OPINION: UK must champion fight against anti-Zionism and global double standards
Nova music festival memorial site
Yesterday, I attended the main memorial in Park Hayarkon, Tel Aviv, held by the families of the Israeli hostages seized by Hamas on 7 October. I also visited the grounds of the Nova music festival where friends and families of the victims gathered to mourn and remember, all the more poignantly, that it was to the sound of rockets being fired overhead from Khan Yunis in Gaza, as they did so. I met a first responder to the attack on Netiv Ha’asara, having viewed a cache of weapons recovered from 7 October Hamas terrorists, which they had used to torture and murder so many Israelis on that terrible day.
My visit has been heart-rending and a stark reminder of the continuing suffering of the hostages and victims’ families – and the appalling atrocities committed against the people of Israel a year ago.
One year on, Israel continues to battle against Tehran’s “axis of resistance” on multiple fronts. Against Hamas, which, as the brutal murder of seven Israelis in a shooting and stabbing attack in Jaffa earlier this month reminds us, continues its indiscriminate attacks on civilians. And it should be noted that on my way to a ceremony, we were forced to pull over and take cover from Hamas rockets in a bomb shelter.
Against Hezbollah, whose incessant rocket fire from Lebanon into northern Israel over the past year has forced the evacuation of thousands of Israelis. And against Iran – aided and abetted by its allies the Houthis and militias in Syria and Iraq – which has now, twice, directly fired barrages of rockets, missiles and drones at Israeli cities.
But, beneath the fog of war, there lies a simple truth. For over four decades, the theocrats in Tehran, and the network of antisemitic proxies they fund, arm and direct, have sought to destroy the world’s sole Jewish state and the region’s sole democracy – and they have never cared how many innocent people in Israel, the Palestinian territories, Lebanon or the wider region, pay the price for their nefarious ambitions.
These basic facts – the underlying cause of the instability, violence and terror which wracks the Middle East – sometimes seems lost here at home. This points to the prevalence, and growing danger, of anti-Zionist antisemitism – which poses a threat to both British Jews and Britain’s national interests.
This menace is evident in the shocking rise in antisemitism over the past year which, according to the Community Security Trust, now stands at record levels. It is apparent in the demonstrations we’ve seen in British cities in which Israel has been pilloried and its attackers glorified. And it is underlined by worrying signs that these racist attitudes are taking root among some young people. While anti-Israel campus protests have seen Jewish students threatened and intimidated, polling carried out by YouGov for the Campaign Against Antisemitism, shows a significant minority of 18-24 year-olds harbour disturbingly antisemitic attitudes and sympathise with Hamas.
The rise in extremism is coupled with a softer, less easy to define, prejudice. We see it, for instance, in the quiet lack of solidarity with the Israeli people in the wake of October 7 that writers such as Hadley Freeman have so eloquently discussed and in the manner in which some news organisations steadfastly refused to label Hamas as terrorists, despite having had no hesitation in rightly using the term in relation to attacks in European cities.
This presents a challenge for the state and law enforcement agencies. The Home Secretary’s speech to the CST last month, in which she vowed to “ensure those responsible for antisemitic hate crimes feel the full force of the law”, is very welcome. There are immediate steps which could be taken to back up words with action. The government should, for instance, fulfil its pledge to proscribe Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has been implicated in propagating antisemitism and extremism here in the UK. It should also seek to address the findings of the 2021 Commission for Countering Extremism which identified a “gaping chasm in the law that allows hateful extremists to operate with impunity”.
But this isn’t simply a job for government. It is also a social and cultural challenge which requires a civic society response. We need to roll back the tide of antisemitic anti-Zionism by building a broad coalition to educate, inform and campaign. The battle against the evil of Jew-hatred should never be left to Jews alone. It should cross and work beyond domestic political divides. And it needs to recognise that the fight against antisemitism is inseparable from that against hatred directed towards the Jewish state.
What might this look like?
First, we have proudly to reclaim the mantra of Zionism, turning it from a term of abuse to a badge of honour. We must never apologise for supporting the right to self-determination of the Jewish people. We must expose the myths and lies – that Israel is an example of “settler-colonialism”, “imperialism” and “apartheid” – which, thanks to a pernicious and pervasive propaganda campaign commenced by the Soviet Union more than half a century ago – now surround it.
The re-establishment of a Jewish state in the homeland of the Jewish people after two millennia was a modern miracle, and we should be unapologetic in saying so.
Second, Britain should become a leader in the global struggle against anti-Zionist antisemitism. The initial appalling failure of the UN to speak out against the sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas on 7 October illustrates all too well the problem of the gross anti-Israel bias which pervades many international institutions.
It is evident too in the fact that, over the past decade, the UN General Assembly has passed 14 times more resolutions against Israel than Assad’s Syria and has condemned Israel six times more than Putin’s Russia. These double standards breach the UN’s principles of equity and neutrality and provide a veneer of legitimacy to the effort to demonise and delegitimise Israel.
Third, as a new paper released by ELNET UK last month argued, there is a vital strategic case for a strong relationship between Britain and Israel: one which rests on shared interests, threats and challenges. Israel and Britain already co-operate closely on countering Islamist terrorism and the danger posed by cyber warfare. But given its fast-advancing nuclear programme and its huge arsenal of ballistic missiles – missiles which already have a range capable of reaching NATO territory – it’s clear that Tehran doesn’t just pose a clear and present danger to Israel, but to Britain and our European allies, too.
Last month, it was confirmed that Iran has now supplemented its supply of suicide drones to Russia with the transfer of ballistic missiles, designed for use in Putin’s war against Ukraine. Moreover, since 7 October, Russia has continued to negotiate a new comprehensive partnership agreement with Iran, which is reportedly due to be signed imminently.
It’s unsurprising that these two global pariahs – with their shared contempt for democracy, human rights and the rules-based international order and their rapacious attitude towards their neighbours – should have drawn closer together.
Our challenge now at this pivotal inflection point is to support Israel, which shares our values, ensuring an alliance of free nations committed to resisting Tehran – the regime which, more than any other, is responsible for the terrible bloodshed and suffering which has blighted the region for the past year.
Joan Ryan is executive director of ELNET UK
This article was published on the 8th October 2024, in Jewish News