Hadley Freeman and Tanya Gold
Hadley Freeman and Tanya Gold: October 7 and the Left
Hadley Freeman and Tanya Gold - October 7 and the Left
- Good evening, everybody. Thank you for coming. This event is in partnership with the Jewish Literary Foundation and the Jewish Quarterly, which this month publishes Hadley Freeman’s essay, “Blindness, October the 7th, and the Left.” In this essay, Hadley explores the willingness of progressives to abandon values they purport to represent, outlines the equivocations, contortions, and hypocrisy displayed by elements of the left, including many who are unable to acknowledge or condemn the atrocities of Hamas, and examines the beliefs that have swept across liberal sectors, such as universities and the arts, with a fervour that blinds adherence to the immense complexities of history and justice. Hadley is one of our most brilliant and forensic journalists. After 20 years at The Guardian, she is now at the Sunday Times, where just last month she won Broad Sheet Columnist of the Year at the British Press Awards. Thank you so much for joining us, Hadley.
Oh, well, thank you for having me, Tanya.
Well, I have read your marvellous essay for the Jewish Quarterly, and I wanted to start off by asking you, where were you on October the 7th and 8th, and how did the news and then the response filter through to you both emotionally and professionally?
So, I was actually at the synagogue you and I go to, Tanya. I can’t remember if you were there that day. But I was in such a hurry to get my kids there in time for Hebrew school that I hadn’t even looked at the news on my phone. And we arrived there, and we always have a kind of synagogue gathering before the Hebrew school starts. And Rabbi Alexandra Wright led the service that morning, which was unusual. And she began by saying, “I’m sure you all have seen the news "and are having strong feelings "about what’s happening in Israel.” And I had absolutely no idea what was going on. And then I realised, oh, there were three security guards on the door this morning instead of one. And then the children went upstairs to Hebrew school and I looked at my phone, and that’s when I learned what was going on. And that evening, once I got the kids to bed, I was following the news on my phone, and I posted something, like a New York Times article, on my Instagram, which is only followed by friends of mine. And immediately I got these responses from people I know, ‘cause only people I know follow me, saying, “How could you fall for this propaganda? "This is like a slave uprising in the Deep South. "We should be cheering this on.” And I was completely stunned, really, that this would be the reaction. I thought I was pretty enured to things after the Corbyn era and after working at The Guardian during 9/11 when colleagues of mine said that America had brought 9/11 on itself. But this felt like a real unreal news thing. We were having live video footage of Israelis being butchered, and people I know saying, “Yeah, this is great.”
There were events in London, I am going to be quite London centric, though. We’ll move to America later. There were events in London on the 8th of October near your parents’ house, I believe.
Yeah, yeah.
And they had, to me, they seemed like a celebration. Is that-
Yeah, they were.
Is that an analysis that you share?
Yeah, absolutely. So, my parents live quite near the Israeli Embassy in London, and they could see flares and hear cheers and chants on Kensington High Street from their apartment, which is a ways up, people cheering what had happened on October the 7th. And then the day after that was, so that was the Sunday, October 8th. Then October 9th, the Board of Deputies organised this vigil by 10 Downing Street. And so I went along, with my friend Daniel, and I was really struck by how it was clearly just Jews there. It was, you know, people being, what the Met would call, openly Jewish, you know, people wearing kippahs. Everyone knew the words to Hatikva and the prayers. It was really striking. I did somewhat feel like, oh right, we are alone in this feeling. Nobody is showing sympathy or solidarity. You know, the politicians were, but not people. It was this sense of things, it’s a bit complicated. That was striking to me.
Before we go into your analysis, I would like to ask you a little bit about your family history. I don’t know if listeners know that Hadley wrote an absolutely amazing book called “House of Glass,” about her grandmother and her three brothers, and how they survived the war in Europe in different ways. And I think it’s particularly informed your view on this. I mean, how could it not? So I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit, well, as I said, about how the history of your family and what they went through has informed your view of antisemitism, and also your view of Zionism.
Well, I think, you know, there’s this joke that, or kind of shtick, for want of a better word, of Jews being overly sensitive to antisemitism and overly, you know, have the kind of antennae up at all times. But like you say, Tanya, thank you very much for being so nice about the book, so my grandmother and her three brothers were in Paris in the 1930s. And the thing that saved my grandmother is that her immediately older brother, my grandmother was the youngest, so the third youngest, Alex, was very aware of the growing antisemitism coming across Europe. He worked in the art world. He saw how the French art world was suddenly turning against artists like Chagall. He noticed that things like Jewish doctors suddenly had all these rules that they were subjected to that hadn’t been there five years ago. And the kind of the move towards antisemitism in France that came after the Dreyfus affair, that was now being rejected. And now there was a lot of antisemitism, particularly against Eastern European Jews, as they were. And that, I guess, has stuck with me. You know, you have to pay attention to what’s going on around you. And, you know, when I’m, you know, coming home from The Times on a Saturday, I sometimes have to go in on a Saturday, and I bring the children with me, and, you know, the Tube on the Northern Ground is suddenly filled with people holding placards saying “Zionism is racism,” and, you know, “Get Zionism money out of Britain,” and all these kind of weird placards. And the children get scared. You do think I’d be an idiot not to be aware of this as a potential sign of something.
Well, one thing I’ve said to myself very often since October the 7th, and it’s certainly a line that’s worth paying pennies for, is, you know, this is a lot, but we need to start unpicking it. So, it’s clear to me that many, many themes are meeting here, and there is more than one different kind of antisemite. So if we maybe start unpicking the tribes, you know, the socialist, crusties, the stupid kids, mostly the stupid kids. They’re pretty interesting. What have you noticed about them? Why are they the way they are?
