I know that Labour can rid itself of antisemitism – here's how

The discussion about antisemitism in the Labour Party has, almost exclusively to date, revolved around disciplining individuals. For sure, Labour needs to sort out its processes and to discipline or expel blatant and unrepentant antisemites. But tackling antisemitism is not just about purging antisemites.

More than a battle against individuals, we have a battle against reactionary ideas. We need to defeat not just antisemites but antisemitism. I want to suggest two ways forward in navigating our way out of these troubled waters.

Firstly, we can tackle antisemitism through educating our membership to recognise it and confront it. We must learn to deal with the causes, not just the symptoms.

Most Labour members are genuine anti-racists who oppose antisemitism. But too many understand it as only meaning hatred of Jews and do not recognise it in less obvious forms.

Encouragingly, some Labour members tell me that they have learned a lot about antisemitism while it has been in the headlines recently. Instead of dismissing all allegations of antisemitism as factional falsehoods, they have thought about the issues, read and discussed with comrades. They have come to understand the pernicious role of stereotypes that associate Jews with money and power and imagine Jews conspiring together or being disloyal to the country they live in. They have learned that although criticising Israel is not in itself antisemitic, doing so in a far more aggressive way than you ever criticise other states can be antisemitic. They have accepted that denying the problem is part of the problem.

Plaudits to them for educating themselves. Let’s help others to do the same. I would like the Labour Party to issue a pamphlet to all its members explaining what antisemitism is. The pamphlet could go through each way that antisemitism manifests itself, point by point, explaining what each means. We could include a brief history of the Jewish people, and perhaps a question-and-answer section. We could post it to every existing member and every new member when they join.

We could also circulate existing educational resources such as Steve Cohen’s book That’s Funny, You Don’t Look Antisemitic, a comprehensive but accessible analysis of how antisemitism has historically manifested on the left.

We could run training courses. We would not just be telling members facts, but explaining our party’s opposition to antisemitism and demanding that our people recognise and tackle it.

For a long time, there was homophobia in the Labour Party. We had Labour MPs voting against equality legislation, and widespread attitudes that would be unacceptable now. While homophobic and anti-trans attitudes have not yet been eliminated within our movement, we now have a real consensus for LGBT+ equality. This has been achieved not primarily by disciplinary action, but by campaigners battling bigoted ideas.

There is no hierarchy of bigotry or racism. Labour has a complex history with racism and internationalism. Political education about antisemitism and all forms of racism can help us reckon with that history, and ensure a socialist politics based on real equality becomes the common sense across the party.

Secondly, we can campaign more openly for our policy for peace between Israel and the Palestinians: for an independent state of Palestine alongside Israel.

I am not suggesting that Israel’s actions, however reprehensible, are responsible for antisemitism, any more than repression by the regimes of Saudi Arabia or Iran are responsible for anti-Muslim bigotry. They are not. Bigotry is responsible for bigotry.

However, some people’s understandable passion to support the Palestinian people against Israeli state oppression has led them, in the absence of an adequate framework for understanding the conflict’s history and possible resolutions, to support conspiracy-theorist narratives about Israel and Zionism. Some people slip from rightly denouncing the specific actions of a specific Israeli government to demanding all Jews apologise for the Israeli state’s actions. I can also think of no other examples where the left persistently questions the existence of a UN-recognised state rather than attacking its constitution, laws and actions of its government.

The Palestinians need our solidarity. They deserve it in their own right, not just as an adjunct of the battle against antisemitism. If we show that solidarity without slipping into antisemitism, we will model to our members and others how to do that, and we will illustrate that accusations of antisemitism are not just attempts to silence support for the Palestinians. Denunciations of Israel that cross the line into antisemitism do the Palestinians no favours.

There are left-wing groups in Israel and Palestine that unite Jewish and Arab people in campaigning against Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories and for equality and justice, such as Standing Together. We can amplify their voices and help their work.

We must make our movement hospitable for Jewish activists. But confronting antisemitism is about more than that. Conspiracy theories (which have antisemitism at their apex) poison the left, miseducating activists to believe that unseen shadowy forces – whether euphemistically referred to as “financiers”, “Zionists”, or identified explicitly as Jews – are to blame for the world’s ills, rather than the capitalist system that operates in plain sight.

An educational drive to confront conspiracy-theorist ideas can help us to establish a common commitment to the genuinely socialist ideas our movement needs to change the world.

Clive Lewis is the shadow Treasury minister for sustainable economics and the Labour MP for Norwich South