Harry's Place

Science!

Quite, The Devil, quite. There is literally nothing to accept or refute in this news article – it is quite, quite meaningless without a LOT more explanation of their survey methods.

It may very well be that anti-Semitism is on the rise, but I am appalled that the BBC can run a prominent news item on such non-data.

any similar ‘data’ on Islamophobic attacks?

Just had a quick look online, and the best estimate of the UK Jewish population is around 280,000, so we’re looking at a figure of around 1 (reported) attack per 1000 population. Is that good or bad, relatively speaking? I genuinely have no idea.

Hard to credit the BBC running an article without any data isn’t it!

Here’s the 07 report from CST

http://www.thecst.org.uk/docs/Incidents_Report_07.pdf

This comment caught my eye “One feature of contemporary antisemitism
is the fact that the use of far right references
is no longer the preserve of neo-Nazis;”

George Galloway and his followers come to mind when I saw that.

Yes, I think the article doesn’t really tell us that much, and the CST site doesn’t provide much new news.

I have also deleted two comments. One of which was a highly offensive spoof posting purporting to be from regular unsavoury character who frequents these comment boxes. The IP address of the spoofer has been noted for future reference.

Please refrain from spoofing commentators, the bigots and morons are quite able to show themselves up without your help.

Hello

It’s not a survey, it’s the number of antisemitic incidents reported to CST during the first half of 2008. The BBC report is based on our press release, which is on our website under ‘Latest Information’, and a short paper which should be on our website at some point this afternoon.

Our methodology is described in detail in the 2007 report, and also in this leaflet.

As for how it compares to other minorities…well that’s a difficult thing to judge, because you first of all have to compare their different capacities to record this sort of thing. There is no organisation in the Muslim community that records Islamophobic incidents in the way that CST records antisemitic incidents, and my guess is that Muslims are probably less willing to report to the police than Jews are. So it’s very difficult to make a comparison.

Cheers for that useful information Dave.

Neil D said:”Please refrain from spoofing commentators, the bigots and morons are quite able to show themselves up without your help.”

First of all I apologise for responding to the poster masquarading as Flanker with an intemperate comment.

Back to the topic I have seen a rise in the acceptability of antisemitism but by using ‘antizionism’ as a euphemism for antisemitism. Sadly this is coming not just from the Islamofash headcases (who are not the entireity of the Muslim community) but also from those groups on the left who a generation or two ago were standing side by side with Britain’s Jewish communities against the rise of Moseley et al. Its amazing how in some – especially online – areas of politics you can get called a ‘zionist murderer’ just for saying that Israel has a right to exist. This Left antisemitism is a growing and worrying phenomenon.

Trundlemaster: ‘This Left antisemitism is a growing and worrying phenomenon.’

It certainly is. Websites like Engage, however, are doing a good job in tracking – if not necessarily containing – it.

Danny wrote:

“if not necessarily containing – it.”

surely there is an obvious reason for that?

Engage and other sites rely on rational argument and facts, but Jew haters, by definition, are irrational and not terribly amiable to facts

the problem is the inherent nature of anti-Jewish racism

so reason can only win so many battles when confronted with deranged thinking

The Jewish community now stands at about 280,000. A few decades ago, the 1950s or 1960s, it was 450,000. Or so I’ve read. OK, that’s not exactly gigantic, but there is something going on when a community drops in size that drastically. Sure, some of it’s due to a low birth rate, and some of it’s due to assimilation. Regarding the latter, however, what is it that makes Jews in Britain want to cease identifying themselves as Jews? That’s the question.

I have heard that there are more attacks on Jews than on Muslims, although, of course, you’re all correct in saying that data and methodology should be scrutinized before jumping to any conclusions.

I find it odd, though, that a community of only under 300,000 could excite so much interest and hostility in British society.

