First, it needs pointing out that plenty of British Jews, including experts on the subject like Antony Lerman and Stephen Sedley, also take issue with the definition of anti-semitism employed by pro-Israel Jews, like Freedland and the JLM. They too believe it is being abused and manipulated for political ends.
These Jews have struggled to make their voices heard, not necessarily because they lack numbers but because they have not been organized in the way the Israel lobby is in much of Europe and the US. And in turn, that is largely because they lack the support, funding and organizational backing that comes from allying oneself to a powerful benefactor like the Israeli state. There is nothing unique about this. Lobbies revolve around powerful interests, as one can see spectacularly demonstrated in the United States, where unrepresentative gun, medical, financial and military lobbies dominate political life.
But in addition, the Israel lobby benefits from the oxygen of publicity offered by the state-corporate media in a way countervailing groups like Jewish Voice for Labour don't. The corporate media failed to send a single journalist to cover the group's establishment at the conference, despite the obvious newsworthiness of the event. And Freedland has continued to ignore the intervention by the Jewish Voice for Labour in the anti-semitism debate.
To understand this "oversight" requires a lengthy, separate analysis of the role of the western corporate media in supporting related corporate interests like the arms industry, and of the readiness of European political and media elites to submit to the so-called "Washington consensus" -- whatever the US state decides are its core interests.
Once these issues are factored in, Freedland's argument becomes entirely self-fulfilling. The definitions we hear from organized Jewish groups conflate anti-semitism with anti-Zionism precisely because they support Israel's interests and those of its western patrons.
Victim or oppressorBut there is an even more profound flaw in Freedland's thesis.
Black people, women and gays are groups whose views should be listened to sensitively and considered seriously by oppressor groups, precisely because the oppressor is still in a position to oppress. It is not that white people's views of racism are worthless; it is that their position of privilege makes it extremely hard for them to consider fully what it is like to suffer a particular form of racism and discrimination, or what it means to be a victim.
But Freedland and the JLM's views of anti-semitism do not fit neatly into this model of victim-oppressor. When the JLM ties its Jewish identity to Israel -- a state that privileges one ethnic group, Jews, over native Palestinians; that was built on the dispersion and ethnic cleansing of that native people; and continues to oppress them through a brutal military occupation -- it precisely subverts the notion of Jew as victim.
In fact, it can be argued that this is the very appeal of Israel to Zionist Jews like Freedland and the JLM. They enjoy at a distance the empowerment provided by Israel. This is the excitement, described at length by liberal Israeli professor Yaron Ezrahi in his book Rubber Bullets, of the Jew who is transformed by Israel into a warrior. It is the reason many Zionist Jews are publicly thrilled by the sight of Israeli soldiers, "his and her" weapons casually slung over their shoulders.
Implicated in oppressionBut in the case of Jews living outside Israel, this self-image of power, the ability to inflict violence, is more complex. Israel offers Freedland and the JLM a strangely privileged status of oppressor by proxy: they demand a collective identification with a nuclear-armed, highly militarized state while still demanding the right to claim personal victimhood.
But Zionist Jews, those who identify their Jewishness with Israel, have compromised that right in relation to Israel. They cannot straightforwardly define themselves as victims precisely because they have chosen to implicate themselves in the oppression of Palestinians.
Palestinians have almost no visibility in western debates about victimhood. Even acknowledgment of Islamophobia covers only a few of the problems they face in the diaspora -- of their possible denial of entry at airports, of the insults and discrimination they face as Arabs and Muslims in western societies. But it does not address their victimhood as Palestinians, their oppression at the hands of Israel, the complicity of powerful states in the west, and the decades of silence and inaction from liberal Zionists and organised Jewish groups like the JLM.
When real leftists, Jewish or not, speak in solidarity with Palestinians, and reject Jewish privilege in relation to Israel, it is not evidence of anti-semitism. It is part of their responsibility to lobby on behalf of a highly victimized group. A group that unlike blacks, women and gays has almost no formal status in western debates about oppression.
When the Palestinians gain even a little visibility, it is chiefly because of the actions of grassroots activists promoting initiatives like Israel Apartheid Week and the BDS movement. When Freedland and the JLM reject these initiatives as evidence of anti-semitism, they choose to speak in the loud voice of Jewish privilege, not the quieter voice of Jewish victimhood.
The real racism problemThe real racism problem in the Labour party, and more generally in western societies, is not currently anti-semitism. It is a profound racism against Arabs and Muslims generally and against Palestinians in particular -- a legacy of recent western colonialism, and of anti-semitism in a much broader sense that refers to all semitic peoples, not just Jews.
It is a racism that defers indefinitely a remedy for the Palestinians whose land was stolen from them by British colonialists who had no right to transfer it to someone else. It is a racism that confers legitimacy on a Jewish state, even as it boasts of its tribalism in marginalising a fifth of its own citizens because they are non-Jews. It is a racism that claims to champion a two-state solution while preferring not to lift a finger to realize it. Further, it is a racism that smears as anti-semites, those whose consciences drive them to fight for Palestinian rights.
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