Anti-Semitism

Anne Main Excerpts

Tuesday 9th December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Sir Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove) (LD)]

On this issue at least, I hope I can call the hon. Gentleman my hon. Friend. Good work is being done across the parties. When he and I visited Germany it was clear that, despite there being a strong commitment across political parties to protect the Jewish community, that in itself has become a source of competition. We are always tempted either to point the finger at other people’s bad behaviour or to be boastful of our own good behaviour, whereas, in the political context here, it must be right for us to have some humility about our failures and some pride in our successes.

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Order. I ask that interventions be brief. They are becoming quite long, and those intervening are not on the list of speakers. I do not wish to take time from those who do wish to make a speech.

--- Later in debate ---

[Guto Bebb]

Indeed, I am aware of those attacks, but I am sure that the hon. Member for Bassetlaw can look after himself. However, it is clearly an unacceptable situation. My office reported some of the attacks that were made on me, and the interesting thing is that it took three months for the social media companies even to respond. We complained in August; we received a response from them last week. Indeed, by that point I had forgotten why I had made a complaint in the first instance.

The situation is simply unacceptable. One could argue that being attacked on social media is, unfortunately, part and parcel of being in public life—although no Member of Parliament should accept anything approaching what has been thrown at some hon. Members of this House. However, for an ordinary member of the public to be attacked in such a manner, on racist grounds, is simply unacceptable, and those companies, which have the capacity to deal with the issue, should be challenged by this House to ensure that they do so. This is not about freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is about having the right to argue a case; what we are seeing is not the argument of a case, but simply old prejudices masquerading as political comment, and it is simply unacceptable.

I have already touched on the issue of equating the Jewish community with the Israeli state. The European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia has said that such an equation is a form of anti-Semitism, and I am afraid it is becoming increasingly evident in the debate that we have about the situation in the middle east. It is crucial, therefore, to ensure that when we are dealing with this issue, we highlight the fact that there is a difference. I have been to Israel on numerous occasions, and if I could say that even once on any of my visits to Israel I came away with the view that everybody in Israel thought the same way about each and every issue, I would be lying, because I have never seen such a vibrant democracy, where people disagree about anything and everything. Indeed, it could be argued that one of the weaknesses of the Israeli state is that there is a willingness to argue and disagree about everything, and they should certainly do something about their proportional representation system, which allows every single view to be heard.

The idea that there is a single view being expressed by the people in Israel, and that that view is being supported by every single person of Jewish descent in any other part of the world, is simply ludicrous, yet it is a concept that is constantly repeated by those who are irresponsible—to put it kindly—in the way that they are trying to deal with the situation in the middle east. We need to ensure that we always challenge that type of behaviour.

In the same way, I am absolutely fed up of hearing about the so-called Jewish lobby. It is highlighted as something extremely powerful that has the ability to change people’s minds in this place. Well, I saw no evidence of the “Jewish lobby” being particularly successful when there was a recent parliamentary debate about the recognition of Palestine. If the ever-powerful Jewish lobby was really that successful, I suspect that this House would not have voted for that motion, even with only a minority of MPs taking part in the vote. When we hear about this powerful Jewish lobby, I wonder how much of it is in the imagination of those making the claims and what their motivation is for making those claims. I think there is a motivation, and unfortunately it has a background in some attitudes that exist on the European continent, which are simply unacceptable.

In the same way, the constant effort to try to equate the state of Israel with apartheid South Africa is also leading to a climate in which the state of Israel and the Jewish people are being demonised. There is obviously no link between the Jewish people in the UK and the actions of the Israeli state. Nevertheless, it is imperative that we understand the effect that the language used by intellectuals has on public discourse. On recent trips to the Netherlands, one thing that emerged clearly from discussions with members of the Jewish community there was how the intellectual elite in universities was leading the debate to places that they had perhaps not envisaged when they started the calls for divestment and boycotts against Israel. Again, we need to be very careful that the comparisons we make—or that people are making—do not end up leading to anti-Semitic behaviour.

Finally, I want to touch upon my last visit to the Netherlands. According to the statistics, the situation there is slightly better than in the UK. The fact that there are schools in London, where we are now speaking, that are protected by security personnel is simply unacceptable. We live in a country of 64 million people, where we are concerned about the ability to integrate people entering this country from all parts of the world, yet we are almost accepting of the fact that somebody going to a Jewish school in London or Manchester needs to have a security guard on the premises.

I have never visited such a school; indeed, I suspect that I have less than a handful of individuals of Jewish descent—British Jews—living in my constituency, so I have never witnessed such a thing. However, I have to tell the House that, as the father of five children, to turn up to a Jewish secondary school in Amsterdam and see a security guard outside was shocking. The fact that many hon. Members in this House will understand that situation does not make it acceptable. It is unacceptable that the Jewish community, or any other community for that matter, in this country or any other part of Europe should need to resort to having their schools, their synagogues or their churches protected. That is simply unacceptable.

To go to a country such as the Netherlands, which has a tradition of tolerance, and to hear half the members of a group of 16 and 17-year-olds we met—my eldest son is 17—indicate that they saw no future for themselves there was simply shocking. I have always viewed the Netherlands as a tolerant country, and as I have said, the figures for attacks on members of the Jewish community in the Netherlands are actually better than they are in the UK. However, if half the sixth-formers in a Jewish school in Amsterdam say that they see no future for themselves in Europe, then Europe has a lot to be ashamed about. We really need to remember those youngsters and their lack of faith in their future in Europe.

Finally, when we talk about anti-Semitism, it is also important that we recognise that it is an issue that is affecting people. We only have to look at the figures for those individuals leaving France, Belgium and the Netherlands and deciding to make a life for themselves in either Israel or the US to know that we have a problem. We had thought that after the atrocities of the second world war, we might have learned our lesson; I am afraid that we need to learn it all over again.

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Another four hon. Members are hoping to catch my eye. The wind-ups will begin at 3.40 pm, so I am sure that hon. Members can do the maths on that one.