Somewhat on that note, I once met up with a Brit who was convinced that the Jews really had a vise-like control of British politics. Why? Because, he said, they’re really big in advertising. Maybe he was thinking of Saatchi & Saatchi. I don’t know. But this guy was well educated. When I run up against this kind of thinking, I get really depressed.

This device doesn’t do pdf. Am I allowed to shout at Jewish jaywalkers without being classed as antisemitic? What if I can prove that I shout at all jaywalkers without discrimination?

Modernity, yes, I take your point that ‘Jew haters, by definition, are irrational and not terribly amiable to facts’. However, they of course don’t see it that way.

But I still think monitoring antisemitism and challenging it in debate are not enough in themselves. Any suggestions for other measures that should be taken?

And on the subject of monitoring, Normblog has this:
“Moderation and immoderation at Comment is Free”
http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2008/07/moderation-and-immoderation-at-comment-is-free.html

Jonathan Hoffman’s report on CiF is here:
http://www.zionismontheweb.org/CommentIsFree_ParliamentASCttee_July08.pdf

[Neil D, if you're moderating this, how about a separate post on Hoffman's findings]

What’s the data on racist attacks on Asians, Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims? Strange how you never concern yourself with that. Actually, thinking about it, a rise in the number of those attacks would be a cause for celebration for many of your readers I guess. A visceral thrill for one and all at the proxy enactment of their hysterical chauvinism. Welcome to the den of the decent left.

Neil, you really are rubbish.

Surveys have shown that surveys are well bad. Didn’t you know that?

Ruby, I think you’re out of line.

Deploring attacks on Jews doesn’t imply that attacks on other groups are tolerable.

Indeed, the one frequently pressages the other.

Beyond that, it’s simple history: antisemitism is so dangerous, has flared up so violently and so rapidly, that millions of people have been killed, dispossessed, expelled, within the span of a few short years. And this has occurred again and again over a period of at least 2,000 years. Add to that forced conversions and (at best) second-class citizenship and a pretty nasty picture emerges.

No liberal, no citizen of a would-be civilized nation, can afford to ignore this phenomenon, or belittle it.

Beyond that, FBI documentation does track attacks on other religious groups in the US. Attacks on Jews far exceed those of any other religious group, in all the sample years I’ve studied.

“What’s the data on racist attacks on …”

I have a hard time imagining anyone saying anything even remotely like this if we were discussing racist attacks on Blacks, Hindus, Sikhs, or Muslims. And if they did say it, they would immediately be called racist. (And rightly so)

However, when discussing attacks against Jews, it is perfectly acceptable to wonder if the attacks against Jews really are bad. (Maybe the Jews are exaggerating; or maybe OK–those figures are solid but really, compared to other populations the Jews are really lucky; or maybe it’s just youth culture…)

The excuses for attacks on Jews seem to be as never-ending as the attacks themselves. 2,000 years of attacks and still going strong.

Regards,

Inna

Antisemitism started to come back about 3 years ago its the interenet that has contributed to it,

Messageboards and websites are where it stems from and the incitement manifests itself in physical acts such as the daubing of and around synagogues in Stamforf Hill a few months ago.

The web instantly broadcasts opinion and propaganda reaches more people – and younger people.

In the 1950’s Antisemitism was one-to-one, person to Jew, jokes and the classic Hendon Golf Club apartheid. In business one would hear classic antisemitic canards about Jews through the ’70’s to the 90’s but then it seemed to disappear as more Jews became prominent and recognisable members of society,business, arts, law, medicine. The post immigrant children maturing.

There is absolutely no doubt, from personal observation and interest that Islamists and the Left are the main drivers of Antisemnitism. The Left hates the USA, hence hates Israel. Some Islamists hate Jews because the Koran has many permissive verses towards hating Jews. No amount of political correctness can deny that.

Maven, if you ever learn to spell and write numerals correctly, people might actually take you seriously.