Kids thing is interesting. I went to Harvard in March and spent a week there to write about the antisemitism on campus there, and spent a lot of time talking to Jewish students and professors. None of the Palestinian Solidarity groups would talk to me. But I think that, you know, America is still quite a new country and people that get very sentimental or nostalgic about the little past that we have. I’m obviously from America. And I think there is a lot of nostalgia for American college kids, for the kind of Vietnam protests that they had on campus in the 60s, when there was a movement that felt like it mattered and that they could speak up. And it was a youth movement. You know, young people today feel, I think, incredibly powerless. You know, the economy is tanking, the climate is bad, et cetera, et cetera. But here’s a way that they can get their voice heard is having these protests. In the same way, I think a lot of the gender stuff, which came right before this and the gender ideology movement, was a lot of young people wanting to have a civil rights fight in the same way, you know, in the 1980s and 90s there was the gay rights cause, and trans stuff kind of got, there was a, a desire for that to be the similar thing, when, of course, trans is very different than homosexuality, and Palestine is very different from Vietnam. But the kind of forcing of these similar things from the recent past onto present day is quite telling. I also think there’s an incredibly simple-minded view of this, which is Palestine and Israel are literally the same as the problems of racism between white people and Black people in America today and in the Deep South.
To me, that is the ultimate form of colonialism, to import the politics and history of one’s own western country onto something in the Middle East. And it’s fascinating to me that today when we have so much information around us, and access to information has never been easier, you literally just have to type it into your computer, there’s so much ignorance about the history of Israel and Palestine in the Middle East, like they really have no idea about anything. They have this idea that it’s basically like India and Pakistan with, you know, the British colonials heartlessly carving up a country for their own benefit, when that isn’t what happened at all. And that’s fascinating to me. But I do think generally there is this, that idea of Jewish exceptionalism, not just that Jews are so exceptionally great, but that when Jews do something people pay more attention to it. So if Israelis are fighting back, that is terrible. But when other countries are engaged in similar warfare or land disputes or however we want to describe it, it gets totally ignored by kids in the West. And I think for a lot of young people in the West today, they don’t associate Jews with the Holocaust at all, and they find the idea of antisemitism incredibly hard to grasp in their mind, particularly kids in America, for whom Jews means like, anything from Harvey Weinstein to Sheldon Adelson, kind of, you know, Bernie Madoff, like rich, powerful, clannish, you know, victim fetishizing, et cetera, et cetera. And powerful, ultimately powerful. And therefore they look at Israel and just see it as basically a kind of big fist of Weinstein-ness pounding down on helpless brown people. The lack of curiosity about who Hamas are, what they do, what they represent, what they actually want, is extraordinary to me.
I’m fascinated by the protests at Columbia and elsewhere. And I wasn’t at all surprised that they wouldn’t talk to you because they seem to like mostly speaking in slogans.
Yes.
And I’ve noticed happily that a lot of them seem to have sore throats when they do speak. And I was wondering, not only is their attitude horrifying for Jewish students, and we will have to talk about the Jewish anti-Zionists in a minute, but it also seems to me to be sort of desperately unfair to the Palestinians. Did you see the woman who came out of the occupied part of Columbia University who said that she needed food? She needed the university to give them food, because they were already on meal plans, and for humanitarian reasons-
Humanitarian aid. She needed humanitarian aid, yeah.
And in the Deep South, at another sit-in, they called an ambulance because a woman felt her tampon had been in too long, and they started screaming about toxic shock. And- And I’m just, I mean, I kind of think they’re sort of completely mad, but obviously we have to try and be a bit more analytical than that. Do you think the Palestinians are even real to them?
Well, I think that’s a very good question. I think there’s a lot of, you know, the critical race theory and DEI initiatives have really built up this very simplistic structure of the world being divided between the oppressor and the oppressed. And for them, the Palestinians are just simple oppressed, in the way Black people in America are oppressed. And there’s no insight into what the Palestinian history is, the history of Palestinian terrorism, for example, in the 1970s, which I am very aware of, despite being basically a history ignoramus. ‘Cause my father’s best friend was on the plane, the Entebbe plane that was hijacked and ended up with Idi Amin. And in fact, in the fight that followed between Mossad and the terrorists, it was Benjamin Netanyahu’s brother, Yonatan, who was killed. And because of that, Benjamin Netanyahu came back from America and is now Prime Minister of Israel. So such is history. But, you know, there is a long history of terrorism and counterterrorism. And I agree that I don’t really know, I mean, I don’t even know if they could identify Gaza on a map. I would be amazed if they could. Certainly, the vast majority of them have never been to Gaza or even Israel. I think it’s quite telling that it’s the Ivy Leagues where these protests are happening, because Ivy Leagues, at this point, cost about $200,000 to go to. And it is very privileged, often, not always, white students kind of assuaging their various white privilege guilt that they’ve been indoctrinated into believing they must feel by shouting at Israel and fetishizing the victimhood of the Palestinians.
Why can’t they give up some of their material privilege?
You would wonder, wouldn’t you? But then I also feel that same way, you know, when I read… This is a big leap, but when I read, you know, yet another interview with Daniel Radcliffe explaining why J.K. Rowling is evil and he will continue to denounce her, I always think, it’s interesting, you know, you could give your Harry Potter money to a trans charity, like the ones that you keep saying you work for, but strangely not, anyway. Much better to denounce people than to have to give up anything that might cost you your own personal comfort. I mean, let’s be honest.
Do you think they’re laundering their souls, you know, through hatred of Jews? Because if that is true, that feels like quite an ancient coping strategy.
