The Sad Old State of Cloud Cuckoo Land – British Jews, the Right, and Islamophobia

The Reform Club is a famous gentlemen’s club in the heart of London’s Clubland. Founded in 1836 by Whigs and Liberals, the kind of people responsible for the Great Reform Act of 1832 that swept away "rotten boroughs" and enfranchised the (male) urban middle class, it looks very much as it did in this illustration of 1840, except that some of the women there nowadays are members in their own right rather than members’ guests. The fictional Phileas Fogg’s celebrated journey in Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days started from the Reform Club, and the club’s sumptuous interior has served as the backdrop for a number of movies – I recognise it in early scenes in The Bounty, starring Anthony Hopkins as Captain Bligh and Mel Gibson as Fletcher Christian – and I know it has featured in others since then.

It was at the Reform Club that I once had tea with a Jewish former MP, Harold Soref (pictured, 1916-93) as his guest, seated in a corner of a library where ladies were permitted. Soref was, indeed, a most unlikely member of a club stocked with marble busts and oil paintings of the great and good of the Liberal Party – Cobden, Bright, Daniel O’Connell, Gladstone, and the rest – for he was known as the most rightwing Tory MP in the House, and there are rumours (I’ve never got to the bottom of them) that as a youngster he’d been a member of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. After two unsuccessful attempts to enter Parliament in the 1950s, he became Conservative MP for Ormskirk in 1970, only to lose his seat in 1974 owing to boundary changes that assured Labour of victory.

A proudly loyal Jew, he was on the Council of the Anglo-Jewish Association and from 1947-51 he’d edited its fiercely anti-Zionist periodical, The Jewish Monthly. He also contributed articles on Anglo- and Commonwealth Jewish history to a number of journals. In the British Museum (now the British Library) I’d read some of his old anti-Zionist editorials, which were based, among other considerations, on the fear, common among right-wingers at the time he wrote them, that Israel would be a puppet of the Soviet Union, abetting that country's rivalry to British interests in the Middle East. However, in 1973, at the time of the Yom Kippur War, when the Heath government despicably refused to supply spare parts for British-made Israeli tanks, Soref had joined most other Jewish Conservative MPs as well as a few non-Jewish ones in crossing the floor to vote with the Opposition over the issue.

I was interested to learn, during our conversation at the Reform Club, that he’d visited Israel not long after Independence was declared, along with another Jewish future Conservative MP (whose subsequent marriage to a Christian provoked a pointed article from Soref – who never married at all – on intermarriage, headed, if I recall correctly, "Bad Jews and Mad Jews"). And it was clear that his anti-Zionism had been laid to rest by events. Perceiving Israel’s interests to have dovetailed with Britain’s, he was agreeably pro-Israel, and when I asked him what he thought of the wisdom of this or that Israeli policy he refused to be drawn, declaring emphatically: "It’s all very well for me, sitting in the comfort of this club, to presume to tell the Israeli government what to do!" (Quite so. Got that, Mick Davis?)

Soref headed a firm of Africa merchants founded by his Romanian-born father and uncle; he greatly feared the spread of communism in Africa and was an unswerving apologist for white rule there. This made him anathema in most Jewish circles – and in leftwing ones generally. In 1974 he had to scale a six-foot wall to escape a mob of howling students yelling “Death to Soref!” when he arrived to speak as scheduled at the Oxford Union. And he was apparently the intended target of IRA gunmen who, lying in wait outside his London home, killed a man who looked similar to him.

Following increasingly fraught relations with other members, Soref at length resigned from the Board of Deputies of British Jews in protest at its pursuit of alliances with other minority groups – he vehemently argued that Anglo-Jewry’s place was with what he called "the indigenous people" of Britain, whom he felt were betrayed by mass immigration and given a raw deal by "the race relations industry", and he maintained that it was futile to forge links with ethnic groups who were no true friends to Jews anyway. An "Empire loyalist", he was staunchly opposed to Britain’s membership of the Common Market – let alone the EU – holding that it was a betrayal of the Commonwealth and of Britain’s interests. At his memorial service in Westminster Synagogue the address was given by Enoch Powell, whose views on non-white immigration to Britain and its consequences, as on so many other matters, were matched by Soref’s.

Soref remains a controversial figure; Jews on the political right would probably not wish to be thought to resemble him, while those on the political left continue to demonise him. For example, in a recent biographical dictionary of Jewish MPs in Britain, of which the Labour life peer Lord Janner of Braunstone is a co-author, his entry contains a scathing value judgment unworthy of such a work, as well as politically-loaded factual inaccuracies.

