It should be clear that this anti-semitism "crisis" is not chiefly about respecting Jewish sensitivities or even about Jewish identity. It is about protecting the sensitivities of some Jews on Israel, a state oppressing and dispossessing the Palestinian people.
Policing debates on Israel
When the Guardian's senior columnist Jonathan Freedland insists that his Jewish identity is intimately tied to Israel, and that to attack Israel is to attack him personally, he is demanding the exclusive right to police the parameters of discussions about Israel. He is asserting his right, over the rights of other Jews -- and, of course, Palestinians -- to determine what the boundaries of political discourse on Israel are, and where the red lines denoting anti-semitism are drawn.
This is why Labour MPs like Hodge and journalists like Freedland are at the centre of another confected anti-semitism row in the Labour party: over the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of anti-semitism and an associated set of examples. They want all the IHRA's examples adopted by Labour, not just most of them.
There are very clear, existing definitions of anti-semitism. They are variations of the simple formulation: "Anti-semitism is the hatred of Jews for being Jews." But the IHRA takes this clear definition and muddies it to the point that all sorts of political debates can be viewed as potentially anti-semitic, as leading jurists have warned. (See here and here.)
That is only undercored by the fact that a majority of the IHRA's examples of anti-semitism relate to Israel -- a nuclear-armed state now constitutionally designed to privilege Jews over non-Jews inside its recognized borders and engaged in a half-century of brutal military occupation of the Palestinian people outside its borders.
To be fair to the drafters of the IHRA guidelines, these examples were supposed only to be treated as potentially anti-semitic, depending on the context. That is the express view of the definition's drafter, Kenneth Stern, a Jewish lawyer, who has warned that the guidelines are being perverted to silence criticism of Israel and stifle free speech.
And who are leading precisely the moves that Stern has warned against? People like Jonathan Freedland and Margaret Hodge, cheered on by large swaths of Labour MPs, who have strongly implied that Corbyn and his allies in the party are anti-semitic for sharing Stern's concerns.
Hodge and Freedland are desperate to strong-arm the Labour party into setting the IHRA guidelines in stone, as the unchallengeable, definitive new definition of anti-semitism. That will relieve them of the arduous task of policing those discourse boundaries on the basis of evidence and of context. They will have a ready-made, one-size-fits-all definition to foreclose almost all serious debate about Israel.
Want to suggest that Israel's new Nation-State Law, giving Jewish citizens constitutionally guaranteed rights denied to non-Jewish citizens, is proof of the institutional racism on which political Zionism is premised and that was enshrined in the founding principles of the state of Israel? Well, you just violated one of the IHRA guidelines by arguing that Israel is a "racist endeavour." If Freedland and Hodge get their way, you would be certain to be declared an anti-semite and expelled from the Labour party.
Grovelling apology
Revealing how cynical this maneuvering by Hodge, Freedland and others is, one only has to inspect the faux-outrage over the latest "anti-semitism crisis" involving Corbyn. He has been forced to make a grovelling apology -- one that deeply discredits him -- for hosting an anti-racism conference in 2010 at which a speaker made a comparison between Israel's treatment of Palestinians and the Nazis' treatment of Jews. That violated another of the IHRA examples.
But again, what none of these anti-semitism warriors has wanted to highlight is that the speaker given a platform at the conference was the late Hajo Meyer, a Jewish Holocaust survivor who dedicated his later years to supporting Palestinian rights. Who, if not Meyer, deserved the right to make such a comparison? And to imply that he was an anti-semite because he prioritized Palestinian rights over the preservation of Israel's privileges for Jews is truly contemptible.
In fact, it is more than that. It is far closer to anti-semitism than the behavior of Jewish critics of Israel like Greenstein and Chilson, who have been expelled from the Labour party. To intentionally exploit and vilify a Holocaust survivor for cheap, short-term political advantage -- in an attempt to damage Corbyn -- is malevolence of the worst kind.
Having stoked fears of an anti-semitism crisis, Hodge, Freedland and others have actively sought to obscure the wider context in which it must be judged -- as, in large part, a painful debate raging inside the Jewish community. It is a debate between fervently pro-Israel Jewish establishment groups and a growing body of marginalized anti-Zionist Jewish activists who wish to show solidarity with the Palestinians. Labour is not suffering from an "anti-semitism crisis"; it is mired in an "Israel crisis."
"Repulsive" campaign
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