From my experience, the nature of anti-semitism and its vast array of different forms haven’t really changed since the end of WW2. It’s just that most of the people who suffer from that pathological disease are now more open about their views – post-modernist Western society no longer puts them to shame for expressing their hatred in public – and more evangelical. I’ve been lectured by academic friends in the UK that the Jews are responsible for the holocaust etc., and that Jews have to understand that Israel naturally makes ordinary decent folk hate them bla bla bla. I think it’s more likely there’ll be a cure for the common cold than for Jew-hatred. Education doesn’t seem to do a thing.

Joanne makes a good point in asking why a community of only 300,000 can excite so much interest. I suspect that the definition of Jew in common parlance goes far wider than observant religious Jews but probably included anyone of Jewish descent whether assimilated, observant, or not. David Milliband, for instance, or Malcom Rifkind, would they be Jews?

I’m taken by this comment: ‘Incidents involving Jewish students or academics and at colleges rose 88%, from 26 to 49.’

Would that have anything to do with UCU’s campaign for a boycott of Israeli universities?

I wouldn’t know about Milliband – despite the lovely Yvonne Ridley’s speculations on his circumcision – but Malcom Rifkind most certainly is Jewish and identifies as such. I mean, that’s pretty basic stuff.

From my own experience at UK universities over 20 years ago, I came across an awful lot of suspicion and hatred of Jews from various students, from all walks of life. Some of them were even studying Hebrew and Jewish studies. One boy would deface Jewish-society posters by writing, in Hebrew, “death to all Jews”. When other (non-Jewish) students found out about what he had been doing, no one criticised or ostracised him. Some of the more militant students refused to talk to me just because I was Jewish; if some did condescend to speak, it was alway belligerently and rudely. The irony is that at that time I was completely apolitical and had never shown any interest in Israel. Jewish students – with the exception of Uncle Toms like Deborah Fink – had to justify their existence by vehemently declaring their anti-Zionism before many students would deign to accept them as equals. Many of those Jew-hating militants now occupy key posts as journalists and FO civil sevants covering the ME. This has produced snow-ball effect on student life – now that so much news and media coverage is instinctively hostile to Israel, it’s not surprising how more and more students today, growing up in this new media millieu, are even more hostile to Jews and Israel than their equivalents were in my day.

“Antisemitism started to come back about 3 years ago its the interenet that has contributed to it”.

Wayyyyyyyyy out, Maven. Even organised, political anti-Semitism in the UK has roots stretching back to the 1920s. Anti-Semitic attitudes and prejudice stretch back centuries. George Orwell examined this unpleasant fact in his essay Anti-Semitism in Britain, which features a selection of hate-filled remarks that he’d overheard from a cross-section of society. My favourite, because it mirrors precisely the attitude of some sections of today’s Left, was this absolute gem:

“Young intellectual, Communist or near-Communist: ‘No, I do not like Jews. I’ve never made any secret of that. I can’t stick them. Mind you, I’m not anti-Semitic, of course.’”

‘Some of the more militant students refused to talk to me just because I was Jewish; if some did condescend to speak, it was alway belligerently and rudely. The irony is that at that time I was completely apolitical and had never shown any interest in Israel. Jewish students – with the exception of Uncle Toms like Deborah Fink – had to justify their existence by vehemently declaring their anti-Zionism before many students would deign to accept them as equals.’

Crikey, Albert, I had no idea it was that bad. I’m very sorry to hear of it.

I recollect very positive views being held by the left about Israelis into the 60s. You would hear of people (non-Jews) going off on their gap years to live on kibbutzes, and the whole social experiment of kibbitzim seemed to get the thumbs up from the left and the feminist movement in particular; it was a progressive cause. Moshe Dayan was quite a hunk, with all his derring-do.

Then along came Yasser Arafat and the PLO. I remember a fierce clash about 1970 between a couple of students I knew about a recent atrocity committed by one of Arafat’s gang. Both students were what you might call ‘left of centre’. The younger one argued that the incident was of course highly regrettable but that the PLO were freedom fighters. the other (a few years older) argued equally passionately that they were despicable murderers of innocent people. As I recollect it was in the 70s that the left started to changes sides.