Yes, in the same way when we see videos of kids at UCLA saying that Zionists aren’t allowed onto certain parts of their campus. I mean, really just proves that some kids don’t know history at all.
How important do you think the very small anti-Zionist element of Jews are to this, both in Britain and in America?
Well, I think more so in America. I think Jews in Britain tend to have more roots in terms of what happened in Europe in the 1930s. She says euphemistically. You know, there are plenty of Jews in America whose families had been there, you know, from the 19th century, like my mother’s for example. And therefore, their sense of the importance of Israel and what Israel means and why Israel was founded in the first place is dimmer, I think, than it is to Jews in Britain. And, you know, we have to remember, you know, okay, yes, these are kids. Yes, kids always protest. Yes, kids say stupid things. But, you know, when I went to Harvard, Professor Steven Pinker said to me, “We have to remember, these kids are the best of the best.” You know, this is who gets into Harvard, Columbia, UCLA, wherever else they’re protesting. Dartmouth now. Princeton. These are kids who will one day be in government, you know, be leading, you know, banks, whatever, tech, whatever it is that industries lead America now. And that’s scary. And also these kids are not getting pushback from their professors. They’re often being taught by young professors or professors who are either activists themselves or trying to be a bit down with the kids, who are posting on social media horrendously antisemitic things. The posts that some of the students at Harvard showed me that their professors were putting up on Twitter and Instagram just honestly made my jaw drop. And they were either kind of a, you know, young trainee professors. I don’t even, I can’t remember what the term is now. Or actual professors like in their 50s, you know, just being so rabidly, like horrendously anti-Israel and anti-Zionism, and dah, dah dah, dah dah. These kids now get no pushback. They’re never told to examine their prejudices or to examine their thinking. They’re validated every step of the way. It’s the coddling of the minds, as Jonathan Haidt says.
And do you think that this is mainstream in American youth?
Yeah, 100%. 100%. And a lot of it has come from social media. There was an article this week, I think it was in the Wall Street Journal, about the amount of anti-Zionist content on TikTok and Instagram. I think it is very mainstream. And the biggest fear for me about it, or the biggest concern for me, is that it will stop young people voting for Biden. And then Trump will get in, and the Jews will be blamed for that.
Well, yes, I mean, I was going to ask you, where do you think this is going to lead? I mean, for some reason I feel much more worried about America than the UK at the moment.
Well, I think America-
Like they’ve never really done it. And now they’re just discovering its possibilities for .
I mean, except they have done it. That’s what’s so stupid about this whole thing. You know, my father couldn’t apply to lots of colleges in the 1930s because there were such tight quotas on Jews, because it was felt that Jewish students won too many academic prizes, and it was disproportionate, it wasn’t fair. So we’re sort of having a return to that of, you know, Jewish kids no longer applying to Ivy Leagues because of this antisemitism. When my, you know, grandfather was growing up in the Lower East Side in America, the antisemitism then was horrendous. You know, there was open talk about eugenicism. I mean, Teddy Roosevelt was very much a kind of, had a definite flirting interest in eugenicist writing. And, you know, Eastern European Jews, particular, as my grandfather was, were seen as dirty, vermin, unwanted, all the rest of it. You know, when I was growing up in the 80s in New York, my father used to say to me, you know, that I wasn’t allowed to go stay with friends who had country houses in Southampton, because those country clubs wouldn’t allow Jews in the 60s, so no daughter of his was going to Southampton. All these things are very present to Jews in America. And also let’s, you know, lest anyone forget, you know, there was a massive killing at a synagogue in Pittsburgh not very long ago. So when you have someone like Susan Sarandon stand up and say, “Well, now Jews know how Muslims feel in America,” you’re just saying you have selective blinders on. You just don’t want to see Jews as victims. You want to see them as, you know, your rich accountant or your rich agent. And then you can hate them and not think about things too difficult or complicated in your head.
Can you see anything stopping it in America? Because one of the things I found hardest to deal with since October the 7th, I mean, I can sort of cope with the antisemites. It’s the people who say nothing.
Oh, totally. You know, as you know, Martin Luther King said, “We will not remember the words of our enemies, "but the silence of our friends.”
Yeah.
And I find the way people talk about Israel, “It’s a bit complicated.” I find that extraordinary. You know, I had a friend who died in 9/11, and when I came back from New York, 'cause I happened to be in New York when 9/11 happened, nobody was saying to me, “It’s a shame, "but, I mean, you know, American foreign policy.” Like it was just seen as a flat out tragedy, except by absolute far left weirdos, like in the LRB who, you know, wrote articles, like Mary Beard saying, you know, “America brought this on itself.” And you can say, yes, America, you know, all history is part of a chain, like things lead to one another. But that doesn’t mean mass terrorist acts, as October 7th was, as 9/11 was, should be seen as, well, it was inevitable. They brought it on themselves. But yeah, I think America is in a much worse state than Britain, in truth. I mean, having grown up in America, I now look at that country as almost as a failed experiment. You know, it’s so obsessed with women’s sexuality and so pro guns and with such extreme political views being expressed on both sides of the spectrum, I look at it a bit like Afghanistan. It’s just like this weird rogue renegade state.
Well, to move over to Britain, you talked to a lot of very clever British Jews, Howard Jacobson, Anthony Julius, the lawyer-
You .
David Baddiel, who wrote the book “Jews Don’t Count,” about antisemitism within the arts and culture. And I was wondering what the response has been, because I think we live in a little bit of a cultural bubble. And I’m wondering whether it’s worse for us in London. I mean, obviously not compared to Israel. I’m talking about antisemitism, sort of, you know, because for the Diaspora Jew, the British Jew, we’ve never seen this in our lifetimes, and most of our parents didn’t see it in their lifetimes either, in Britain. I mean, what’s your emotional response to it been over the last six months? Has it changed? And, I mean, what are your non-Jewish friends saying to you, if they’re saying anything at all?
