or supposed lack of it – ever again. I will not be so polite the next time it happens.
Thank you.
Very well said Tom. Big round of well-deserved applause.
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ALL RIGHT WE WONT BUG YOU
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You’re right about all of that.
However, I’d suggest that it starts with minor forms of othering like lumping all Jews together as if they were all the same and believe the same things about everything… and then it rapidly goes downhill from there until we’ve ended up back where we were. Just look at the history. And the ramping-up of antisemitic incidents everywhere.
Yes, we’re not anywhere near a second Holocaust — but with all the other nastiness that’s going down — things are looking nasty.
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I can relate to the above as I’m from a very similar background, funnily enough my father was also a Chemist. My grandparents were Russian Jews who left Russia for England during the Russian Revolution.
We certainly weren’t Orthodox Jews, but always celebrated Shabazz and Passover. I hate saying this, but unfortunately there are quite a lot of anti semitic remarks on Social Media, not least that Israel should be given back to Palestine, and even worse than that.
These remarks are usually blamed on the Left, whereas usually the opposite is more likely, and I don’t believe for one moment that Jeremy Corbyn is anti-semitic.
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Reblogged this on Hercules space.
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Congratulations on this piece. With one or two minor differences you have told MY story as well as your own. Thank you for doing so with such clarity.
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Respect for your feelings and your grandfather. .define antisemitism in Israel nowadays. Would your grandfather approve and do you approve of criticism of the behaviour of an Israeli led government towards the Palestinians? If so clarify which and why 2 wrongs dont make a correct attitude.
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Thank you, Tom.
The most sensible and heartfelt comment on this sorry affair that I have yet to hear.
Best wishes, Dave Atha. Leeds.
Sent from my iPhone. Quality may vary.
>
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Reblogged this on sdbast.
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Thanks for this piece…. Annie Albers said she was only “Jewish in the Hitler sense”
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Thank you very much for this. The continuous accusations of anti-semitism that fly about the establishment are simply weapons in trivial power games, which serve not only to maintain certain establishment narratives, but are also an affront to ordinary intelligence, a complete rewriting of history and most importantly an insult the the millions of jews who have suffered and died at the hands of actual anti-semitism.
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Thanks Mr Pride that was such a moving explanation of why this ‘Anti Semitism’ in the labour Party by MPS mostly is both offensive and dangerous. I agree with you 100% and I admire your openness and bravery in responding
It puts all those to shame who are using the real terror of anti-Semitism to attack those expressing anti Israeli views. I think they are playing with fire
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A very well written piece. Thanks Tom. Yes, it is high time to stop this nonsense.
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A powerful piece, which must have been emotionally draining to write. May it be widely read!
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One of the sanest things I’ve read on this topic – and thankyou for calling out Margaret Hodge too. She had a completely free ride in a long sympathetic unquestioning interview on Woman’s Hour about a year ago where she egregiously conflated the indubitably horrific murder of her relatives in the holocaust with the most rabid allegations of anti-semitism from Corbyn as if her allegations and her family history were the same thing. It was a really horrible piece of propaganda.
I have a very high opinion of Hodge over some issues but there is an irrational animosity at work when it comes to anti-semitism. And I have a genuine fear that, when the dust has all settled on this issue, she and her like-minded friends will have left a legacy of increasing anti-semitism rather than reducing it.
For most people, including supporters of Corbyn’s brand of socialism, I’m sure that a person’s jewishness or non-jewishness is a matter of complete indifference. Unless you have a racist mindset, you don’t judge a person on the basis of their ethnicity. And there other more attractive political spaces for enthusiastic racists. Why would they join a party committed to fighting social injustices of all forms?
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Reblogged this on hilary77blog.
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Reblogged this on Worldtruth.
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Dear Tom,
My dear friend Monty is descended from a handful of Jews from his family who escaped the Holocaust from Austrian and Poland. His Grandfather, Grandmother, Uncles, Aunts, Cousins, and 600 members of the Modlinger family died in the camps.
And they were betrayed by friends, neighbours, work colleagues and friends at churches such as Methodists, Presbyterians, and Quakers, YES Quakers betrayed his family to the Nazis.
They did this because really people did not like Jews no matter what they said on the outside and also to then get their friends and neighbours homes, apartments, businesses and assets.
Then after Monty said the very people who betrayed them Quakers etc would turn up as part of the supportive care services to support the Holocaust survivors, and they would actually say “Hey friends, Hey Neighbour, Do you remember me….” as if it was nothing.
On coming to England, they pretended to fit in, did not say they were Jews and attended Methodist church to fit in.
Monty did not know he was Jewish or the end of his grandfather and uncles and family until 16.
As his parents did not want the children mentioning by accident that they were Jew,
They like many Jews through the ages had learnt their lesson.
And since finding out. the anti-Jewish and antisemitic stuff is horrendous, like cartoon prejudices. his home was even set alight with him in it. And it is constant.
Unfortunately, Monty looks very Jewish and like a Nazi cariacature unlike his sister who looks more European.
And now we get, even from the intelligent and socialists and labour and LibDems and educated that the Holocaust is a Jewish lie and hoax. And all Jews are liars, and greedy and all the rest
Even that Jews are not really human beings but shape-shifting alien lizards.
And this is from educated middle class social conscious people.
Any reason to find cause to Hate the Jew.
Even Quakers again. Who were horrendous of their excuses for the Holocaust as all well meaning ignorant people are.
Forgetting that if you dismiss as a lie and a hoax the deaths and existence of 6 million Jews, then you also have to dismiss and deny 7-8 million Russians, 3 million Polish, 600,000 Serbs, 270,000 disabled (More than this have died in last few years alone in UK due to cuts. That’s how complacent you are) 500,000 Romanies, 200,000 Freemasons, 25,000 Sloveness, 7000 Spanish Republicans, 15,000 homosexuals and 5000, Jehovah Witnesses.
There is no pity for the Jew and all the sanctimonious pledges of support disappear to nothing in a real situation holocaust and prejudice.
Or it is just a story to amuse and titillate a smug white middle class and chattering bourgeoise over their cappuccino, latte, or church coffee morning.
We know there is no real interest, and you are on your own.
and as Golda Meir said, We Are Going to Have to Do It For Ourselves.
So empathy and solidarity from those who know and why a Jew remains silent.
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Horrified to hear from some of my Jewish comrades who are pro-Corbyn and critical of the current government of Israel that they have been harassed, insulted, called “Kapo” on social media, been targeted at work by people trying to get them sacked, had very sinister references made to where their children or grandchildren go to school by some of those who maintain the Labour Party is “institutionally antisemitic”.
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This is what I fear, that using anti-semitism as a stick with which to beat Corbyn and his followers will actually create a much more serious climate of anti-semitism. Hodge, Ryan and the other eight or so other ’empty pots’ are playing a very dangerous game. They are a ridiculously small number of individuals creating a totally disproportionate amount of mischief. Dianne Abbott alone has received loads more abusive comments than all the allegations of anti-semitic abuse added together. I’ve not heard a word of concern about that from any in this little noisy group.
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If people are doing that Tom, then they are tw-ts and deserve you to say a few choice words to them. Identity Politics is poisonous. People like Mrs Hodge are despicable for suggesting current situation are like the holocaust. You’d think given some of the events that person has been involved in (child abuse scandals and little sympathy for victims)they would have more sense.
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Thank you for this tom, I can’t though share this for some reason on Facebook.
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