TORONTO — Anti-Semitism is an enduring phenomenon and must be constantly fought, says a British parliamentarian and author of a new book on the subject.
Denis MacShane
“Anti-Semitism won’t disappear, anymore than racism will vanish,” Denis MacShane said in an interview in Toronto last week. “But fighting it is always worthwhile, because it causes great damage to peace and democracy.”
Describing it as a “powerful, virulent and destructive ideology,” MacShane – a 61-year-old Labour party MP and former cabinet minister – warned that classical European-based anti-Semitism has merged with Islamist anti-Semitism in recent years.
Arguing that Islamism, or Islamic radicalism, is antithetical to universal liberal values, MacShane said that this particular form of anti-Semitism is officially sanctioned by two Muslim states, Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Iranian government threatens Israel’s existence and denies the Holocaust, while Saudi Arabia propagates Wahhabism, a highly developed kind of anti-Semitism.
A former journalist and trade unionist who represents the constituency of Rotherham in west Yorkshire, he elaborates on these ideas in Globalising Hatred: The New Antisemitism, published in London recently by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
According to MacShane, Islamist anti-Semitism has become a force to eradicate Jewishness from the Middle East and weaken and undermine humanist values of rule of law, tolerance and respect for human rights.
The book is a spinoff of MacShane’s work in chairing the All Party Parliamentary Inquiry Into Anti-Semitism, which was commissioned in 2005 and was the first committee of its kind in British history.
Releasing a 60-page report a year later, the committee found a “pattern of fear” in Britain’s Jewish community after synagogues were attacked, schoolboys were jostled on public transportation and rabbis were punched and knifed.
It also detected “an anti-Jewish discourse” in mood and tone whenever Jews were discussed.
The committee urged the police to upgrade the documentation of anti-Semitic incidents and asked the government to improve education about anti-Semitism in schools, crack down on anti-Jewish activity on university campuses and prevent the spread of anti-Semitic material online.
The recommendations were accepted by the prime minister of the day, Tony Blair, noted MacShane. “To Britain’s credit, the Blair administration produced a formal response setting out tough new guidelines for the police to investigate anti-Semitic attacks and for universities to stop anti-Jewish ideology from taking root on campuses.”
MacShane, the minister of state for Europe from 2002 to 2005, called anti-Semitism “the canary in the coal mine that tells us something is going seriously wrong.” Citing current and disturbing examples of anti-Semitism outside Britain, he mentioned two cases.
A major Swedish daily published a report alleging that Israeli soldiers harvested Palestinian body parts. “This is a reference back to medieval anti-Semitism,” said MacShane, whose brief visit to Toronto was under the auspices of the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy.
As well, an important Spanish newspaper carried an interview with convicted Holocaust denier David Irving as part of its coverage of the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II. “What possessed the editor to select Irving?” MacShane asked.
In general, MacShane is working to ensure that anti-Semitism does not become a component of the public policy of nations. But to his regret, the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, sanctions anti-Semitism by calling for Israel’s destruction and denying the Holocaust, while Hamas and Hezbollah enshrine anti-Semitism in their respective charters.
In his view, anti-Zionism morphs into anti-Semitism when Israel’s right of existence is questioned.
“My interest in anti-Semitism stems from my interest in fascism, communism, racism and South African-style apartheid,” explained MacShane, whose mother, Isobel MacShane, was Irish and whose father, Jan Matyjaszek, was Polish.
An Oxford University graduate who earned a PhD in international economics from the University of London, he worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation as a journalist and changed his surname at its request.
A former president of the National Union of Journalists, he was also policy director of the International Metal Workers’ Federation. In 1982, he was arrested for attending a Solidarity trade union demonstration in Poland.
Representing a working-class riding in a steel- and coal-producing region, he has been an MP since 1994. There are 10,000 Muslims in Rotherham, but apparently no Jews, as far as he knows. “It’s a part of England where Jews historically did not settle.”
Although a Catholic, MacShane – who calls himself “Jew blind” – has been the butt of anti-Semitism. Detractors have accused him of being a “secret Jew,” while anti-Semites have sent him nasty text messages.
But MacShane remains undeterred and unruffled, having recently accepted a job as chair of a think tank on anti-Semitism associated with the European Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism.