Since then being Jewish has become associated with the state of Israel in the public mind. Yet I know several non-observant Jews who really have little time for Israel and don’t self-identify with it. That’s the irony.

It’s not surprising really — so much of the modern Green movement and “environmentalism” had it origins in the 1930-40s. The organic food nonsense was started by anti-Semites and blackshirts and the Green Party manifesto and the BNP manifesto are so alike it’s scary.

When people are infected by that sort of eco-fundamentalism it’s bound to set off resonances for the “rights of indigenous peoples” and “racial/genetic purity.”

Devorgilla

You are right that attitudes swung in the late 1970s. Israel’s misfortune was to win the 1967 War, thereby disqualifying itself for the traditional British sympathy for the underdog. The growth of the Muslim Brotherhood, the collapse of Communism (which left the far Left of the 1960s seeking a cause), the rise in the oil price, the Arafat legacy, Israel’s economic boom on the back of Russian immigration, the concentration of Palestinian disapora students at some Universities (eg Manchester) – all came together to feed antisemitism in the UK.

Then there was the Yom Kippur war, about 1973, and the raids on Lebanon, the seizure of the West Bank.

I’d forgotten about the British affection for the under-dog; your are right. And ‘the under-dog’ was how the British left tended to view the Jews until they started being successful.

Also, didn’t the settler movement start in the 70s? This did a lot to lose ‘Jews’ (Israelis) sympathy on the left.

But all in all, I think it was Arafat’s manipulation of the MSM and his secular identification with the western Marxist revolutionary tradition that swung it.

When I tell younger folks that there was once a respectable left wing tradition of admiring Israel, they gasp in amazement.

Joseph K: Born and raised in the U.S., I’ve never even once experienced anti-Semitism (not that it doesn’t exist here; and I’m Jewish), so I can’t imagine living in the middle of it. I’ve lived in L.A., Kansas and New York. BUT, what I can’t understand is, if anti-Semitism was (is) so rampant in the U.K., why not leave? Is it that you just get used to being hated?

“Joseph K: Born and raised in the U.S., I’ve never even once experienced anti-Semitism”.

I can believe that. The phenomenon of politicised anti-Semitism, at least in the modern age, seems totally absent from the U.S. Sure you have David Duke and co, but nothing like the UK’s history of political parties steeped in Jew-hate (I’ve even had an American Jew ask, in a different forum, why I was so against the BNP when they were “pro-British”.)

As for being “hated” and prejudice being “rampant”, I think you misunderstood my post. My point was that anti-Semitism in Britain was not a recent phenomenon, as Maven had suggested, but instead that its resurgence has drawn from a well of feeling that has long existed. Its expression is not widespread, at least not face-to-face: in my forty or so years I’ve probably not experienced any more direct aggression – both verbal and physical – than a black or Asian Briton, and probably less than many.

But it’s the underlying sentiment to which you become sensitive. People who, on the surface, may seem reasonable and tolerant can, particularly after a drink or three, let their real views slip out. The former manager who told me that he couldn’t get promoted because “they” controlled the company, just as “they” controlled the world. The liberal-minded colleague – all Fair Trade and hair braids – who suggested, during the 2006 Lebanon conflict, that the concentration camps be re-opened to remind “those Jews” how lucky they are. (She apologised immediately, explaining that she was simply infuriated over “Israeli atrocities”.)

These are just two isolated examples, but like Albert said, above, it does make you wary when meeting new people. Having said that, the majority of people are no problem, face-to-face. I’ve been well-received at uni, through to work and life outside work. I’ve even – gasp – been on the receiving end of kindnesses from Muslim strangers that have left me staggered. (Although in making these statements I should point out that I’m not outwardly religious – I’m sure identifiably religious Jews could tell you a different story.)

