David Baddiel is a well-known British writer and comedian who grew up in an Orthodox Jewish home in London and attended a Jewish Day School for his primary school years. Today, he considers himself a secular, Jewish atheist.
Baddiel has written a brief but exceedingly compelling new book which appeared in Britain this spring entitled, Jews Don’t Count. In 123 pages, Baddiel attacks the British Government and the public for not considering the Jews of Britain as a minority. There are approximately 300,000 Jews representing roughly .05% of the entire population in Great Britain; a likely minority All imaginable racial or ethnic groups are listed on every official government form with the exception of Jews, which is the practical explanation of the title of Baddiel’s book.
In fact, Baddiel, who holds no candle for the Israelis and certainly not for the current Israeli government, attacks the scourge of anti-Semitism which has now exploded in Britain. (It would have been an even more exciting book if it had appeared now after the recent events in Gaza and not last February.) Baddiel attacks the English chattering class anti-Semitism as well as the anti-Semitism spoken on the “pitch” at the football matches.
Baddiel refers to the statements and allegations made by the former British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and his colleagues as not being attacks against Israel. Badiell goes a long way to demonstrate that Corbyn’s support for the BDS (boycott, divest, and sanction movement against Israel) and Corbyn’s repeated anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian outcry were blatant anti-Semitism. Any efforts to suggest that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism is false and Corbyn’s suggestion that they can be separated is totally misleading.
The demonstrations and marches in London and around Britain since the recent war in Gaza were larger and more aggressive than those that occurred in the States. In fact, the protests against Israel which have occurred in America produced a dramatic increase in attacks against Jews and Jewish institutions during the past few weeks. In Great Britain, however, the Community Security Trust (CST)-- which tracks anti-Semitism like the ADL in the States—had recorded increased violence in Britain against Jews after every one of the Gaza Wars since Israel withdrew from the territory in 2005, once again saw a jump in May.
Baddiel’s focus is clearly on the rise in anti-Semitism in Great Britain but he draws the obvious link between anti-Semitism within the British Labour Party and that found among many elements of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party in America. As further evidence of his thesis, he could ask today why those American progressives, most of whom were Palestinian supporters, did not rally to attack the violence perpetrated against American Jews and Jewish institutions over the past several weeks. That would have been natural, if in fact the notion that one can be anti-Israel and not anti-Semitic had any validity.
Similarly, as Baddiel had seen from some in the British Government, there continues to be a shockingly weak response from some political officials to the rise in anti-Semitism in the States. Just as there was an absence of Democratic outrage at those Palestinian supporters in their own party—except from the White House--the weakness of Republican officials to condemn directly and unequivocally Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene with more than a slap on the wrist was unconscionable. The Republican congressional leaders clearly remain unwilling to admit that a major portion of the GOP—the Trump wing specifically—actually have no problem with Greene’s disgracefully misuse and abuse of the Holocaust and Jewish victims of Nazi genocide.
Baddiel was brilliant in his dissection of anti-Semitism in Britain. One would assume that he will be equally emphatic and unsubtle when the American version of his book appears in the States in September.
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