Yes, Labour members can criticise Israel without being antisemitic – Clare Short has spread a poisonous myth

Clare Short is helping to spread a myth that stops the Labour Party from getting to grips with antisemitism. The former Labour cabinet minister claimed on Newsnight on Tuesday that the real problem was not antisemitism but the stretching of the definition of antisemitism to include all “criticism of Israel”.

David Hirsh, author of Contemporary Left Antisemitism, coined the term “the Livingstone Formulation” to sum up what is going on when someone spreads the “you can’t criticise Israel” myth. He named it after Ken Livingstone who once said: “The accusation of antisemitism has been used against anyone who is critical of the policies of the Israeli government.” (Any person, any criticism, note.)

Hirsh pointed out that this formulation is, first of all, flatly untrue. The party members complaining about antisemitism in Labour today themselves usually have a record stretching back decades of public criticism of many aspects of Israeli government policy.

More than that, the formulation is poisonous because for Hirsh it involves “refusing to engage with an accusation of antisemitism”, instead making “an indignant counter-accusation, that the accuser is taking part in a conspiracy to silence political speech.” In other words, it is a license to live in denial.

And it reduces all discourse about Israel, Hirsh observes, some of which may indeed be demonisation of Israel or actual antisemitism “into the legitimate category of “criticism”’.

Worst of all, the formulation involves a conspiracy theory: the idea that “those who raise the issue of antisemitism are doing so as part of a common secret plan to silence such ‘criticism’”.’

But it’s all a Big Lie.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Definition of Antisemitism, adopted under pressure by the Labour Party leadership in 2018, says “criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.”

None of the most frequently heard criticisms of current Israeli government policy fall foul of the IHRA definition of antisemitism. To criticise Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, call for its immediate withdrawal and the creation of a Palestinian State alongside Israel is not antisemitic. Nor is criticism of the expansion of settlements in the West Bank. Calling Israel’s efforts to deter Hamas rockets and terror “disproportionate” is not antisemitic either. Nor is pointing out the inequality and discrimination faced by the Arab minority within Israel.

Not a single person has been suspended or expelled from the Labour Party for making these kind of sharp criticisms of Israel, and nor should they be.

What is causing a crisis in the party is not “criticism of Israel” but hate-filled demonisation and dehumanisation that echoes classic antisemitism.

Some members equated Israel with Nazi Germany and claimed Zionists were behind Isis and 9/11. Other Labour members have said that Jews have dual loyalties and can’t be trusted; that Tony Blair is “Jewish to the core” and under the protection of the Rothschilds; that the Labour party, under Jewish pressure, is now dominated by “Jew process” not due process.

We have seen a local party vote down a resolution condemning the Pittsburgh Synagogue massacre because it had heard enough of “antisemitism this, antisemitism that” (yes, that actually happened); Jewish Labour councillors have been compared to Goebbels and Jewish Labour MPs have been called “the enemy within”. One Labour councillor shared an antisemitic meme of a blood-smeared, hook-nosed Israeli soldier and the meme said “Israel was created by the Rothschilds” (he remains a councillor).

I could go on. Details of these and over 100 other cases of antisemitism, antisemitism-denial and victim-blaming in the party can be found in the 2019 Fathom report Institutionally Antisemitic: Contemporary Left Antisemitism and the Crisis in the British Labour Party.

The hour is late. Unless the “you can't criticise Israel” myth is seen for what it is, a form of antisemitism denial, the party may be finished. The party is now “institutionally antisemitic” in exactly the sense given that term in the Macpherson Report: guilty of a “collective failure ... to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin.”

It has failed to understand contemporary antisemitism, failed to prevent the party becoming host to antisemitism, failed to develop “appropriate and professional” processes to deal with antisemitism, or safeguard members, and failed utterly to eradicate the party’s culture of antisemitism denial and victim-blaming.

Whatever her intentions, Clare Short has reinforced that culture with her comments.

Professor Alan Johnson is a Labour Party member and the editor of the online journal Fathom: for a deeper understanding of Israel and the region.