It’s not that you “get used to being hated”. I’ve never felt “hated”. And even if I was, why should I leave the UK? It’s my home.

I wonder if this incident made it onto the CST list ….

I agree with Danny above, please can we have a thread on antisemitism on Comment Is Free?

There is lots of interest

Devorgilla – above you mention Malcolm Rifkind. This example appears in Hoffman’s CIF Report (cited above). Apparently all Jews would like nothing better than an invasion of Iran….. (preumably this moron ‘readthepaper’ thinks that Jews control the world, so why does Iran stay uninvaded … ).

NotNew
April 1, 2007 2:30 PM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Rifkind
readthepaper said
>>>I’m sorry you found fodder in my comment to slander me as antisemitic. I merely pointed out the facts: Rifkind is Jewish and extremely pro-Israel. He would thus like nothing more than to see the US/UK (or anyone else for that matter) invade Iran. He is also the chairman of the Armour Group. The Armour Group provides mercenaries to the Allies in Iraq for a handsome profit. He would benefit financially from an invasion of Iran, as he would be providing mercenaries into that war also.
Or were you unaware of these minor details?
I’m surprised the Guardian didn’t mention these facts, as I’m sure they are fully aware of them. In my opinion, anyone who runs a mercenary company profiting from war should not be taken sufficiently seriously by the Guardian to pose as an intellectual airing his view — regardless of what past positions he may have held in the government. This is as preposterous as Adnan Khashogi providing his views about the desirability of starting a new war.
At the end of the day, there is probably going to be a war with Iran, and many, many, thousands and thousands of people will probably lose their lives. Let’s not let the rhetoric of a war-profiteer like Mr. Rifkind of the Armour Group paint public opinion ahead of it. At least not in the Guardian.<<<

This is the problem we have, all kinds of interest groups shouting the odds, I wish people would think about where some of these voices are really coming from.
BTW this worked last time, it’s good to talk!.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Iranian_seizure_of_Royal_Navy_personnel
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3835313.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3826179.stm
Andy

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I’m not trying to split hairs here, just get facts right, but as a non-Jew, what I have picked up in the UK is anti-Israeli feeling from the 1970s onwards rather than ‘anti-semitism’, per se. But I’d also be disengenuous if I didn’t admit that the two occasionally slip over in the public mind; and that the left-wing critique of ‘zionism’ has slowly morphed into a general way of thinking that ‘the Jews’ are the problem in the Middle East, and therefore globally. At least amongst sloppy thinkers.

In the early 90s I had a friend (no longer a friend) who began talking that way, seeing an international Jewish problem out of a frustration with the deadlock in the Palestinian problem, and disgust at the settler movement, and the way that the whole situation was causing global problems.

But I would still say that despite what is often ’slop’ and slip ups(Joseph’s experience with the Fair Trade lady) the dislike is with Israel rather than with Jews as a race. And that the Fair trade lady is still quite clear about the precise target of her ire. But, worrying all the same, I agree; these things can quickly morph. Look as Yugoslavia.

It’s a bit like being an American in the UK after the invasion of Iraq. I have had quite a few American friends say they felt really ‘hated’ by the poisonous attitude to the US in the MSM after 2003. I’ve had US exchange students tell me that they were told to tell people they were Canadian, to avoid any aggro! I was shocked at that. But they also said that as soon as people realised they were critical of Bush the hostility just melted away. ‘Oh, well that’s all right then’.

This mirrors Joseph’s experience; as long as you anounce you are not pro-Israeli you don’t get flak.

But why should you? The Jews are an indigenous people of the Middle East. They’ve as much right to be there as Arabs.

Thank you, Joseph K and also devorgilla, as well. I’ve read on blogs about anti-Semitism in the UK and wondered how much it was in your face or not. And if it were rampant, how Jews in the U.K. can stand staying there.