So is it worse in London than outside of London in Britain? Is that what you mean? Yeah. Well I think with the marches, you know, it has been really scary. People laugh at Jews when they talk about this on social media, but it’s totally frickin’ weird on Saturdays when suddenly, you know, all around my parents’ house, because they live in West London, there are these quite angry protests, and it’s a mix of sort of oldie far lefties, young kids, and very angry Middle Eastern people. Like that is the only way I can describe it. And there’s a lot of antisemitic posters up, and anyone who claims that there aren’t is lying or blind.
Yeah.
And I walked to my parents’ house the other day, or the other week, because I go see them every weekend. And I walked past my old synagogue that I went to as a teenager called West London Synagogue near Marble Arch, and it had seven policemen outside it. I mean, like, that was not the case in the 90s. Like, I don’t remember police at all being outside the synagogue, let alone seven. And outside the synagogue you and I go to, Tanya that, you know, there’s now every week three and we have to open our bags and show the bags, and the kids aren’t allowed to hold the security gate open for anyone behind them. It has to be opened by the security guard. It is scary. But would it be better outside of London? Well, I mean, you’re a better place to say it than me. But the few times, yeah, the few periods of my life where I’ve lived outside of London in England, I’ve felt like sort of Woody Allen at Annie Hall’s family table, you know, and it’s just like this hasid, you just, there’s no Jews. It’s so weird. And you feel like some weird semitic freak or something walking around. And it makes me want to start, you know, breaking out “Hava Nagila” or something just to freak everyone out at the co-op. So, I don’t know, I’d feel lonelier. I definitely feel a sense of solidarity here.
And what about your non-Jewish friends?
Well, there’s some who don’t speak to me anymore. I have noticed that. ‘Cause they don’t like what I’ve written in the paper. Some have told me off for what I’ve written in the paper, and others just say quietly it’s, you know, sorry about the language here, everybody, but “It’s fucking weird, what’s happening.” I’m like, “Yeah, it is.” But I do feel like, you know, it’s like what you and I used to joke about during the Corbyn era, Tanya. It’s like, oh, now you see who would’ve sent you to the Gulags. Now, you know.
I spent a lot of time covering Jewish Voice for Labour, which is Corbyn’s Praetorian Guard of Jewish Corbynites. And get very angry with me. And yet at the march, the most recent march, their leader, or one of their leaders, they tend to operate a sort of-
[Hadley] Mm-hm.
They didn’t like hierarchies. Naomi Wimbourne-Idrissi was, so-called Jewish Bloc. They’re always taunting us with the Jewish Bloc. Thousands of Jews were telling her on these marches, so it’s not antisemitic to go. So the first thing I wanted to say that she was marching next to this insanely antisemitic poster of, I think it was a bull or a pig covered in Stars of David sort of goring the world and sort of laughing and joking. So- I feel that she’s sort of over there. And I mean, there is a question, you know, how much damage have they done? I wonder when they’re actually going to come out and say, because they’ve had these beards for quite a while now, since the beginning of the Corbyn era, they’ve had these beards and were saying, you know, “It’s not antisemitic. "Look, there are some Jewish people here.” And I wonder when they’re going to stop saying Zionist and start saying Jew. And will that feel better or worse?
Well, I think, I mean, Zionist is, you know, they are far left, so they like to think, you know, they’re not prejudice. So Zionism is a great cover for them. And yeah, I find the anti-Zionist Jews quite hard to take. I don’t want to start turning on my own in all the rest of it, but there are some journalists, who I don’t need to get into names, who now seem to just take a delight in scolding people like me and you for being the wrong kind of Jew. And I know they feel that I do to them, but I don’t write about that. I never write about the anti-Zionist Jew. I just don’t want to get into it. I just don’t care enough. But the ones who sort of like to write columns, you know, jumping up and down, saying, “Look, I’m the good kind of Jew,” I find really nauseating. And, you know, often they didn’t say anything about October the 7th. They haven’t said anything about the hostages. And I wonder if that, if they think about that at all. Like, do they think about October the 7th at all? 'Cause I think about it a lot. I think about what’s happening to the Palestinians, too. And I also think that the people who are protesting about what’s happening to the Palestinians, about what Israel’s doing, why aren’t they angry at Hamas? I mean, Hamas really started this. Hamas could have taken measures to protect its people after doing what it did when Israel’s response was entirely predictable. Why did Hamas spend all its money on just amassing weapons for itself and building tunnels for itself? Why didn’t they stock pile food for the people? I find, you know, it feels very telling to me that the bad guys are only Netanyahu. They’re not Netanyahu and Hamas. That’s all I need to know. That’s all I need to know from these people.
Well, you know, if you are interested, and I’m very interested in them, to me they’re completely emotionally impenetrable. I spent a lot of time with them and I got absolutely nowhere, though I probably would agree with Howard Jacobson’s line when he said he’d never met a socialist who didn’t hate his father.
I love that line so much. So good. He wrote that in the “Statesman.” I actually saw Howard, this is going to make us sound very Londony and all the rest of it, but a neighbour of mine very sweetly had a Passover in the middle of last week for those of us who were kind of a bit orphaned. 'Cause my children are with their dad a few nights a week. So he invited me over to his for when my kids are with their dad. And Howard was there one night, and I said to him, “That line you said "in the 'New Statesman,’ ”‘I’ve never met a socialist who didn’t hate their father.’ “And ‘Judaism is a patriarchal religion.’ "It like changed my life, Howard.” And he lit up like a little candle. It made me so happy.
