The other week David Aaronovitch unburdened himself on the subject of Christian anti-Semitism and got caught up in a journalistic fiasco. It all began when the sometime Guardian columnist who now writes for the London Times, offered his thoughts in the Jewish Chronicle on the recent quarrel between the General Synod of the Church of England and the Chief Rabbi over the synod's decision to disinvest in Caterpillar, the US company that manufactures Israeli bulldozers used to demolish Palestinian homes. Exercised about the whole business of Christians attacking Jews, Aaronovitch had taken particular exception to a "clumsy" Guardian article by Canon Paul Oestreicher that accused Jewish leaders of attempting to use moral blackmail against critics of Israel. Oestreicher wanted to "nail the lie that to attack Zionism as currently practiced is to be anti-Semitic".
Not disputing that he was right in principle, Aaronovitch sought to belittle Oestreicher's case by describing it as "so old its beard touches the ground" (as if a familiar argument is by definition feeble). Still, Oestreicher's offensiveness paled, it seemed, beside that of a certain Neil Berry. Identified by Aaronovitch as the treasurer of Christian CND, the aforementioned was alleged to have written articles peddling an "updated, more zingy" form of anti-Semitism. The trouble was that the Christian in question had written no such articles and was outraged to discover that Aaronovitch had him down as the author of material that, he self-protectively agreed, was clearly anti-Semitic. Aaronovitch was obliged to post a Times Online apology to the affronted treasurer acknowledging that he had confused him with another Neil Berry whose published opinions "bordered on being anti-Semitic".
The other Neil Berry happened to be me and I am bound to say that I resent Aaronovitch's anti-Semitic slur - just as I resent the panic-stricken manner in which my Christian namesake accepted its validity. Having evidently undertaken a glancing trawl of Internet blogs, he not only misidentified me but offered an insultingly sketchy account of two pieces I had written, one a contribution to the London-based paper, The Muslim Weekly, which compared the financial backing that David Cameron, leader of the Tory party, had been receiving with that received by Blair; the other a discussion of attitudes to the Iraq war taken by Jewish columnists that appeared in Arab News. But what exactly did I say that was deemed so heinous?
My piece on Cameron and Blair contained the suggestion that "if Tony Blair emerged out of nowhere, it was in no small measure because he found a remarkable sponsor in the person of his tennis partner, Lord Levy". Aaronovitch found the suggestion so far-fetched that he dismissed it as "utter twaddle". But his brusque rebuttal was to prove ill timed, since it soon emerged (from the coverage of the "loans for honors" scandal) that long before Blair became prime minister in 1997, Levy was instrumental in collecting vast sums of money for the Labour Party. David Osler, author of the useful book, Labour Party PLC: New Labour as the Party of Business (2002), reveals that the funds furnished by Levy enabled Blair to run the "biggest opposition leader's office in history, employing 20 full time staff on appreciable salaries". The central role played by the entrepreneur nicknamed "Lord Cashpoint" in sustaining Labour's finances, and indeed in enabling Blair to develop a party within the party, has now become common knowledge.
The article went on to question the wider political implications of the Labour Party being bankrolled by Jews who may also be Zionists at a time of heightened sensitivities among Muslims and others about Zionist influence on Anglo-American foreign policy. In the case of Lord Levy, a Zionist with a home in Tel Aviv who raised funds for the former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and whose son worked for Israel's minister of justice, the implications seem only too plain. For scarcely had Blair become prime minister than he demonstrated his gratitude to him by making Levy a Lord and appointing him as his special envoy to the Middle East, with a room of his own in the Foreign Office. Little was made of any of this by Britain's phlegmatic media, but it is not hard to appreciate the cynicism with which Levy's appointment was greeted in the Arab world - an Arab world which Blair had seemed anxious to assure of his good faith, proclaiming his desire to see a just settlement of the Palestine-Israel conflict. What, one would like to ask, stopped Britain's purportedly even-handed prime minister from appointing a figure of unimpeachable bipartisan credentials as his envoy, or from arranging for Britain to be represented by both a British Jew and a British Palestinian? What exactly was the rationale for giving the job to an unelected businessman whose pedigree as a diplomat was nonexistent and whose allegiance to the Jewish state might well have been felt to compromise his judgment?
That the appointment of Levy was less than sensitive is underlined by the reaction to him of the Lebanese government who thought he had come to them to champion not the British but the Israeli viewpoint. A diplomatic brouhaha ensued which necessitated the issuing of a placatory statement by the British ambassador.