While I’m definitely not religious and not particularly Jewish-identified (however, the upsurge in Muslim Jew-hatred has made me much more conscious that I am of Jewish background), I agree that were I noticeably Jewish, like Hassids, for instance, or people who look obviously Jewish (whatever that is), I might have had quite a different experience.

In Kansas, when I lived there, people were often very interested in what your religion was and from their comments, I gather that for some reason, I looked Catholic (go figure), because I was very often asked, “what are you, Catholic, right?” I assume that because I didn’t look Jewish, people would be less likely to hold back on their anti-Semitism.

Of course, Americans are very pro-Israel, so while there is a history of Jew-hatred in the country, it is confined to some fringe groups (Muslims, nowadays; some blacks; upper class Protestants). I think Americans admire a winner (which Israel clearly is; and by extension, Jews share in some of that).

Still, the atmosphere is much more pleasant here, as far as being Jewish goes; in fact, as far as being anyone goes. America has its faults, but lack of tolerance isn’t one of them. Right after 9/11, like days later, I was walking on 8th Avenue and saw a cab driver praying on a carpet next to his cab. Thing is, no one paid him any attention and this after it was known who the hijackers were. Almost at the same time, I read about how Jews were told to hide any signs they were Jewish when walking around Paris (probably still a good idea), as one was attacked just then. Speaks volumes for the difference in culture: Europe talks about multiculturalism, but we actually practice it (though, I might add, not always).

Devorgilla

As soon as Israel’s critics start talking about ‘One State’ or questioning the Jewish identity of the country, they are in
antisemitism territory. The same if they make comparisons between the IDF and Nazism or talk about apartheid.

There is a very good article by Sidney Brichto in the current Standpoint

Seymour, Carol Gould, an American journalist living in London, whom I believe is Jewish, is writing a book, ‘Don’t Tread On Me’ which I believe should be out by now, about her experiences of anti-Americanism and anti-semitism since 9/11 which she says IS making life intolerable for her. So much so, that she plans returning to the US. Suggest you get hold of it.

She has lived in London since the 1980s.

It could all turn around 360 degrees though if America votes Obama. I repeat, the flak is about US policy and Israel, not about a race. But all the same I think it is dangerously emotional. The MSM carries much of the blame for creating this attitude. That’s why I read HP.

The left in this country (UK) are basically emotional. They don’t think, they just react, with lazy emotive cliches and word-bombs like ‘Zionist’ or ‘neo-con’ to close down any meaningful debate.

Seymour Paine

It has to be said that what’s happening in the UK (and Europe) is much more nuanced than commonly portrayed in the US. On the one hand, there is little (?no?) discrimination in the employment market or eg housing. Jews can do any job and are freer than ever. Apart from a few antediluvian idots (Jenny Tonge), the man political parties are free of antisemitism. (I can remember (and I’m not that old) when homes for rental had signs outside ‘No Jews, no Blacks’). But on the other hand on certain university campuses it is very unpleasant. Even Oxford has had a bad dose of Zionophobia crossing into antisemitism. One difference between the UK and US is the nature of the Muslim immigrations. The US had its Muslim immigration earlier and they were better educated and from the Middle East. By contrast the immigration into Europe was from Pakistan and Bangla Desh and they were poorly educated.

Devorgilla

You are right that if the US votes Obama then life in Europe will become less uncomfortable for Americans. But it isn’t going to make any difference to the incidence of antisemitism since the sources – militant Islamists and unreconstructed leftists – will be unaffected. The dinosaur left in Europe already dumped Obama after his AIPAC speech.

Thanks for the link to the Standpoint article Jeremy. It was excellent. I did query one or two of its points though. He begins by saying that to be Jewish in a religious sense is to feel an identity with Israel, with the Covenant with God that was perceived to have been destroyed by the Holocaust but was revived by the creation of Israel. He argues that case very well, I thought. The logic and need of it is very clear.

