The extraordinary vindictive zeal with which Jewish novelist Howard Jacobson and others have sought to exploit London Mayor Livingstone's predicament smacks of tendentiousness, of a hidden agenda.
In an age when British political life is dominated by colorless, "on-message" nonentities, the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, has stood out as a pugnaciously opinionated individualist who thrives on controversy. Seldom, though, has Livingstone been embroiled in a nastier public spat than the one he has precipitated by comparing a relentlessly importunate journalist to a "concentration camp guard".
The Evening Standard journalist in question, Oliver Finegold, told Livingstone that as a Jew he found his remarks deeply offensive. There is no reason to doubt that he did, but there is no reason, either, to doubt that Finegold rapidly realized he had a headline-grabbing scoop on his hands. It was, as it turned out, the sort of scoop journalists dream of. For no sooner had he reported the mayor's remark than Livingstone became caught up in a media maelstrom, with Jews and non-Jews alike furiously denouncing him as at best insensitive and at worst plain anti-Semitic. Adding his own voice to this chorus of condemnation, Prime Minister Tony Blair, a politician hardly known for his own readiness to admit mistakes, was soon calling for Livingstone to apologize.
Livingstone's pointblank refusal to make any sort of apology guaranteed that the furor would not quickly subside. This sometime socialist firebrand evidently believes it would be the height of absurdity for him to be conciliatory to the Evening Standard, a newspaper which, together with the Daily Mail, belongs to a press group that has hounded him without mercy over the years and that itself has a shameful record of propagating racism and xenophobia, including a flirtation during the 1930s with fascism. Not that Livingstone - who may yet offer an expression of regret over the incident - is any more in the habit of saying sorry than Tony Blair. To employ the popular Americanism, the customarily genial mayor of London does not do contrition.
What has surely made the controversy all the more acrimonious is the proximity of the mayor's outburst to the 60th anniversary of the Allies' liberation of Auschwitz. Jews everywhere are understandably haunted by the specter of their traumatic past and hypersensitive to the least sign that it could recur. At such a time, it would be surprising if Jewish nerves were not more than usually raw - though it must be said that that being appalled by any indication that light is being made of the death camps is by no means peculiar to Jews. Consider the worldwide revulsion that greeted the photographs of Prince Harry sporting a swastika at a fancy dress party.
As it happens, Jews (along, to be sure, with other racial minorities) have reason to feel especially insecure and embattled at the present time. A report was published the other day documenting a sharp rise in anti-Semitism in Britain during the past four years. In recent weeks, members of London's Hassidic Jewish community have been subjected to vicious physical attacks; Jewish families are living in a state of siege.
All the same, when every allowance has been made, some of the specifically Jewish reactions to Livingstone's remarks have been nothing if not excessive. Jewish public figures have insisted that Livingstone long ago disclosed the true nature of his feelings toward Jews by his conspicuous support for the cause of the Palestinians. The unmistakable implication is that he thereby revealed himself to be - if not an anti-Semite - then certainly no friend of the Jewish people. It has even been suggested that Livingstone has harmed Britain's bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games - that he is, in short, not just anti-Semitic but unpatriotic.
Writing in the Evening Standard, the Jewish novelist Howard Jacobson granted that in likening Oliver Finegold to a concentration camp guard Livingstone was arguably being racist not toward Jews but toward Germans. However, he then proceeded to contend that Livingtone's language betrayed a culpable moral relativism and that the mayor has in general been guilty of a compromising tendency to make no distinction between the conduct of Israel and that of Nazi Germany. Jacobson's charge was that Livingstone is soaked in corrupt leftist thinking which routinely resorts to disproportionate language and is careless of proper moral discriminations. As a consequence, he is capable not just of comparing a mere journalist to a concentration camp guard but of blithely describing Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as a war criminal - even as he extends hospitality to the Muslim cleric and alleged champion of suicide bombers, Yusuf Al-Quaradawi.
That he is dismissive of the widespread view of Sharon as one of the most bloodthirsty leaders of modern times says much about Howard Jacobson's own brand of moral relativism. Nevertheless, Jacobson might have seemed to be making a cogent enough case - until one took into account how much he was not taking into account. For the truth is that on the occasion of his outburst, the mayor had been attending a party and was speaking late at night to a reporter who had been harassing him remorselessly - a reporter, moreover, employed by a newspaper organization which, in the days when he was an icon of the British left, never missed an opportunity to besmirch Livingstone's reputation and which is eager to destroy him still. It is well to remember, too, that Livingstone's own record on race is not just irreproachable but among the most exemplary in modern British politics and that he has long enjoyed the respect of his deputy, Nicky Gavron, a Jew with special personal reasons to be mindful of the Nazi Holocaust and the horrors that have flowed from anti-Semitism.
The extraordinary vindictive zeal with which Jacobson and others have sought to exploit Livingstone's predicament smacks of tendentiousness, of a hidden agenda. Indeed, it is hard to suppress the suspicion that their interventions spring from a determination not merely to humiliate London's outspoken mayor but to intimidate people in general into never breathing a word that could be construed as anti-Semitic.
None of this is to condone Livingstone's attack on Oliver Finegold, which scarcely ranks as the mayor's finest hour. No doubt, given the damaging fall-out from it, the mayor himself wishes he had been rather more judicious in his choice of words. But what is happening when, in the heat of the moment, a politician well known for his progressive views on race can make a tetchy remark to an intrusive journalist and find himself the target of such vitriol? Less and less distinguished for its civility, British public life seems in danger of degenerating into an orgy of hysteria and ill feeling.
