[Robin McAlpine Blog] Schrödinger’s lobbyist

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Schrödinger's lobbyist

I can be very critical of John Swinney, but in my very angriest moments I couldn’t possible come up with any case whatsoever that John Swinney is a threat to Scottish Jews. In fact, as a deeply religious man with strong ecumenical views, I can’t think of a First Minister less threatening to the Jewish community.

So booing him after a friendly speech? There is no justification at all based on anything he has done or not done for Scottish Jews. If this had been the Orange Order they’d have had a point, but not Scotland’s Jewish churches. There is no credible case to be made against the First Minister.

I mean, one could construct some loose argument that his criticism of Israel’s military assault on Gaza or referring to it as a genocide is harmful to the interests of a nation state with which many Jews feel an affinity, but that would be expressly and directly antisemitic, no?

The International Holocaust Remembrance Committee’s (highly controversial) definition of antisemitism is clear on this. It places "Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel" high up on its list of the more direct, less tangential forms of linguistic antisemitism.

So it should be. It is clearly utterly wrong to hold someone accountable for someone else’s actions simply because they share the same religion. It is patently wrong, clearly unfair, explicitly a hostile act of bullying. That’s why I opposed it when most of Britain’s politicians were calling on Muslim leaders in Britain to decry the actions of ISIS.

But it has to work both ways round, right? It can’t be offensive if you behave as if every Jew must answer for Israel, so Israel and Jews are separate issues. That is clean and honest and fair. So there is absolutely no read-back from criticism of Israel in relation to Jewish communities. There is no link. We have just established that point.

Jewish people must be free from our censorious tendencies to want ‘someone’ to answer for what Israel has done. In turn, we must be free from any bad faith suggestions that criticising or taking diplomatic action against a foreign nation state has something or other to do with their safety. It does not.

And of course I twiddled with that sentence a bit to find a non-clumsy way to say ‘some Jews’ before deciding not to bother because when they refer to the ‘Jewish community’ or ‘Scottish Jews’ they never specify ‘some’. Many, many British Jews are highly critical of Israel.

They have every right to be and a genocide is a genocide whether you have ‘an affinity’ with the nation carrying out the genocide or not. If you see calling a genocide a genocide as a threat to you, that speaks only of you, not of those making the allegation.

If you see calling a genocide a genocide as a threat to you, that speaks only of you, not of the allegation

Some of what has happened in recent days is not only clearly wrong, it is pretty clearly racist. The increasingly abhorrent Shabana Mahmood telling us what is and isn’t British is far right stuff. Do we really want to get into government ministers deciding what is and isn’t British? Good luck with that.

But setting aside her Tommy Robinson impression, Starmer is little better. Let me think…. When did Keir Starmer ask a Jewish or Israeli group at any point ever to "respect the grief" of Palestinians? His relationship with pro-genocide lobbyists has only grown stronger. His every word drips clear Islamophobia (somehow I don’t think the ‘strangers’ in his ‘nation of strangers’ speech were Jewish).

His team openly brief journalists that getting rid of some Muslim Labour councillors was ‘shaking of the fleas‘. Jeremy Corbyn would have been jailed for referring to Jews leaving Labour as ‘shaking of the fleas’. Starmer clearly does not value the lives of Palestinians and is clearly contemptuous towards Muslims. We’ve seen it again and again. But this isn’t mentioned.

So little is really mentioned. The main establishment Jewish religious organisations (with which many if not most British Jews do not align with) are part religion, part lobbyist for a foreign power. They use their privileged position as a church, a position which enjoys many more protections than a general non-governmental body, to advocate for a foreign nation state and they do it fairly openly.

I can’t think of another church which spends anything like as much time trying to dictate this nation’s foreign policy, or one where it would be tolerated. Yet, like Schrödinger’s moggy, they can switch roles at will. ‘You can’t touch me, I’m a church’ is interspersed with ‘you must do as I say because I’m not really a church but the unified representation of an entire race’.

Personally I think anyone extensively and regularly lobbying for any foreign entity should register. I’m pretty sure no-one would tolerate Britain’s Russian Orthodox Church intervening on sanctions on Russia in the same way.

