Readers of my occasional postings at normblog might be forgiven for forming the view that the main locus of concern about liberal/left anti-Semitism in this country is the University and College Union (UCU). Sadly this is not the case: some other organizations are giving as much cause for concern, most notably at the moment the Green Party.
Some members of the Green Party have become increasingly disturbed about what they see as its failure to take anti-Semitism, in its own structures and debates, at all seriously. This lack of serious concern is manifested in a variety of ways: for a start, although the Party has an explicit policy of giving no platform to racists, and hence would not join in campaigns with the BNP, nonetheless it is ready to do so with overtly anti-Semitic organizations such as Hizbollah and Hamas. The Green Party's leading female speaker (and president-in-waiting), Caroline Lucas, publicly supports [see Q. 5] an economic and cultural boycott of Israel. Other high-profile Green speakers, including its leading male speaker Derek Wall, have expressed overt support for the academic boycott of Israel, even though several legal opinions have been given to the effect that such a boycott, including the reluctantly watered-down version which was passed at the last UCU conference, would fall foul of the Race Relations Act.
Several Green members have voiced concern about anti-Semitic comments being made on the party's international email list (and on other of its lists too), a concern which has been ignored or dismissed in the Party. More formal complaints have been made about this, and they too have been ignored or dismissed. (This will all sound painfully familiar to those who have watched the journey of the UCU down the same road). A Green member who expressed concern about the demonization of Israel on these lists has been charged by other members with being an 'Israeli academic speaking on behalf of Israel' - apparently on the sole basis of his having a Jewish-sounding name. Reference has been made in Green circles to 'squealing Zionists' and to the need to 'smash the Zionists' - which group is comprised, in the view of the prospective smashers, of all Jews who support the state of Israel and the Law of Return.
This rhetoric, at once contemptuous and threatening, is alarming stuff. Some of the academics who resisted the boycott proposals in the UCU felt that its main effect would not be on Israel or its academics at all, but rather on Jews, both in academia and elsewhere, here in the UK: they feared that the demonizing of Israel and its supporters by many proponents of the boycott would lead to the normalizing and dissemination of anti-Semitic discourse. It's beginning to look as if they were right: the selective blindness about the use of anti-Semitic tropes which afflicts some prominent parts of the UCU does seem to have spread to parts of the Green Party too. Perhaps it's catching.
Many people who are not members of the Green Party, and who would not at this time vote for it either, nonetheless feel sympathetic towards it and regard it as a valuable element on the political scene (I am myself such a person). They think its concerns are important ones, and they wish it well, in a general way. So it is an important matter if this Party, which aims to become part of the mainstream of political life in the UK, is unwilling to do what's needed to ensure that its commitment to anti-racism is a genuine one. If, instead, it turns into an institution that only rejects racism directed at the groups which it politically favours, and regards with complaisance discrimination and racist discourse targeting other groups, then that general well-wishing will (and should) evaporate.
The upcoming Green Party Conference will have before it a motion (Motion C15) framed by both Jewish and non-Jewish members, which declares that recognition of the state of Israel is consistent with the Party's philosophical basis; which acknowledges that contemporary anti-Semitism often uses the language of anti-Zionism; and which seeks both to ensure and to demonstrate that the Party takes anti-Semitism seriously. Interestingly, another motion is also before the conference (Motion C16), one which makes no concessions at all about the possibility of anti-Semitism in the Party; which reaffirms the Green Party's determination to engage with (unnamed) Islamic groups in support of Palestinians; which dissociates itself from 'any other agendas' which such groups may have, without actually naming them; and which then baldly 'rejects any implication of anti-Semitism'. It will be instructive to see which (if either) of these motions gets passed. (Eve Garrard)