I mean, I’m sure he’s the best Jewish writer alive. Well, you know, for me, certainly.
I agree, I agree, I think he’s a genius, and his way with language is perfection. So, yes, I worship at the altar of Howard Jacobson, unashamedly.
I wanted to ask you what your sort of overreaching analysis about why this has happened now. I mean, my possibly lazy view is that it’s just a reanimation of ancient demonic Jew hatred. I mean, who doesn’t like to have, you know, someone to kick, you know, because then you all feel so much better about yourselves. I also think there’s a huge amount of deeply suppressed guilt for the Shoah. Because if Jews are Nazis, then they can no longer be victims. Then no one has to feel bad. And, you know, the culpability of non-Jewish Europeans in the Shoah was enormous. You touched on racism in America, you know, internalised racism, fueling this. I mean, what’s your view? Are we just terribly, terribly unlucky?
Well, yes, and I think there have been various social and educational movements that have encouraged this. For example, the rise, like what I said, the oppressor and oppressed ideology, critical race theory, which posits that Jews are white and Palestinians are brown, has been a huge push towards this. And yes, I do think there’s this desperation to kind of be able to cross the Holocaust off the sheet of sins. You know, the constant talk about how Israelis are as bad as the Nazis, what’s happening to the Palestinians is a genocide. You know, even though none of those terms are appropriate for what’s happening. It’s awful what’s happening to the Palestinians. It’s a tragedy. Is it a genocide? No. No matter what South Africa would like to say. And it’s very interesting that it was South Africa that brought that, and it’s also very interesting about how Ireland has been so vocal about how disapproving they are of Israel. And of course, Ireland remained steadily neutral during World War II, so-
Spain, don’t forget Spain.
Oh, and Spain, exactly. So, whereas Germany has been very vocal in its support, and I always, you know, I think that’s very telling. Germany is a country that really has undeniably reckoned with its guilt, far more than Poland or France or any other country that had elements of Nazism in them or fascism in them. And yeah, I think the left would like to just tell the Jews to fuck off, quite frankly.
I’m wondering whether, in being so insane, they pose less of a danger, because, I mean, I live in Penzance, there was a Palestinian Solidarity campaign rally, and I went, and, Palestinian nationalism is a reputable movement, you know, I agree with you. And it is not served by these people who seem to me to be far more in it to hate Jews than to stand up for Palestinians, who they don’t seem to be able to separate from Hamas. So I suppose my question is, because they had quite a large crowd in the first week, but then in the second week no one came, because they were just a group of crazy old socialists, and decent people, you know, who were grieved by what was happening didn’t want to be associated with them. And I wonder if that’s what we’re going to see here. I mean, we saw this massive outbreak of antisemitism under Jeremy Corbyn and then everybody went off and voted Tory, and I just-
Yes, yes. Well, I think also what I see on American campuses is you really can’t underestimate the social pressure to be part of a crowd. And I see that with the students who I follow on social media, on both sides of the political spectrum, and also the journalists who are there in America, British ones and American ones, who really want to be part of a wave. I think there is that desire to be part of a wave, even though they look absolutely nutty a lot of the time. It doesn’t help when the police are, you know, violent in videos and, you know, whacking people with sticks and all that. Like that doesn’t help to bring balance to any kind of conversation. But I just don’t understand why people have such a simplistic view. I mean, when people would talk about Vietnam in the 60s, 70s, you read, you know, journalists who were there like David Halberstam, you know, they had a very subtle, you know, understanding that this was a complicated situation. North, South Vietnam, communism, the Vietcong, et cetera, et cetera. And so much of the, not the news reporting, I don’t mean that, but like so much of the columnist writing in America and Britain on this subject is so simplistic. And you know, there’s no acknowledgement that Israelis have been protesting against Netanyahu for the past year and a half, like a bigger movement within a country than I think any other country’s seen in recent years against its leader. You know, there’s just this assumption, all Israelis are horrifically right wing, they’re all members of the Likud. There’s no sense of differentiating between Israelis and Netanyahu. You know, in the same way there’s a difficulty for some people to separate the Palestinians and Hamas.
Among the other Jews that you know of our age, I mean, how are they coping? Because I remember saying the week after, you know, this is my Howard story, I did a panel with Howard and Melanie Phillips, and I said that I was completely shocked, but on the other hand, I wasn’t shocked at all.
Mm, yeah. Well, I think I feel like I’m shocked, but not surprised, I guess, because the Corbyn era has sort of warmed us up for this, of seeing how people on the left will just kind of jazz hands away antisemitism if it’s inconvenient to their political beliefs. But I’m shocked that ,you know, Hamas could live whatever it is, livestream rapes and murders, and people would still be like, “Well, it’s not definitive proof is it?” Or, “Well, they brought it on themselves.” It has been, I think it’s been very shocking to a lot of Americans who didn’t have a Corbyn era to warm them up. And even to those of us here who did, it’s been very disturbing. I remember in the weeks after October the 7th, myself and a friend of ours from the Hebrew school, another mother, Julia, and I, wouldn’t leave the Hebrew school when our kids were in classes. We stayed in the little seating area upstairs, just in case something happened and we needed to be there with our children. Like that felt like a new thing. And that was a real feeling. That wasn’t us fetishizing victimhood or looking to be oppressed. Like we were genuinely scared that someone might try to attack the synagogue.
You interviewed Dave Rich from the Community Security Trust, who’s written a very good book on this, “Everyday Hate,” and he says that this is something we always need to keep at the margins of society. I interviewed him way before this happened, and of course that hasn’t happened now. You know, it’s right in the centre. I mean, is your instinct is that it will get better, but maybe get worse first? I mean, what is your instinct?