I thought of Soref today, when I read on the Jewish Chronicle’s website (thejc.com) that a new parliamentary group, of which Conservative MP Kris Hopkins is chairman and Lord Janner (pictured) is a co-vice-chairman, established to tackle Islamophobia has – though evidently not without misgivings from its LibDem co-vice-chairman, Simon Hughes – been shamed into curtailing its foolish ties with Engage, an explicitly anti-Zionist Muslim organisation that has also defended radical Muslim preachers and opposed moderate Muslim groups concerned about Islamist extremism, following an exposé of Engage by former Conservative MP Paul Goodman (the Roman Catholic son of Jewish parents) in the Conservative Home website that he edits.

To quote the JC:

‘In June, Mohammed Asif, chief executive of Engage, wrote to Education Secretary Michael Gove to express his opposition to Zionism being taught in Jewish schools. "Zionism is not part of the Jewish faith," he wrote. "It is a political ideology which has its roots in the works of Theodor Herzl and subsequent ideologues that have advanced the idea of a national struggle to establish a homeland for the Jews in the modern era."

The Engage website described Sunday Telegraph reporter Andrew Gilligan as “deranged” after he raised questions about whether the organisation was independent enough to perform the functions of secretariat to the all-party group. In recent years the group has defended the right of radical Muslim preachers to come to Britain and express their views and opposed the ban on extremist group Hizb-ut-Tahrir from university campuses.

Engage has also challenged those who condemned the Muslim Council of Britain’s Daud Abdullah for signing the Istanbul Declaration, which urged attacks on the British navy.

One comment on the Engage post announcing the establishment of the Islamophobia group said: “Jews and Christian scholars, the so called Western Orientals have always tried to mispresent Islam in their writings. They have always tried to spread baseless lies against Islam in a very authentic and scholarly style, hiding their deep rooted hatred against Islam.”’

According to the Tel Aviv-based Reut Institute (and it’s not wrong!), London has become a “Mecca of Delegitimisation” – a hub of hate for proponents of a concerted assault on Israel’s very right to exist – composed of a “Red-Green Alliance” of hard leftists and Islamists who liaise with like-minded groups throughout Europe (or Eurabia, as it's been dubbed by the Egyptian-born writer Gisèle Littman – aka Bat Ye’or). In 1973, Soref was already warning that London was home to some 50 revolutionary movements – a prophet ahead of his time, effectively anticipating Melanie Phillips’s characterisation of the British capital as “Londonistan”.

Some Jews, fed up with the current situation, and heeding an English Defence League (EDL) call to help "lead the counter-Jihad fight in England", have joined the so-called Jewish Division of the EDL, an organisation widely seen as composed at its core of football hooligans and National Front types.

'An exasperated friend tells me his father, a fearsome Jewish anti-Fascist in his day, now spouts near-the-knuckle canards about "illegal immigrants" and "asylum seekers". This phenomenon is known as "pulling up the ladder" – as each wave of migrants grows to feel at home "aboard" their new country they identify evermore with the host community, sharing in its resentment towards newcomers and not recognising any empathetic connection with their own historical experience", the Daily Telegraph blogger Julian Kossoff has observed blogs.telegraph.co.uk/.../the-english-defence-league-the-jewish-division-and- the-useful-idiots/:

'But when I heard that there were Jews actively supporting the English Defence League (EDL), I thought: "pull the other one". The EDL claims to stand up for Englishness against Islamic extremism, but in truth it is largely a hodgepodge of football hooligans, lumpen boot-boys and cast-offs from seedy neo-Nazi outfits, such as Combat 18.

....While many in the Jewish community have understandable concerns about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism – so often streaked through with virulent anti-Semitism – it is important to remember that the EDL are not our friends. They are part of the problem, not the solution.'

The EDL’s avowed support for Israel and brandishing of the Israeli flag at anti-Islam rallies has met an icy reception from communal leaders. Mark Gardner, communications director of the Community Security Trust, has observed: "The EDL intimidate entire Muslim communities, causing tension and fear. Jews ought to remember that we have long experience of being on the receiving end of this kind of bigotry." Similarly, Jon Benjamin, chief executive of the Board of Deputies, has said:

"The EDL's supposed 'support' for Israel is empty and duplicitous. It is built on a foundation of Islamophobia and hatred which we reject entirely. Sadly, we know only too well what hatred for hatred's sake can cause. The overwhelming majority will not be drawn in by this transparent attempt to manipulate a tense political conflict."

Certainly, the fact that, following the poppy-burning ceremony on Armistice Day (11 November) by a group of Islamist extremists linked to firebrand extremist Anjem Choudary, the mosque in Portsmouth, which was in no way associated with the poppy-burners, was surrounded by EDL members and daubed with graffiti, lends credence to the view that the EDL consists largely of racist thugs.