But then he describes Jews who are against Israel. At one point he calls them ‘Quislings’. Yet by this evidence he acknowledges that there is a body of Jewish opinion in this country (for right or wrong reasons, good or bad) which is opposed to Israel. Ie., he seems to affirm, unwittingly, that it is possible to be both ‘Jewish’ and not support Israel.

So which is it? I only ask out of genuine curiosity and because my neighbour, a good friend, is Jewish. Or rather, was Jewish. I don’t know if she still counts as ‘Jewish’ if she is a secular non-observant Jew who married a Gentile and a humanist… But she does self-identify with the Jewish people to the extent that she follows events, owns and reads books on Jewish history, as does her daughter.

Yet she is opposed to Israel, feels it was folly, and can only end in disaster. She tells me that many Israelis feel the same, and that people have started returning to Germany, of all places, convinced that it is now safer for Jews than the Middle East. She is quite blunt about the whole sorry project being stricken. This shocked me, and I’m not even Jewish. I’ll give you that my friend (in her 70s) is not one of life’s optimists. But still, she is highly intelligent and very shrewd, and I have always found her generally negative prognostications to be highly prescient.

So, are these ‘Jews’ not ‘Jewish’ then?

Devorgilla

A Jew is someone born to a Jewish mother. That person remains a Jew by race even if they are secular. If they convert to another religion, they remain a Jew by race. Your friend is right that some Jews are leaving Israel, but many more are immigrating, not least from France where antisemitism is worse than in the UK. “She tells me that many Israelis feel the same … “. That’s far from my judgment. If you go to Israel – which you should (cheap flights now) – you’ll be amazed at how many more children walk to school than in the UK, and how people leave their doors open and feel safe walking in the streets at night. There are attacks occasionally – most recently by the Caterpillar driver in Jerusalem – but the security fence has cut terrorism dramatically. You say your friend is prescient – but she sounds like a bit of a Cassandra to me.

‘You say your friend is prescient – but she sounds like a bit of a Cassandra to me.’

I’ll say! I love her all the same though. I am one of life’s optimists, I think we will come through, somehow, but not without a considerable struggle to right the massive dose of poison churned out by the far left. Your article link was very helpful, thank you.

I visited Israel in 1973 just after the Yom Kippur war, lived in Jerusalem, and loved it.

35 years ago – time to revisit if you are able

devorgilla: Thanks for the tip about Gould’s book. I’ll definitely keep an eye out for it.

I suppose Jews in Europe are used to a greater degree of anti-Semitism. England’s historical treatment of Jews was pretty bad, so I guess that goes with the territory. You begin at a different part of the spectrum. While the US has had (has) its own history of vicious racism (were people lynched in England for being the wrong race?), it also has vast room, and a history of creating your own reality (Shakers, Mormons, and many others); plus no state religion. No one in the government has to be devoted to “community cohesion” (a really Orwellian phrase). We don’t have to cohere here.

Of course, it’s difficult to sum up any national situation in a few sentences; I’m sure someone can find dozens of counterexamples.

Seymour, Jews were admired in Scotland in the 17th century by a radical Calvinist Protestant group known as the Covenanters, for Israel’s Covenant with God. The Scottish Covenanters (who also signed a National Covenant with God, in 1638) developed an influential Covenant theology. There is philosemitism as well as anti-semitism.

In that many of these Covenanters and their successors de-camped to the US in the 18th century and became founding fathers of the new republic (Witherspoon was one of them) I have often wondered if the lack of US anti-semitism drew on this positive view of Israel developed by Scottish Covenant theology. It certainly still influences modern day US Christian Evangelicals.

In the sociologist 1967 Bellah wrote an influential article in which he traced elements of this Covenant theology (’Promised Land’, ‘Chosen People’, ‘New Israel’, ‘one nation under God’) to key presidential speeches and claimed it represented a kind of US civil religion.

In other words, forget the Masons. The real secret movers behind America are Scots . I rather like that.