Well, I honestly, I mean, I would be interested in your take, Tanya. Like, I have no idea what’s going to happen in the Middle East. I cannot see any way out of this. You know, Netanyahu needs this fight to avoid going to court for corruption. Hamas needs this fight in order to look revolutionaries for their people. Like, how is this ever going to end? And if this doesn’t end, how do we stop people in the West sort of seeing it through the prism of their own politics, their own ignorances. And how will that, you know, how can that not affect the Jews? I think in America, where things are so much more volatile, it’s so much worse. At least we’ve got almost certainly Keir Starmer coming in who has been vaguely sensible on things. He’s probably not going to be as pro-Israeli as the Tories, but is, you know, far from Corbyn, you know? Whereas, in America, you know, we could well be having President Trump this time next year, and you know, that is chucking gasoline on already a massive dumpster fire. So, I don’t know. I really have no idea. I feel sorry for 20-something American Jews. I think they’re having a terrible experience.
I think I’m going to bring in some questions now, if that’s all right. I’m just looking for the ah, yeah, oh, we have loads, which is great.
Q&A And Comments:
Q - “Do you have any reflections "about how we move people beyond the binary thinking, "Israel all bad, Palestinians wonderful?”
A - Do I have any reflections on that binary? Well, I wish people would just, you know, engage their intelligence a little more. No country is all bad. No country is all good. You know, one of the things I really loved about writing this essay for the Jewish Quarterly was learning more about the history, and, you know, the Peel Commission in the 1930s when he was advising, or when Lord Robert Peel was advising Britain to just basically, you know, hand over the Mandate Palestine to the people there, he said, you know, “This is an issue of right against right. "The Palestinians have a right to this land "and so did the Jews.” And I think that’s so true. It’s right against right and it’s wrong against wrong. And, you know, both sides have committed terrible atrocities and both sides have a right to this land. And I don’t understand why other people can’t get their heads around that. Like, that is it. That’s the problem.
Q - Well, I don’t know if, have you been to any of the protests to cover them?
A - Yeah, only one, though, and I was horrified. Also I live right by Regent’s Park, where lots of protests happen every weekend, is another problem.
Q - Palestine protests?
A - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well they seem to me to be having an extraordinary amount of fun.
Oh yeah, yeah, no, it’s a social thing.
Which I sarcastically wrote this morning for people who claim to stand in witness to genocide. I don’t think it’s even too far to go to say that they seem to approach the idea of there being a genocide with something like glee. I mean-
Yeah, hopeful. Absolutely. I mean, the way people are interpreting, you know, the ICJ’s finding, you know, misinterpreting it, that Israel’s committing genocide, which is not what they said. You know, they’re so desperate for this, so desperate for Israel to be all evil and Palestine to be all good and all oppressed is sick, I think. Why do you want the people you’re on the side of to be the victims of a genocide? It’s so mad.
I do suspect, actually, and I’ve thought this for a while, that we are over, classically as Jews, we’re overanalyzing it. To me it feels very much like a reenaction of a mediaeval passion play.
Yeah, for sure. And, you know, the kind of the hanging of the Jews in Yorkshire and all that kind of thing. I mean, it’s very weird, and it’s a very, like hating on the Jews, like you say, to wash away your own sins.
Q - There’s another question about Columbia. “How do you think they cope with the fact that,” the protestors at Columbia, “that you could tell them that all Europeans "coming to the U.S. are colonisers "oppressing the Native Americans?”
A - I mean, I think it would blow their tiny mind. Also, I don’t understand how you can call survivors of the Holocaust, who were the first wave of Jews to arrive in Israel, colonisers. Like how were they colonisers? Are refugees colonisers? Yeah, I think it would make their heads explode. I also think it’s interesting that, not that so many of those students have absolutely no connection to Israel or Palestine. You know, with the Vietnam protest, what started that was that a lot of those college kids were burning their draught notices. Well, you weren’t supposed to get a draught notice if you were going to college, but a lot of their friends were getting draught notices. So, you know, of course they felt personally involved. There was a risk of them being sent off to be blown up. That is not a risk here. It feels like pure vanity coupled with ignorance when I see those young people shouting about genocide.
And boredom. It’s like they’re longing for something interesting to happen to them.
Yeah, and they, you know, shut down their 200-grand-a-year university now. Brilliant, well done.
Q - Brian Ratner says, “It is being suggested "that the demonstrations on the U.S. campuses "are being coordinated and financed externally. "Do you have any information or view on this?” But will we know who it benefits?
A - Yeah, I mean maybe in some cases. People do say this. I often think one overestimates the amount that these kids can be coordinated. And also we don’t, you know, there is a, certainly with UCLA, there’s a theory that a lot of those people that we see causing the most amount of damage and property damage aren’t actually students. They’re outside kind of activists. So maybe, but I mean also it, who cares? I mean, these kids are so stupid to go along with it. That’s what’s upsetting. The American education system has failed.
Q - We’ve been asked to distinguish between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
A - Yeah, I mean, thing is, the vast, vast, vast majority of Jews believe in Israel’s right to exist, which is all Zionism is. So if you are an anti-Zionist, you are disagreeing with, you know, the vast majority of Jews. And why should Israel not be allowed to exist? It is a legal state. I think that’s one of the difference, the things that’s really stood out to me with this round of protests. It’s not just about the settlements anymore. It’s the whole idea of Israel as being seen as illegitimate, which is ridiculous. So it’s not, you know, the occupation, the whole country is now an occupation. I saw Mehdi Hassan was tweeting the other day, I’m sure some of the listeners out there know who that is, in which he very sort of disparagingly described Israel as a manmade country. I don’t know who he thinks made other countries, hedgehogs? Like that is how countries are formed. They’re made by humans.
