New Left inherits hatred

THE STATESMAN | 2-27-2002 | MICHAEL GOVE

[cd jones]

There is one form of hate which increasingly dares to parcel out blame. Far from this prejudice being met with resolute condemnation, action against its most virulent proponents is nugatory and the intellectual trends which favour it go broadly unchallenged. Why? Because this form of racism can be worn as a chic accessory to radical views, a badge of identification with "the oppressed".

Anti-Semitism is the new black. The anti-Semitism now abroad is qualitatively different from the prejudice against the Jewish people which the Roman Catholic Church harboured in the 19th century and fascists in the 20th. The new anti-Semitism of the 21st century is advanced not through Rome and the far Right but fundamentalist Islam and the radical Left. Which is why contemporary condemnation has been so muted.

Extremist Islamic activists are the most vocal vessels of this new hate. A few weeks ago, The Times disclosed that Islamic cleric Sheikh Abdullah el-Faisal was urging British Muslims to take arms training and kill the "filthy Jews".

Hardline Muslims had been training with AK-47 rifles in the Finsbury Park mosque in north London, home to another radical cleric, Abu Hamza. Over the years, the same mosque has sheltered Zacarias Mossaoui, a terrorist responsible for 11 September and "shoe bomber" Richard Reid.

All these men cleave to a form of Islam which sees jehad, the holy war, as the highest form of devotion and the Jewish people as the most urgent target for assault. Sheikh Faisal's recent arrest, under laws which have lain unused for a century, comes after years when he has been free to peddle hate.

As for Abu Hamza, he and his mosque remain untroubled by the authorities. The failure to deal effectively with Islamic extremism is a consequence of more than just ignorance or incompetence. Honest discussion of the radical Islamic message, the hold extremist clerics have over many British mosques and the anti-Semitic nature of much of their discourse has been impeded by a New Left model of multiculturalism.

British Premier Tony Blair's assertion that Islam is "a religion of peace" was admirable in its intention to promote inclusivity, but it failed to take account of strident, radical Muslims who daily subvert civil peace.

The British government's reticence cannot be separated from broader trends on the Left which challenge the Jews' security. A hypersensitivity to Islamic interests and insensitivity to Jewish concerns is an under-remarked feature of the European New Left.

Because Britain's Jewish citizens have become well-integrated, often professionally successful, and in many cases Tory-voting, their community is no longer considered a natural client group by the Left in the same way as other minorities are.

The most conspicuous example of this trend was the notorious cover of the New Statesman which depicted a Star of David piercing the Union Jack under the headline "A Kosher conspiracy?" The magazine's editor has apologised but the fact that such an offensive image could appear at all shows how the wind is blowing on the Left.

Three factors in the New Left thinking chip away at the security of the Jewish people. First, the trend towards seeing world affairs through the mirrored sunglasses of the revolutionary; second, hostility towards the historic nation state; third, the preference for therapy over discipline.

The first trend, Ray-Ban Radicalism, is now common on the Left, where foreign affairs are seen through a single set of lenses. Conflicts everywhere are perceived as struggles between "imperialist" oppressors and the wretched of the earth, irrespective of the real complexities.

In Cuba and Nicaragua, and with inappropriateness in Ulster and Israel, the Left indulges terror, casting its victims as the "real" oppressors.

The Left's growing hostility towards the nation-state is a threat to Israel. The New Left's insistence on dissolving sovereignty works against the survival of Israel because it rejects the "exclusivist" principles of self-determination and secure borders.

This animus against the nation state is given expression by bodies such as the European Union, which consistently favours Palestinian claims over Israel. It finds an outlet among international lawyers such as those in Brussels demanding to try Ariel Sharon for "war crimes".

And it is amplified in the UN through events such as the Durban "anti-racism" conference where Zionism was equated with racism.

The final New Left trend which works against Jewish security is the preference for therapy over discipline. Faced with any conflict, the Left shies away from the resolute punishment of those in the wrong and insists that both sides have legitimate "issues" which need resolution.

The universalist New Left logic of the "peace process" dictates that terrorists and democrats are treated alike. Both parties must learn to abandon their "intransigence" to achieve progress.

By placing aggressors on the same moral plain as victims, the New Left not only denies morality any place in conflicts, it denies the Jewish people, in their contested home, the moral right to self-defence. The new anti-Semitism differs from the old. But the old taught us one terrible lesson. These dangers will grow unless checked. Unless checked they will diminish us all.

The Times, London.