February 19, 2009
“I would be remiss if I didn’t say, and not simply on a level of self-interest, that ‘Something is happening and you don’t know what it is, do you, Mrs. Jones?’”
That’s my old friend Winston Pickett — that’s Winston, not Wilson; don’t let the 1960s lyric throw you off. Winston heads the brand-new European Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism. I called him in London last week to make sense of what the ADL calls a “pandemic” of anti-Semitism across Europe and Latin America as a result of the war in Gaza. Winston also helped organize this week’s London Conference on Combating Antisemitism, which brought parliamentarians from around the world, including NJ’s Rep. Chris Smith (R-Dist 4), to discuss strategies.
Each day, it seems, brings a new headline out of England: British Jewry’s Community Security Trust says 2009 is on course to become the worst year on record for anti-Semitic incidents in the UK. A man is attacked in the heavily Jewish Golders Green neighborhood. Famed playwright Caryll Churchill writes an appallingly one-sided playlet about the war in Gaza.
Frankly, this New Jersey Jew doesn’t know what this feels like. So I asked Winston, who is American but has lived in Brighton with his British wife and kids for almost 10 years.
He tells me it’s a mixed picture for Britain’s 300,000 Jews. On the one hand, theirs is a prosperous community, and Jewish life is booming. After decades of typically British reserve, there are “more Jews who are coming out of their shell, who are more expressive. You see more kipot, more Jewish educational stuff, a robust nonprofit Jewish sector.”
And yet the rate of anti-Semitic incidents is the highest in 25 years, and the spike in incidents during and since the Gaza war has far surpassed the usual paroxysms that follow a crisis in the Middle East.
“There is a sense of being a real minority — even the Sikhs outnumber us two to one,” said Winston. “And the media is not the same as in the United States. They always take the left-wing line and almost always see Israel as the aggressor. When you turn on the media and listen to the chattering class, it invokes a sense of siege.”
But, I ask, is the anti-Israel rhetoric the same as anti-Semitism?
Winston answers by telling a story. Since the 2005 London bombings, he and his wife made a pact that he wouldn’t wear his kipa on the train or the street.
“People are always going to be blogging and wearing their heart on their sleeves and prone to play the anti-Semitism card — to see anti-Semitism behind every critique,” he said. “But that doesn’t account for or excuse the dehumanization of Jews, or calling Israel a Nazi state. You have to differentiate between what you may call an argument and what is far too often a vilification whereby Jews themselves are under attack. People getting hit going to shul because they were identifiable by wearing kipot, simply because what happens in Israel! Imagine blacks being attacked because of what Mugabe is doing, for crying out loud. You feel it on a daily basis.”
Still, he doesn’t describe the feeling as fear, but “dissonance.”
“There is a kind of a whiplash effect,” said Winston. “Our antennae are always working overtime.”
The good news, he said, is that the government “gets it.” Authorities tally anti-Semitic incidents as hate crimes, and a 2005 report by the Parliamentary Committee Against Antisemitism served as a wake-up call to non-Jewish politicians. This week’s conference, said Winston, was an attempt to share the UK model with legislative bodies in Europe and beyond.
Winston stresses that anti-Semitism in England is a growth industry — but so too is the effort by Jews to fight back.
“Pulling together a conference like this here is a big deal. We’re putting the issue on the map. We’re not taking it lying down. On the contrary — it’s good to be in the fight.”
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