Stop accusing the Jewish community of conspiring against the left

The standard response to Jews is that they know that their claims of having experienced antisemitism are false, and they persist in making them anyway for selfish tribal reasons. It is a nasty little trick to silence the voice of the Palestinians and to smear their great supporter Jeremy Corbyn. The debate about antisemitism, in this view, is just an underhand way of trying to win the Israel-Palestine debate.

Moreover this is the charge made against the community as a whole, not only against particular individuals. It is the community as a whole which is accused of ‘pouring petrol on the fire’ or of orchestrating a ‘cynical attempt to challenge Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership’. Make no mistake, the charge against the Jewish community is that it is involved in a conspiracy against the left. Any individual could get it wrong. But when a whole community gets it wrong together, in an organised and co-ordinated way, and in bad faith, then the allegation is one of Jewish conspiracy to lie and to smear.