[Tanya] Yes.
So I think why, I do wonder why, how someone can say to themselves, “I’m not antisemitic, I’m anti-Zionist.” Well, that’s like saying, you know, you’re not anti-Muslim, you just don’t think people should make, you know, the pilgrimage, et cetera, et cetera, and Saudi Arabia shouldn’t be a Muslim country. You know, there are religious countries that have basis, and Judaism is allowed to be one of them.
Q - There is a question from Leslie Isaacson, and I’m going to take it. It says, “You say they never think about October the 7th. "Do you,” I assume you and me, “Ever think about the 300,” sorry, “the 30,000 Palestinians who have been killed, "including thousands of children?”
A - Yeah, of course, of course I do. I think about both. And I always make sure to talk about both whenever I write a column about this, as I’m sure you do, Tanya. I don’t see that on the other side. You know, I read whole columns by people I know in newspapers such as oh yes, the Guardian, about the evils of Israel, which they don’t once mention Hamas, they don’t once mention October the 7th. I would never write a column about October the 7th without mentioning the thousands and thousands of Palestinians who’ve now been killed. Like I can see the tragedy of both sides. Can other people? I don’t know.
Well, I feel whenever I have a conversation about this with a non-Jew, I feel I have to do the caveat and the purity test, and you have to stand up and you have to say, you have to announce that you care as much about one side or another, or they think you’re a monster. Well, they’re, of course, not prepared to do that for you. And I was very struck, actually by a line you had in your book from Anthony Julius, and he wrote an article, didn’t he? About British antisemitism that he knew was read by the faculty at his university, but none of them ever mentioned it to him.
Yeah.
And didn’t he say that they assumed, he believed that they thought that he was lying?
Yes.
That Jews lie.
Yeah, that Jews lie, yeah. And, you know, we try to make ourselves out to be the victim and we over-egg our anecdotes and all the rest of it. You know, the Holocaust wasn’t evidence enough and October the 7th is not evidence enough.
Q - Andrea Collett asks “Whether, in your view, "Israel will ever be likely "to be deemed a failed experiment?”
A - Well, I say Netanyahu is doing his best to achieve that. You know, if people, Israelis are fully aware of the flaws of Netanyahu. I have cousins in Israel, and they, you know, they write to me very sadly about what’s happened to their country, and they write very sadly about what’s happening to the Palestinians. You know, it didn’t have to be like this. But I would also say people have always had double, you know, politicians have long had double standards when it comes to Israel. You know, the Six-Day War everyone kind of agrees is when things changed, when Israel stood up for itself and fought back and destroyed the Egyptian Air Force. And suddenly Israel was being held to a different standard. No longer were Jews the kind of meek, you know, the humble Jew being led off like a lamb to the, you know, camps. Suddenly they were these strong fighters, and there were a lot of countries that didn’t like it. And so it has continued in that way.
Q - Carol asks, “Why has Biden not said one single word "about what’s happening to Jews on campuses?” I believe that’s changed. I believe he did say something today.
A - Yes, I think he said something over the weekend, didn’t he? But he is very much always careful to do the both sides thing. And I don’t blame him for that, to be honest. We need him to be elected, and we need young people to get out and vote for him, is the sad truth.
I was pretty confident that Biden would win the election a couple of months ago. I’m not so sure now. I mean-
I don’t know. That’s so awful. Young people and a lot of Black Americans are so angry with him. I don’t really know what they think.
About Gaza?
Sorry?
Q - About Gaza?
A - Yeah, yeah. I don’t really know how they think Trump will be better for their cause. It’s a disaster. It is a disaster.
Q - Would you be willing to say who you think is going to win in November?
A - I mean, I have been wrong on every election since Brexit I think, so. Going to win, and then we’ll just go with the other one. I’ve also always been wrong.
- Yeah, Robert Kennedy at this point. Who knows? I don’t know, I don’t know. I’m hoping that Trump will just be in prison. It’s the best I can hope for at this point.
Q - Michael Britain asks if there’s an antidote to the underlying propaganda supporting these movements? And what can we possibly do? I mean, my response is so unhelpful. Usually just to sort of throw up my hands. I’m one of those fatalistic Jews. But do you think there is anything that we can do? And it’s a shame that we have to do all the labour.
A - Yeah.
Q - But do you think there’s anything that we can do?
A - Well, I keep trying to urge on people, you know, writers who I really respect, you, Howard, you know, I really enjoy, actually, Jonathan Friedland’s podcast, I must say, “Unholy,” in which he debates with a conservative Israeli about various Jewish issues of the day. You know, and the writers on the subject who I really like, Anne , for example, in Israel, and yeah, Rosenberg and the Atlantic. And I also am always trying to tell people to read and watch, you know, the kind of Jewish culture that made them fall in love with Jews in the first place. Whether it’s Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Paul Auster, who just died, Philip Roth, like remember, you know, what Jews brought to the West, you know? You know, we are part of the culture. We’re not, you know, Bernie Madoff and Harvey Weinstein. You know, we are a demographic that contributed a lot. And can you remember the joy of our culture as well, instead of just ranting at us all the time?
Q - I’m afraid I have another Trump question before we finish, which won’t be very long. Erica Lewis says that many Jews think that Trump is good for the Jews.
A - Many Jews think that, did she say?
Many Jews think Trump is good for the Jews?
Many Jews in Britain or in America?
America.
Oh, in America.
There were Jews for Trump. I mean, my own view is that anyone who ignites a race war eventually we’re going to be in it. And he’s the-
Yeah, quite. I mean, he is the-
Our best hope was a sort of pluralistic, thriving society, and then no one would want to beat us up.
