That is a Racist Slur

The good news is that Tam Dalyell's outburst to Vanity Fair - in which he suggested Tony Blair was unduly influenced by a Jewish cabal - has not been ignored. His remarks made all the papers, proof that anti-semitism is no longer an uncontroversial part of public conversation.

That's welcome. If there is bad news it's that Dalyell has been treated as a naughty boy - "incorrigible," said Peter Mandelson - rather than as a man who has uttered a racist slur. Bad news, too, that so far much of the condemnation has come from Jews rather than Dalyell's comrades in Labour and on the left -who one might have hoped would be queueing up to denounce such a whiskery old prejudice in their own ranks.

In a way, this episode is a test for Britain. American journalists covering the Dalyell story say the same comments would be a career-ender in Washington - much as Republican Trent Lott's expression of nostalgic sympathy for racial segregation recently cost him his place at the helm of the US Senate. Admittedly Dalyell does not hold leadership rank in Labour, but it seems Britain's intolerance for intolerance is not quite as advanced as America's.

We needn't detain ourselves too long consigning the errant MP's argument to the dustpile where it belongs. For one thing, his is not even a well-informed rant. Two of his sinister troika - Mandelson, Jack Straw and Middle East envoy Lord Levy -do not identify as Jews at all. (Indeed, only the Linlithgow MP and Hitler's Nuremberg laws would count Straw and Mandelson as Jewish.) The three men certainly do not operate together.

And they are anything but advocates of a "Likudnik, Sharon agenda": Mandelson and Straw have publicly advocated serious territorial compromise by Israel, while Levy was reported last year to have clashed loudly with Sharon over Palestinian rights. Most important of all, it is Britain which has taken the international lead demanding progress on Middle East peace and the creation of a Palestinian state - hardly proof of a Blair government somehow tricked into doing Sharon's bidding.

Even if Dalyell's aim had been more accurate, it would not have made his salvo any more forgivable. The whole business of "naming names" and "claiming the courage to speak out" reeks of McCarthyism - at the very least. It would be good if Labour and British society in general found a way to demonstrate that it holds no place for such poison.

The MP's defence is that the cabal he really has in mind is in Washington where, he says, a group of neoconservative Jews - the familiar roll call of Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith et al - have won the ear of the president. This perhaps deserves more attention than his muddle-headed theories about Britain, if only because versions of this idea are gaining currency in liberal circles.

First, it's worth doing a reality check. As it happens, George Bush's cabinet is the first in decades not to include a single Jewish member. The result is that those bent on sniffing out Jewish influence have to go to the second, third and fourth rungs of the administration to find it. Among the neocons the heavyweights are not Jewish: they are Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

So it pays to be clear, when one hears casual references to "the tiny group of men who surround the president", who they are and who they are not. Worthwhile, too, to realise that the umbrella labels don't always fit: superhawk Wolfowitz, for example, seems to harbour some un-Sharonite views. Earlier this year, he told the Washington Post the case for a Palestinian state was getting more, not less, urgent and that he preferred "concrete steps" - for example tackling Jewish settlements in the occupied territories- to endless diplomatic process.

Second, this group is not and does not operate like a "cabal", with its connotations of secrecy and ulterior motives. On the contrary, it is explicit about its aim: a world dominated by American power and made safe for western-friendly democracy.

Crucially, this is an American aim pursued for American reasons. The people urging it are dedicated proponents of US might - the Jews among them included. They do not construct these grand designs for Israel's sake, but for America's. It just so happens that in some cases - though not all - those strategic goals are consonant with Israel's. Where they differ - as in Ronald Reagan's sale of Awacs aviation technology to Saudi Arabia - the hawks always choose the US over Israel. Even when they meddle in Israeli politics, it is to serve US ends.

Is there any connection between the Jewish neocons and their Jewishness? Perhaps a good university dissertation could be written on that, drawing on the Jewish tradition of seeking to change the world - from Christ to Marx. But any such thesis would also have to explain the consistent Jewish presence on the left, out of all proportion to their numbers. Maybe Jews are found sitting around the neocon table, but they are also found organising today's anti-war movement - to say nothing of the white ranks of both the anti-apartheid struggle and the 1960s campaign for civil rights in the US.

Real anti-semites are not troubled by that contradiction: they just say that Jews are behind everything. The Nazis used to depict the Jew as the master Bolshevik and master capitalist - often in the same sentence. But this kind of warped logic can have no place among liberals or the left.

The 19th century German socialist August Bebel called anti-semitism the socialism of fools, the belief that the world can be understood by looking for the hidden hand that makes everything happen. But the real world is not like that. It's more complex, and no amount of conspiracy theories will make it easier to understand.

Tam Dalyell would have us believe that Bush stands against Yasser Arafat because the Jews made him do it - when the reality is that Bush has his own post-9/11 reasons for seeing all terrorism as an indivisible phenomenon that the US can never again indulge.

There is a wider lesson to draw from this sorry episode. In a way Dalyell is an easy case, because he presented his views so baldly. He did not completely hide behind "Zionist" or "Likudnik" euphemisms, but spoke instead about Jews. In so doing he clearly crossed the line between anti-semitism and anti-Zionism and made himself easy to condemn.

But not all such anti-Jewish feeling expresses itself so directly. A search of the BNP's own musings shows that even they - the fascists and racists of our age - do not call themselves anti-semites. They too claim merely to be anti-Zionists. Now of course anti-semitism and anti-Zionism can be neatly distinguished, and many learned minds do so all the time.