Could there be a future Lord Levy among David Cameron's entourage? Much of the rest of my piece addressed the implications of the lavish Jewish financial support now being enjoyed by David Cameron. Already Cameron is much indebted to Jewish backers: Among them, the casino magnate, Lord Steinberg, the media mogul, Michael Green, the chief executive of the Next chain, Simon Wolfson (who is advising him on economic matters), and the owner of the Jayroma clothing company, Andrew Feldman, the latter an Oxford friend of Cameron's who has reportedly become the "chief conduit" of current Tory funding. The precise attitudes toward Israel of all of Cameron's backers are unclear, though Michael Green for one is a zealous Zionist. What is striking is that while he has otherwise put off making manifesto commitments until various policy units have reported their findings, the newly appointed Tory leader lost no time in addressing the "Conservative Friends of Israel" and signaling that Israel's security rates among his top priorities.
I granted that to question whether Cameron's patrons might have an agenda that encompasses not just benefiting their own business empires but also the furtherance of specifically Jewish, if not Zionist, objectives was to run the risk of being condemned as a blatant anti-Semite. I added that the possibility could not be discounted that the businessmen supporting Cameron were entirely innocent of ulterior motives. What, I wondered, though, would have been the media reaction if Cameron's Tory Party were in receipt of Muslim largesse? Or if it were Muslims who bulked large in his immediate political circle rather than, as is actually the case, Jews, such as Oliver Letwin, Simon Wolfson, Zac Goldsmith and the former editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Michael Gove? Without question, any significant involvement with the Muslim community on Cameron's part would be regarded as a matter for legitimate public discussion; there would be no shortage of columnists querying the propriety of his conduct: Whether the candidate was sound on "terror" and whether the British people could safely entrust their fate to a candidate with such connections. So why is it that his involvement with Jewish patrons and acolytes who may nurse highly partisan feelings about Israel and the Middle East elicits no comment whatsoever?
If this has become an especial cause for concern it is because though the British Muslim population is now far bigger than Britain's Jewish population there is no proportionate reflection of Muslim attitudes and values in British public life. The perception among Muslims that the British political establishment favors Jews and disfavors Muslims is surely not one that ought to be allowed to take root in a country that wishes to encourage a spirit of national loyalty among its ethno-religious minorities.
Reviling me for being preoccupied with "the Jewishness of things", David Aaronovitch also disparaged an article I wrote on the high proportion of British Jewish columnists who promoted the invasion of Iraq and who treated those who challenged the case for war as if they were simpletons with no grasp of geopolitical realities. Aaronovitch himself figured prominently among them - as did the Observer columnist, Nick Cohen. Cohen made a name for himself as a scourge of New Labour and many were puzzled when he stepped forward as a champion of the war, writing like some closet US neoconservative. Admitting that his arguments had to be judged on their own terms, I wrote that it was hard to believe that Cohen's bellicosity, like that of other pro-war Jewish columnists, was wholly unconnected with a peculiarly Jewish anxiety about Israel's security. Cohen's subsequent habit of issuing regular warnings about the "Islamofascist" threat to Western democracies, together with his loudly trumpeted concern about the recrudescence of anti-Semitism, did nothing to lessen this suspicion. When, one day last summer, he boasted to readers of the London Evening Standard about meeting the great American neocon, Paul Wolfowitz, this suspicion hardened into a certainty. For if Wolfowitz has been one of the chief proponents of "regime-change" in Iraq, he also ranks as one of the world's leading Zionists.
Does all this mean that I am an exponent of what Aaronovitch weirdly dubbed an "updated, more zingy form of anti-Semitism"? My own belief is that I am raising issues that are crying out for public airing. Or have we now reached a point where it is impossible to discuss the political conduct and allegiances of Jews without being denounced as the worst sort of racist? The irony is that there is far more frank discussion of Jewish affairs in the Israeli media than in Britain or the United States. Robert Fisk has remarked that when Bill Clinton appointed several pro-Israeli American Jews as his Middle East peace envoys the Western media shrank from addressing the matter, yet a prominent Israeli paper was quick to discuss the import of the "mission of the four Jews". Similarly, it was the Jerusalem Post, not any British newspaper that animadverted on the Jewishness of Lord Levy and other key sponsors of New Labour. In a magisterial article in the current London Review of Books, the American academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt describe how the Israel lobby in the US has successfully intimidated would be-critics of Israel and of the incestuous US/Israel relationship; the same, albeit to a lesser degree, has been true in Britain. Speaking to the moment, this groundbreaking polemic is provoking furious Internet debate. The truth is that the pressure to stay silent on the subject of Israel, its treatment of the Palestinians and its influence on Anglo-American foreign policy is becoming intolerable to growing numbers of people across the world.
Hostility toward Jews has been a monstrous historical phenomenon. Nor are signs wanting, particularly in France, that Jewish people are experiencing renewed persecution. But this should not distract attention from the fact that the politicking of British and American Jews has long had a profound bearing on Israel's relationship with the rest of the Middle East, if not on the whole world order. Nowadays, the gibe of anti-Semitism is too often used as a means of stifling open debate, of outlawing discussion of issues that are of the widest concern. Journalists in Britain and the US ought to be much less inhibited about addressing those issues. They might try following the example of their Israeli counterparts.