Clearly, of course people should be free to campaign for the interests of any entity they wish, but those on the other side must surely be granted the opportunity to highlight the fact it is happening. It cannot be right to say ‘I’ll lobby for Israel but if you accuse me of it you will be deemed antisemitic’.

What is most ludicrous in all of this is the claim that ‘antisemitism has been allowed to fester’. This seems to be to be one of the most surreal statements I can think of. Comfortably the most extensive political discourse on religious or racial discrimination has been related to antisemitism. The most incredibly restrictive code of practice on antisemitism (the IHRC one) has been widely implemented.

No other group has anything like the extent and detail of codified protection, certainly not that I can think of. The Community Security Trust is something like a private police force which provides additional protection at Jewish places of worship and similar. It is funded to the tune of £18 million by the public purse. To suggest this is ‘allowing’ antisemitism is unsustainable. No-one is ‘allowing’ antisemitic behaviours or attacks in any way whatsoever.

Yet it is this ‘private police force’ which is given the power to create its own evidence. It is hardly a neutral body in collecting statistics. You would never know that in the last two years attacks on Jewish property have fallen 19 per cent or that assaults have decreased by 26 per cent.

Last year there were 201 incidents classified as assault, but only one that was ‘serious’. There were 157 attacks on property. There were 250 threats, a decrease of 20 per cent. Mass produced antisemitic literature (don’t know what they include in this category) occurred 27 times.

Jewish people must be able to live in Britain free from threat, free from harm, free from prejudice, free from discriminatory behaviour.

Add all that up (allowing for double counting) and it doesn’t account for much of the 3,528 incidents of antisemitism reported by the CST. On the other hand, this ‘surge’ in antisemitism included 1,844 incidents classified as ‘antisemitic’ which were specifically about comments over Isreal’s actions in Gaza. Another 1,533 were use of the word ‘Zionism’.

These may be uncomfortable for British Jews but it does not imperil their safety and since even the CST accepts that these are explicitly interpretative, it is perfectly reason that there could be alternative interpretations. And (yet again), 2024 is the last year with complete figures and it is a sharp 18 per cent decrease since 2023 (although that year was a high).

I can only write any of this because I have been relentlessly anti-violence. There is no instance anyone will ever find of me accepting or condoning any kind of violence. I fundamentally oppose violence as a tool. I have also, throughout my life, consistently stood up for any persecuted minority and I always will.

Last year there were six criminal cases with convictions for actions related to antisemitism. In the majority it was far right ideology which was the source and only one was islamic related. There was one violent act and those were teenagers. There were two acts of violence against property. All are to be condemned. All are wrong. And all were successfully policed and prosecuted.

I have challenged people before when they have used antisemitic language or framing around me. For what it’s worth, I am not aware that I actually know an ‘antisemite’ if that means a consistently held discriminatory ideological view, but I’ve known people to stray into antisemitic language when making an argument or through lazy cultural association. We must never, ever turn our eyes away from prejudice. Any prejudice.

Jewish people must be able to live in Britain free from threat, free from harm, free from prejudice, free from discriminatory behaviour. But free from fear? I know people whose skin is not white who were utterly, utterly petrified by the Unite the Kingdom rally. Should it have been banned based on their fear?

I wish I could reply ‘yes’, but I can’t, because no law was broken in the organisation of that march and we must protect our freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of protest with all the vigour we have. That will mean annoying, offending, and even scaring other people. And that is the price of liberty.

The rhetoric from the UK Government is pretty shocking, but we’ve grown used to it ever since the party was captured by a right-wing faction. If anything has surprised you since Starmer’s ‘fine to starve Palestinian babies‘ comments then you have more benefit of the doubt to bestow than me. But John Swinney? Really?

Antisemitism is real and awful and we must be vigilant. But if you are using unsupportable claims about antisemitism to reduce civil liberties and protect an abhorrent regime far away, it seems to me to be you who is harming your religion, not those calling for an end to a genocide.

Source: Schrödinger's lobbyist