Always, I mean the best hope for Jews is always a pluralistic, you know, metropolitan society. You know, Trump described those marchers who chanted “Jews will not replace us” as very fine people. You know, of course there’s some Jews who support him. Jews are not a monolithic block. There’s going to be some Asians who support him, some Black people who support him, but of course, he’s not good for the Jews. He’s not good for anyone but Trump. And he is barely good for himself. He’s an absolute idiot who is now a lunatic. Like, he’s not good. He’s the most unstable human being walking around, probably.
Q - Do you want to talk about the settlements? Because I’d always like to mention the settlements.
A - Yeah, of course.
Q - Have you been to the West Bank?
A - No. I’ve only been to my cousins in Tel Aviv.
Q - I just, what I find extraordinary is, you know, a lot of them are American and Russian. Do you think it would be easier to defend Israel if we did not have this violent settler culture? I know some people-
A - Of course.
Will have a go at me.
Of course. Yeah, yeah, of course, of course it would be easier to defend. Which is why Jews such as myself, or you, you know, Josh Glancy, et cetera, have always spoken out about the settlements and the occupation. But equally, I don’t think that excuses Hamas. You know, we can separate them, right? But yeah, of course, of course I wish that the, you know, that the Palestinians in the West Bank weren’t under this horrific kind of rule and hadn’t suffered so much violence.
Q - We’re going to finish up in a moment. So I mean, I wanted to ask you, I mean this is an immense essay, it’s 20,000 words. I always feel that you’re much tougher than I am, as a journalist. I mean, you’re braver than me. And I was just wondering, despite the family you come from and the world you’ve lived in, was there anything about the research that actually shocked you?
A - No, no. I feel that my eyes were so opened about the people who I considered on my political tribe during the Corbyn era, and then a little bit more after October the 7th. So, no, nothing really shocked me. It was interesting dating how The Guardian has changed in its attitude to Israel. I really didn’t know very much about that, with the Balfour Declaration to now to, you know, today with The Guardian openly stating that one of its big mistakes was supporting Zionism in the 1920s. It’s heartbreaking, really, to see how the left has shifted in its attitudes towards Israel. It liked Israel when it was a victim, not when it was triumphant and in its ascendancy, and of course, the settlements are part of that. But not entirely, I don’t think entirely. How about you? Is there anything that you’ve seen in the past few months that shocked you?
Well, I mean, I feel a little bit ashamed to say it, but there was, I live in Penzance, and there was a big rally down here for medical aid for Palestine, and lots of people I knew went to it. You know, parents from schools, people who run local businesses, the sort of local sort of artistic bourgeoisie, and I thought it was great that they were having a party for medical aid for Palestine. But on the other hand, they also endorsed the Palestinian Solidarity campaign. And I think I have the only Jewish child in Cornwall. And with that, so… I mean in West Cornwall, and with that and going on the rallies where I actually stood with a group carrying a picture of a hostage, and to have them go past us with our double of peace men, and they all wanted to come over to scream at us. It wasn’t enough to go on the rally. Going and screaming at the group who were holding pictures of the hostages and Israeli flags was part of the fun. And I think I felt in that, I mean, I’ve studied a Jewish history in my life. My mother’s a historian of Jewish people, as you know, and the question always when talking about the Shoah or antisemitism is about how, how, how could they do it? But how could they do it? And I always used to think it was rather consuming Shoah education, ‘cause you get to the end and then you have to go back to the beginning. But I felt in those gestures of throat cutting and the sort of combination of ecstasy and rage, no grief at all, it was ecstasy and rage, I felt some of that fire, you know, that your, you know, that your family faced in the 30s and 40s. I did want to end with something that might cheer us up a bit, which is the story of the bridge at the end of your road- Which has led quite a political life these past-
Yes.
[Tanya] All in the essay.
I mean it’s still going on now. The posters go up and down every day. So every night someone in the neighbourhood, I honestly don’t know who it is, and maybe it’s lots of different people, puts up hostage posters on this little pedestrian bridge in my neighbourhood. And then every day they get torn down by people. And at first I thought they were, you know, Middle Eastern teenagers, but, you know, people started filming who’s doing it, and they are middle-aged English, Italians, you know, lots of different people from Europe, tearing up the posters, calling them propaganda. And you know, it’s scary. To me it’s scary. Why would you tear down posters of hostages? Like if you think that this is, you know, too pro-Israeli, just put up posters of some of the Palestinians who’ve been killed or some of the Palestinian political prisoners. You know, there’s lots of things you can do that aren’t literally ripping up posters of dead Israeli children. And one morning I was walking my kids to school, and we go past the bridge, and I saw a woman there with her back to me, and I thought, oh god, it’s, you know, someone tearing the posters down. And she heard me come, and I could see her freeze, and she turned around and she was holding posters, and I realised she was putting them up, and she realised that I was worried she was tearing them down, and we just sort of smiled at each other and then carried on with it.
I had a similar experience, actually, after I went to this rally. I was given, I’m going to swear now, guys, I was given a page of stickers that say, “Fuck Hamas,” and I put one on. It wasn’t very large, and as I walked to Oxford Street, and on the way to Oxford Street, two women, about our age, one with children, one was white, another was a lady of colour, came up to me and went, “Thank you.” So that gave me hope. We’re going to have to finish now. I urge you all to buy the Jewish Quarterly and read Hadley’s essay “Blindness, "October the 7th, and the Left.” Thank you so much for coming to talk to us tonight. It’s been a pleasure. And if we didn’t answer all your questions, we apologise. Thank you very much and good night.
Thank you, everyone. Thanks, bye.