But it's worth wondering if that distinction cuts much ice at street level - where anti-Jewish incidents in Britain have gone up by 75% compared with the equivalent period last year. If Zionists are constantly accused of having dual loyalties, of wielding untold power, of pursuing a secret agenda to reshape the world, all classic charges long hurled at the Jews, then one has to wonder whether one is hearing the same racist slur now voiced by Tam Dalyell - just expressed less openly.

My family discussed the anti Jew bias yesterday.We were born in the wrong part of the country or something as we don't understand anti semitism.I was not taught to suspect Jews and it continues to baffle me.I know it exists,of course.

I'm from NYC, up until fairley recently, anti-semetism wasn't really something people talked about openly. Generally, it was just your kooks and neo-nazi's who had that attitude. Then, more and more, it started coming to the surface. In college, you would have alot of kids, mostly the ones who were either african american or hispanic, making, in class, anti-semetic references. Now, its very much out in the open, though people use the word neo-conservative instead of say "the jews". I got into an arguement the other night, with a left wing loon who was arguing that the "neos" are in control of this country, she didn't try to hide the fact that she meant jew. I asked her to name, just one jewish member in the Cabinet, just one. She said there aren't any, they are all behind the scenes controlling everything. Even worse, a couple of my friends who I had assumed would know better didn't even blink an eye, saying that, they keep hearing that on the news, so maybe it could be true.

We were born in the wrong part of the country or something as we don't understand anti semitism.I was not taught to suspect Jews and it continues to baffle me.I know it exists,of course.

Same with me. I was born, raised and live in a medium-sized western city and just don't get the whole anti-jewish thing. I know several people that are jewish and I just can't see how they're an object to be despise. If they hadn't revealed their jewish-ness to me I never would have known.

I'm surprized that some say Judaism as a "race". Is Islam a "race"? Catholisism? Since when can you convert your race?

This is at the core of anti-semitism. In the nineteeth century in Germany and France it became intellectually disrespectable to be a religious bigot. Or indeed religious at all.

Thus the notion that Jews are enemies as members of the semitic "race" as a way of hanging on to their bigotry.

The word "race" once meant nationality or lineage, as in "the Irish race", the "French race", even the "Jewish race". "Race" came to have the connotation of a biological subspecies. Hence racist anthropological theories, etc.

"I'm surprized that some say Judaism as a "race". Is Islam a "race"? Catholisism? Since when can you convert your race?"

Of course, Jews are a people, with everything that suggests: a common heritage; a common history; a common language; a common religion. There is also recent very strong evidence to suggest that most Jews (except recent converts) are very closely linked genetically, but really that is not the point as genes don't make a people but culture most definitely does.

I'm surprized that some say Judaism as a "race".

What confuses me is a thing like..."Jewish Rye Bread"

How do you determine that a loaf of rye bread is Jewish? Is it a male loaf of rye bread? And if so, how or where do you circumcise it? And why is there no "Catholic Rye Bread"? If there is "Jewish Rye Bread" I would expect at the very least to see "Catholic White Bread".

And what about the Buddhists and the Muslims? Why aren't they screaming for equality in the bread arena?

"I'm from NYC, up until fairley recently, anti-semetism wasn't really something people talked about openly. Generally, it was just your kooks and neo-nazi's who had that attitude. Then, more and more, it started coming to the surface"

A very important point you make. We Jews are often accused of being over-sensitive to anti-Semitism. We're not, we just realise that the virus of anti-Semitism never really disappears but periodically just goes into stasis for a while, only to reappear in a slightly different and often more virulent guise.

I don't think that Jews are overly sensitive to anti-semetism, but they problem that many of them encounter, is that they do not go aggressivley enough after the serious bigotry, and some of these groups go after, to put it best "small potato's". A teacher trying to teach a course on Nazi culture (and not in a sympathetic way) gets the hard treatment, while the NY Times commits libel and gets away with it.

"In college, you would have alot of kids, mostly the ones who were either african american or hispanic, making, in class, anti-semetic references"

What makes me puke is that it was Jews that were in the forefront of the fight to give equality to African- Americans. It's just like South Africa where the Jews fought against apartheid when no other white people wanted to know. Mandela qualifed as a lawyer because a Jew hired him; no other white would touch him. When he was on Robben Island it was Helen Sussman, the leading Jewish Member of Parliament who first spoke out against his imprisonment and led the campaign to have him released. And what do we get for our pains? A viciously anti-Semitic UN conference on race at Durban, and a government and a Mandela who are staunch supporters of Arafat and his terrorist gangs and active haters of Israel.

"I don't think that Jews are overly sensitive to anti-semetism, but they problem that many of them encounter, is that they do not go aggressivley enough after the serious bigotry, and some of these groups go after, to put it best "small potato's"."

Wouldn't you imagine after all this time that Jews wouldn't have to fight alone? That says a lot about the world and how it really hasn't changed one bit in the sixty years since the Holocaust.

I wish alot more groups would start condemning PETA, they have been on a wicked anti-semetic streak as of late, by comparing the holocaust to sitting down to dinner, yet being very quick to say, they have no opinion on the Israeli and Palestin conflict, but decrying the death of animals that may be harmed (but if you listen carefully, they subtley blame Israel for the whole thing).

I was raised the same way. I was also raised to support Israel's right to exist. My belief that they are the Chosen People and the only ones with a right to that land only grows stronger the longer I'm a practicing Christian.

My only fear is that if the same statement was made in the House of Representatives, that it wouldn't cost anybody their job here either. They are not exactly a preferred minority.

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