I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.
from William Blake, Jerusalem, 1804
Introduction
In 2006 the UK celebrated the 350th anniversary of Cromwell’s readmission of Jews to England. This concluded a four hundred year absence of organized Jewish life in the country following the expulsion in 1290 under Edward I. According to a widely accepted view, held by many British Jews and non-Jews alike, Britain has provided generous sanctuary to waves of Jewish refugees fleeing European anti-Semitism. It has given them a tolerant, accepting environment in which they have progressed steadily from poverty and exclusion to full integration into British society. Britain is also frequently credited with leading the fight to save European Jews from the onslaught of Nazism and assisting the survivors to rebuild their lives after the Second World War.
Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of the United Synagogue of the UK, expresses this attitude in his reflections on the anniversary of the readmission.
The Jews who came here loved Britain. They owed it their freedom to live as Jews without fear.In many cases they owed it their lives. Perhaps it takes an outsider fully to appreciate how remarkable Britain is. Jews loved its tolerance, its courtesy, its understated yet resolute commitment to liberty and civility. They loved Britain because it was British. It knew who and what it was: the leader of freedom in the modern world, the home of Shakespeare, Newton, the Industrial Revolution and the mother of parliaments. It had confidence in itself, and because it did so, it did not feel threatened by newcomers.
Without that confidence, bad things happen. [2] In fact, there are good grounds for regarding this view of Britain’s traditional relations with Jews as largely inaccurate. Recent events have seen the emergence of a distinctly uncomfortable environment for Anglo-Jewry. It might be suggested that this is a relatively new phenomenon conditioned entirely by current demographic and political factors. However, when one consults the historical record it becomes clear that much of what is now taking place bears a clear connection to a well established pattern of wide spread hostility to Jews as members of a cultural and ethnic collectivity that has existed in Britain over many centuries.
Since the start of the second Palestinian Intifada in September 2000, the press and public discussion in Britain have been dominated by strident and obsessive attacks on Israel. A part of this comment constitutes legitimate, and in some cases, well motivated criticism of Israel’s policies and conduct towards the Palestinians living
under a repressive occupation in the territories beyond its 1967 borders. Vigorous critique is a feature of normal political debate to which any country involved in a bloody and longstanding conflict must expect to be subjected. However, much of this discourse goes well beyond objections to the policies of a government. It paints Israel as a demonic entity whose people are collectively guilty of unprecedented criminality.
The country is portrayed as the instrument of an international conspiracy headed by a “Zionist lobby” that dictates American, British, and, on some versions, all of the West’s foreign policy.
These claims are no longer the preserve of extremists operating on the fringes of the political spectrum. They have seeped into mainstream discussion, where they are increasingly accepted as unexceptional. Several recent examples give an indication of how far this process has progressed. [3]
[1] I am grateful to Anthony Julius, Rory Miller, and Colin Shindler for helpful discussion of many of the ideas presented in this paper, and for generous assistance with historical research material. I would also like to thank Mitchell Cohen, Lori Coulter, Eve Garrard, Norman Geras, Jonathan Ginzburg, Edward Kaplan, Yaakov Lappin, Joe Rothstein, and Mort Weinfeld for very useful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. I bear sole responsibility for the content of the paper and any mistakes that it may contain.
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[2] Jonathan Sacks, “Anglo-Jewry at 350”, the Jewish Telegraph, July 7, 2006.
[3] For additional cases and a detailed discussion of the rise of a demonizing mythology in mainstream
British discourse see Shalom Lappin, “Israel and the New Anti-Semitism”, Dissent, Spring, 2003, pp. 96-103, and Shalom Lappin, “The Rise of a New Anti-Semitism in the UK”, Engage Journal, January, 2006.