But while holding aloof from it is one thing, holding aloof from all denunciations of Islamic extremism is quite another. The antisemitism spawned by a diabolical alliance of leftists and Islamists must be robustly countered – why, only last evening there was yet another grotesque antisemitic meeting on a British campus, as an Islamic extremist, Abdel Bari Atwan, editor-in-chief of London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper (who in 2007 had declared on MEMRI TV "By Allah, I will go to Trafalgar Square and dance with delight if the Iranian missiles strike Israel") addressed the theme "How much influence does the Zionist lobby exert in the US and UK?" During the lecture he allegedly accused Jewish students of "bombing Gaza", referred to the "Jewish lobby" and refused to condemn Hamas: "Would you want me to condemn those who are resisting the occupation?" ("To invite Atwan to a British university should be inconceivable”, says Israeli ambassador Ron Prosor. "That in 2010, situations are allowed to develop where Jews are called 'Nazis' on British campuses, should appal and concern Britons in equal measure.")www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/42342/police-probe-antisemitic-speech-lse

"It is surely high time for Diaspora leaders to stop living in denial and get their act together. Instead of competing with each other in oozing political correctness, they should display some backbone and call a spade a spade," Isi Leibler has observed – and, boy, Anglo-Jewry desperately needs a leader of his vision and calibre! What a sorry lot most of them are!

'We are currently witnessing the greatest revival of global anti-Semitism since the Middle Ages. This permeates all classes of society, and, ranging from academics to illiterates and European leaders who retain office despite making unabashed neo-Nazi remarks about Jews to mobs at anti-Israeli demonstrations carrying placards "gas the Jews".

It encompasses the entire political spectrum, but is spearheaded by liberals and Muslims. Muslim radicals relate to Israel in a manner reminiscent of the Church’s medieval attitude toward the Jews. They promote popular TV programs depicting the blood of Muslim children being used for baking matzot, and have revived The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a best-seller. They certainly compare favorably with the worst Nazi Jew baiting, with imams quoting genocidal religious texts to the faithful, inciting them to murder Jews, "the descendants of apes and pigs".

It is macabre to observe the alliance between liberals and jihadists who represent the antithesis of everything the Left purports to represent. The extremist Islamists are the most reactionary elements in the world. They reject fundamental human rights, proscribe freedom of expression and religion, promote the degradation of women and, to this day, implement barbaric laws including stoning of adulterers and homosexuals and the amputation of limbs for petty crimes. More than 50 Muslim countries deny Judaism or Christianity equal standing with Islam....

Alas, Jews who exaggerate the presence of Islamophobia become leading proponents of the campaign to sanitize and understate Islamic extremism. This is especially bizarre, given that Jews, especially in Europe, but also increasingly in the US, are facing far greater threats of violence than Muslims. It is also synagogues, rather than mosques, which are continuously being desecrated and vandalized, in many cases by Islamists.

In that context, the relative tranquility which Muslims experience in Western societies is a great tribute to tolerance – a tolerance unlikely to have been extended to Jews in similar circumstances. Imagine the response if Israel had a track record like some of the Arab states, or if Jews in Western countries were blowing up their neighbors.

While genuine interfaith relations are to be commended, many Jews persist in engaging in "dialogue" with Muslim organizations that refuse to dissociate themselves from hard-line Islamic attitudes. Some of the leading Saudi groups promoting international interfaith conferences are directly engaged in the promotion of anti-Semitism, yet Jews participating in these bogus meetings naively babble on about love and coexistence and ignore realities. By doing so, Jews undermine the few moderate Muslims courageous enough to speak up.

All religions incorporate texts and concepts which encourage violence and aggression, but it is the interpretation by religious leaders that determines actual behavior. Judaism, Christianity and Buddhism today are overwhelmingly supportive of peace, and seek coexistence while condemning extremists.

In contrast, only a few Islamic moderates have the courage to criticize extremism within their own circles. Those brave enough to do so are marginalized, condemned by their kinsmen, and their lives are frequently endangered. The overwhelming majority remains silent or defends the Islamic excesses of Islamic regimes.... There is indeed a desperate need to encourage moderate Muslims. But appeasing the extremists and groveling to Muslim bullies merely emboldens them. There is not a single instance in history in which appeasing religious fanatics of any faith has brought about progress. If we allow ourselves to be intimidated or fail to confront Islamist jihadists, they will succeed in destroying the very tenets of our civilization.

This is an area in which Jews, who have the most to lose, must surely stand up and be counted."
www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=189444