Anti-Semitism

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Boswell on obtaining this debate and so helping us in this House to keep to the forefront of our minds the scourge of anti-Semitism. It is very important that we do not let it be pushed to the side when there are many other pressures on our time and thoughts.

Growing up, I was, like many others, very aware of the question of anti-Semitism. I learned as a schoolboy about the Holocaust but also read about the Dreyfus case in France and other such events. I came from a community that always felt an instinctive sympathy with Jewish people. Irish Presbyterians, particularly in the north, always felt quite an identification with Jewish people and felt a little bit beleaguered at times, as often they do. Then I started my work in psychoanalysis and very many of my friends were of course from Jewish backgrounds. I became aware of the difficulties of their experiences—indeed the founder of psychoanalysis, Freud himself, wrote about his difficult experiences at the hands of Christians. That was one of the distressing things: the recognition that throughout the millennia, not just the centuries, much anti-Semitism actually came from the Christian community. More recently we have tended to associate it with other communities but we must not forget that historically that is where much of the anti-Semitism has come from. All sorts of rationalisations were given for it but it was just prejudice and bigotry.

What became clear when I talked to my colleagues was the range of views, not about faith so much—of course, that was the case as it is in every faith community—but the attitudes to the state of Israel. There were some who were not actually very supportive of it. Freud himself, when he was asked to give support, refused and said it would be a very troublesome business. He was not supportive of the idea of a state of Israel at all. The vast majority are supportive of the notion of a state of Israel, a place where Jewish people can feel at home and comfortable, safe in their own culture and community. Then there are those within that community who support the state of Israel but have from time to time very serious questions about the particular policies of particular Governments.

My old friend Amartya Sen has pointed out that when the pressure comes on, the important differences between people tend to be squeezed out and we see them all as a single bloc. It seems to me that under the pressure of prejudice and bigotry—or of economic crisis, which is always a bad time for tolerance—there has been a tendency to see all Jewish people as falling into one group. That is unfair and inappropriate and justifies, in the minds of some people at least, a critique against Jewish people as a whole, when it is quite clear there is a very healthy diversity within that community, not only within Israel but within Jewish communities right across the world.

It is extremely important that we do not allow people inside or outside the Israeli community to portray it as inappropriate that Jewish people should have a range of views. It is also extremely important to keep being clear that Jewish people have a range of views on every subject under the sun, not only because those views are often eloquently written about and enrich our culture, understanding and science but because politically it is the best detoxification of the notion that if you do not agree with the current policies of the Israeli Government, that in some way justifies an anti-Semitic attitude. Whatever the Government do, we must continually point out that not agreeing with the current policies of the Israeli Government is not a justification for anti-Semitism and does not go along in any way with the notion of it being justified. It is a very important distinction that we must keep hammering away at, because in times of crisis these differences tend to be squeezed out.

That is one of my anxieties at present. In the past few years, we have seen a rightward shift in the politics of Europe. You can see it in almost every election in almost every country. When you see that shift, you see more intolerance, a lack of pluralism and, almost inevitably, a resurgence in anti-Semitism. I say resurgence because it has always hovered there under the surface. I even noticed that there were nasty phrases and words during the financial crisis—“It’s all about money and the banks and you know who is at the back of that”. Sometimes it was even said, “It’s the Jews, you know”. You got that horrible, sinking feeling that we were experiencing a serious and dreadful rise of anti-Semitism. We must be clear that this is completely unacceptable and I welcome the fact that our Government are coming back, as have previous Governments, to remind us of that problem.

Apart from pointing out that anti-Semitism is wrong in principle and does not recognise the extraordinary richness that the Jewish community in this country has brought to us all, in almost every field of human endeavour—culture, science, medicine, the law, Parliament, and everywhere—I wish to make one other remark on this subject. My wife and I love to get away for as much time as we can down in the south of Burgundy. We love it very much there, and we love the vineyards. Some of you will know that every so often at the end of a row of vines a rose is planted. I was a little puzzled about this in my ignorance, in the early days when I started going down there many years ago. Then I discovered what it was. The rose is much more susceptible to mildew than the vines, so if the mildew starts to appear on the rose the vigneron knows that he must get out and spray the vines. The rose is the canary in the mine, as it were. The Jewish community is the rose in the vineyard because you can be sure that when you see the rise of anti-Semitism, it is merely the first sign of a dreadful prejudice and intolerance in our community. Never forget that the Jews are the rose in our vineyard and that when we see anti-Semitism arising, it will call for all our minorities and damage our country.