March 1999

(Keith Vaz, Labour MP, following a racist statement from Conservative MP Norman Tebbit).

England is a very anti-Semitic country. Sometimes I think the anti-Semitism is the only factor which all (gentile ) classes, races and creeds in the nation have in common. I’ve lived half a lifetime here with a face so Jewish it makes Woody Allen look like Dan Quayle. So I know.

I was 7 years old when the very Aryan Craig Witherston set this ball of prejudice rolling. A primary school dinner table. I remember the passion, as passionate as a 7-year-old can get. His blue eyes were burning.

"But you’re Jewish, not English"

"I’m English and Jewish"

"No you can’t be English if you’re Jewish".

Perhaps that’s where I should have given up. But I always believed I’d find the mythical beast. - the English gentile without an ounce of anti-Semitism in their bones. Or I’d be the one to change them. But it always emerges either subtly or unsubtly. Causing either great offence, or mild disappointment. Not a surprise. Not any more. Occasionally the force of it startles. Slaps one out of complacency

I’m in a pub with ‘friends’ I’ve known since childhood. We have reached that light headed but not blotto state of the evening. We’re in front of an open log fire and childhood reminiscences are being exchanged. The perfect English moment. I’m one of them, I’m relaxed. The talk is of childhood visits to the dentist, and then Paul Booth, another uber Aryan fellow, who always looks ready to invade Poland at the shortest notice. ‘Boothie’ with his blonde chimpanzee features. Puts down his beer glass and casually, so casually, says, "My dentist had everything in him that Adolf Hitler hated about the Jewish people".

I’m no longer one of them. No longer amongst them. I’m a Jew. I’m a Jew walking into Auschwitz. I’m the helpless Liberal Jew. Despairing, screaming inside. I want to transmogrify into an angry Millwall fan and ram glasses down his Aryan throat;

"YOU'RE INSULTING THE JEWISH PEOPLE YOU C~~#?"

I want at least to find the words to tell him why he’s wrong. To make him look the size of a pea. But I find only blandness and platitudes and mild British indignation. Ironically a victim of my own British will to keep social propriety at all times. - When his extraordinarily anti-Semitic proclamation, only reinforces why it's ridiculous for me to think of myself as British. As Craig Witherston kindly pointed out. But I can’t find the words to make them see. The best I get from someone I’ve known for 15 years is, "He wasn’t wrong to say it, he just said it to the wrong person.". So it’s correct to be anti-Semitic. You just have to be sensitive around the Jews. Very English. Never be impolite. Even in the presence of those vile Jesus murderers. A similar line was taken by the Brit media a couple of years back, when Mark Bosnich an Australian playing in British soccer (for Aston Villa Football Club) decided to perform a Nazi salute to the Tottenham Hotspur Football Club (Spurs) crowd, because he was receiving abuse from the Spurs fans for a previous confrontation with a German Spurs player. Tottenham are famously the most Jewish club in England, (fans wise) but that news obviously never reached Australia, as Mr. Bosnich claimed not to know this when he performed his hilarious little sight gag. He was condemned out of hand for his action, by the media. There’s always a sort of set cliche for such events which allows newspaper, radio, and TV men to unimaginatively and lazily churn it out. Like slothful automatons. In this case it was,

"Bosnich was totally wrong to do this at the Spurs ground as Tottenham have many Jewish supporters who would have been offended".

So presumably then if he did it at Chelsea’s ground in West London, ( a club notorious in the past for its neo-Nazi following) he should have been serenaded around the pitch by jackbooted skinheads for the apposite nature of his gesture. Bosnich’s error was to be ignorant of the correct British neo Fascist etiquette. As a Brash Australian he wasn’t familiar with our more quaint, les affaires neo-Nazi customs. It’s Ok to be a Nazi, but not in front of Jews.

This English ambivalence and ignorance regarding Jews was perfectly illustrated for me by a conversation I heard on a sports show on the radio a while back. A journalist was talking about his completely justifiable hatred of the aforementioned Chelsea Football Club. (And it does pain me to have to mention the execrable Ch**s*a not once, but twice in one article!) His ire at "the Blues" was "Because of the preponderance in their crowd of loathsome racist and fascist toads".

Nice one pal, I couldn't agree more. Give this man his own Ch**sea bashing chat show. A minute later he ruined everything. The discussion had moved on to another football club - Aston Villa. In an equally opinionated fashion he claimed that Villa were ripping off their supporters in their club shop.

"The price of their replica shirts is outrageous. And everything in that shop it's really like...."

And in the next 3 words his voice changed from grown up journalist/grammar school vowels, to that of a crude 13 year old classroom anti-Semite, caricaturing a Jewish ghetto accent, "Already maa boy".

For any dear reader, glancing through this column on the WWW, blissfully unaware of the vagaries of British anti-Semitism, this is an absolute classic of the genre. You could almost imagine his hands going to his nose and rubbing it as he spoke. His face screwed up in Fagin like impersonation of the mean, avaricious Jew. (I didn't have to use much imagination for this. Tony Mees our school hard man used to enjoy greeting me with this gesture most mornings, just prior to smacking me on the bonce and loudly proclaiming,

"Lend us a fiver YID".)

So here’s a journalist who's a classic English ( and very human) ball of contradiction and confusion. He clearly loathes Nazis yet doesn’t mind indulging in the type of stereotyping which would fit quite neatly into 3^rd Reich propaganda. He seems unaware that its wrong (in all senses of the word) to imply that Jews are mean. And of course his remark goes unnoticed and unchallenged by the interviewer and other guests. Or perhaps there was a Jew round the table wincing inside. This is part of everyday life in England. We mostly keep our Jew heads below the parapet about these things because it seems to be the easiest way. The safest way.

In Roseanne Barr’s excellent book "My Life As A Woman" she states that "If you’re reading this and you’re an anti-Semite, you’re not my friend".

I love the ‘screw you ‘of that. It appeals to the punk rocker in me, where everything is black and white. But like so many 'screw you' style statements it's very hard to apply in everyday life. I don’t suppose I’d have had a single gentile friend in this country if I’d taken this approach. The incidents I’ve mentioned here are just a few amongst thousands I could depress you with.

I’m no longer Utopian. Anti-Semitism and racism seem to be at the very heart of the English. I realise I’m about as likely to meet the genuinely non-prejudiced Englander as I am to take Madonna’s virginity. Across the years a couple of friends have admitted to me on drunken evenings that they "feel anti-Semitism and (or) racism". I tell them that’s good, that’s honest, that I believe that’s the first step - to realise and admit to your prejudices. But infuriatingly (and here’s the rub) - they always seem unwilling to take the 2^nd step. Namely to acknowledge these racist instincts are wrong and to try and rid themselves of them.

Feeling something inside doesn’t necessarily make it acceptable to practice and spread. Otherwise we’d be congratulating every pedophiliac in town for their bravery in acting on their feelings and making restaurant dates for them to meet our children. We don't hate/prosecute these people for their desires - only for not realising its wrong to act on these feelings, and fighting them within themselves, or seeking help to overcome them. Nobody’s born perfect, nobody can help how they feel inside. But only a fool can’t see the logic, and intellectual justification behind the theory, - that its immoral and illogical to be racist and anti-Semitic. We have to fight the inner prejudices we’re brought up with, know they're wrong, and challenge them within ourselves. - By meeting different types of people and confronting the fears, or even by seeking psychiatric help if necessary.

These are cynical, hard edged times. There aren’t many Martin Luther King’s around. But I do have a dream that one day people will at least see the need to fight their inner bigot.

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