Today, Jeremy Corbyn (JC) was elected leader of the British Labour Party, and as such becomes leader of Her Majesty's loyal opposition. Many in the Jewish community have expressed concern, some have expressed dismay at some of the stances which JC has taken in regard to Israel in particular and more widely his relationship with Jews, or rather his many relationships with people who are anti-Jewish. He includes Hamas and Hezbollah among his friends. He has defended the actions of anti-Jewish clerics with links to far-right antiSemitic groups who claimed that Israel committed the terrorist attacks of 9/11. He has regularly shared platforms with Holocaust deniers and leading Jew Haters, including Paul Eisen and Raed Salah. In short, many have tried to paint the picture that JC is anti-Jewish because he hangs around with a lot of people who are.
JC is not anti-Jewish.
JC believes that Jews do not have national rights.
Now - many may claim that these two arguments do not make sense - if someone denies the national rights of a particular group, surely one is "anti" that group. Well - this is where it gets interesting.
One of the things that even JC's enemies have remarked upon is how sincere JC appears when he denies any form of prejudice against Jews. Even those who bitterly oppose his stances tend to agree that they really don't believe he has an anti-Jewish bone in his body. So where does this come from? Well, as with most things - one needs to understand the context. There are two ways of explaining the paradox which is the perceived leftist anti-Jewishness of JC.
Firstly JC is part of the international left - a movement in which it has become axiomatic to believe that Israel is a colonialist pawn of American imperialism, and that the Palestinian claim to the land is entirely valid while the Zionist claim is invalid. Once an axiom has been accepted as such, it isn't challenged. Within the internationalist left, no-one bothers to check historically the rights and wrongs of Palestinian claims to be the "native population" and accusations that the Zionists are a colonial import. As such, anti-Zionism is intrinsically understood as a noble part of wider anti-Imperialism - the one unifying stance of the Internationalist left. This is the known context and one that many have pointed out. But there is another context which is equally important.
JC's refusal to recognise Jewish national rights grows from the context of his own understanding of Jewishness. The Jews whom he knows and associates with either explicitly or implicitly also deny the national character of Jewishness. He knows many diasporist British Jews. And if the Jews he knows deny their own Jewish nationality, how is he expected to take seriously that Jewishness really is a nationality and that Jews have national rights. When the Balfour declaration was being crafted, its leading opponents were Jewish diasporists. Their fear was that if a Jewish state would be created, Jews in Europe would be stripped of their national rights as citizens of the lands in which they lived. They opposed Zionism on the grounds that it was bad for British Jews. They were right. The existence of a Jewish Nation State throws into question the loyalty of British Jews. Corbyn is the natural corollary to that Diasporist fear. Corbyn understands the diasporist narrative of Jewish existence as the true and valid one. Jews are a religious group, who are free citizens of many countries. They deserve full civil rights in whichever country they should find themselves, but they have no rights to a national home (hence he would rescind the Balfour declaration), since they do not constitute a nation. JC views himself as pro-Jewish and anti-Zionist, because Diasporist Jews have encouraged his belief that such a stance is both rational and moral.
JC is a product of the situation in which Israel finds itself, as much as he is a catalyst of the factors which affect Israel's place in the world.
If Israel wants to look at the cause of its PR problems in the UK, they are not to be found with Jeremy Corbyn, but within the Jewish communities of the UK.
And as such, the Jews of the UK really have nothing to fear. Yes - Corbyn is anti-Israel, but that won't affect the Jews of the UK particularly. If anything, Corbyn, and his policy of "Anti-Israel / Pro-Jews" will be good for the Jews of the UK, as he will help break the connection of Jews and Israel which fosters anti-Jewish violence. That's the point. Even his anti-Israel stances will be relatively irrelevant, since Britain has very little power to affect any change in the Middle East, and since he is unlikely to be elected PM. But what Corbyn asks of British Jews is truly challenging: are you willing to allow someone to deny the national rights of Jews. And if not - how will you show that we are a nation? In the end, Corbyn could be Zionism's best friend.
