By Antony Lerman | 19/08/2010
‘Reformed' far-right parties in Europe professing admiration for Israel and seeking rapprochement with Jews are nothing new. We have seen this phenomenon in Italy, when Gianfranco Fini's former neo-fascist party became the National Alliance, in Denmark, when the Danish People's Party made overtures to Jews based on support for Israel and in other countries too. But hard-line far-rightists in Britain, specifically the British National Party (BNP), despite making their own attempts to become electorally more respectable, have not been so keen to play the Israel card—at least, until recently.
Disavowing antisemitism, acknowledging the Holocaust and even offering apologies for past Jew-hatred have been seen by these parties as important steps towards garnering more mainstream support. But the expressions of support for Israel are generally more linked to visceral anti-Muslim sentiment, which has become so central to what these far-right parties are all about. They see Israel as the shining example of how to deal with the ‘Muslim threat'. Attempting to destroy Hamas and Hizbullah, openly acknowledging the ‘demographic threat' of the mostly Muslim Palestinian population—far-right leaders urge these kinds of policies on their governments.
In the last year or so the anti-Muslim backlash in Britain has been spearheaded by a new group calling itself the English Defence League (EDL). At first the EDL portrayed itself as grassroots English men and women defending the English way of life against the ‘alien' ways of Muslim immigrants, with their ‘strange' mosques, the ‘un-British' head scarves and full veils of Muslim women and the Islamist radicalism of Muslim youth, often expressed in the form of insults hurled at British soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. The EDL staged street protests, usually in open opposition to gatherings of Muslims, and violence invariably ensued. But it soon became clear that there were strong links between the EDL and the BNP. It seems that the BNP found it expedient to tap into wider anti-Muslim sentiment through a front organization.
Stories have been circulating for some time about the EDL's wish to develop ties with Jews and about emerging Jewish support for the EDL. Now, both of these developments have been openly confirmed, with even the BNP itself, through pro-BNP bloggers, lining up behind this position. A few days ago Ha'aretz published an interview with a Jewish woman EDL supporter and the Jewish Chronicle said that the EDL had launched a ‘“Jewish division”, encouraging Jews to “lead the counter-Jihad fight in England”'.
The official representative body of British Jewry, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, has unequivocally condemned these developments and there is no serious evidence showing any widespread Jewish support for such groups. However, apparent evidence that two prominent members of the British Zionist Federation, Richard Millet and Jonathan Hoffman (who is a ZF Vice-Chairman), were only days ago openly consorting with EDL supporters and attempting to disrupt a picket of activists advocating the boycott of Israel products, has caused some consternation.
Hoffman and Millet are well-know for their aggressive self-styled ‘pro-Zionist' activism, which is not supported by the ZF as an organization and appals many Zionists. Nevertheless, as anyone closely observing developments in the UK and Europe more generally knows only too well, there is undoubtedly strong potential support for anti-Muslim sentiment among Jews. And while it is unlikely that even those far-right groups that have gone the farthest to sanitise their images will succeed in mobilising Jewish opinion to any numerically significant extent, I would not rule out such a development completely.
Let's not pretend that there are no deeply worrying problems between Jews and Muslims. Good work on dialogue and reconciliation still goes on, but I suspect that most people involved feel it's like the labours of Sisyphus. But it's absolutely certain that the enticements of far-rightists, newly converted to Zionism and ‘love' of Israel, are for fools and mean nothing less than the collapse of Jewish values.
But it's equally true that every people has its fools—and they are to be found among leading politicians and great scientists, just as among truck drivers and agricultural labourers. No people exists without such weaknesses. Such tendencies can be overcome—with sufficient realism and self-awareness. But if you imagine that the uniqueness of your past suffering, which you see as constantly recreated in the present, puts you outside of history, your chances of ensuring that sense, justice and morality will prevail in your relations with others are severely limited.
