British Anti-Zionist Committee

As reported in the Jerusalem Post, the "leadership" (for what it's worth) of the British Jewry has been "de-Zionized". In other words, it has consistently taken a "critical" position towards Israel (quote marks, because it is consistently one-sided and calumnious). Worse even, the head of its self-appointed Jewish Leadership Council (JLC), Mick Davis, has suggested that Israel's policies should be corrected because they poorly reflect on him, thus repeating one of the main antisemitic ideas, according to which the Jews bear collective responsibility for actions of fellow Jews, whether real or imaginary, just as they have had for the slander of deicide.

This reminds me of my home country. In the Soviet Union, antisemitism was officially banned but its official expressions were well understood by the population from the incessant "criticism" of Israel, with printed propaganda including cartoons hardly different from those in Der Stuermer. Everybody could readily connect this "criticism" and its fluctuations with the official and not so secret policy regarding hiring Jews, accepting them to universities, and allowing them emigration. In the antisemitic Soviet Union, there used to be "Anti-Zionist Committee" comprised of famous Jews - actors, writers, lawyers, scientists, and headed by a general, a World War II hero. The AZC, "voluntary" as it was called, was created in 1983 by the KGB and the Propaganda Dept. of the Party (basically the same animal). It was popularly known as the "Antisemitic Committee". Its goal was to malign Israel with the added legitimacy of "Jews themselves" doing that, and to convince the "abroad" - whoever would need such a pathetic pretext, particularly in the USA and Israel, - that the Soviet Jews needed no Israel and there was no antisemitism in the USSR. Needless to say, if anybody thought to organize a Zionist committee, he would see the other side of the KGB in no time, as people like Sharansky did indeed. Those AZC members were partly duped by the continual Communist (anti-capitalist and anti-Israel) brain-washing, partly scared of the KGB for themselves or for family members, partly the official and popular antisemitism had brushed off onto them. I do not know how many well-known Jews were approached and rejected the KGB's kind offer to join. I am not sure how many of the members were "invited" by the KGB rather than volunteered, but there were those among them who did the latter, ashamed of fellow Jews and vocal in "criticizing" Israel. That was nothing new. Right after the Bolshevik revolution, young atheistic Jews had created "Yevsektsiya" (Евсекция; the "Jewish Section" of the Communist Party), whose function was eradication of the Jewish religious and national culture - following Marx's suggestions on the Jewish emancipation by emancipation from Jewishness.

As in the USSR, the "Jews themselves" argument attaches - in the eyes of so many willing beholders - additional legitimacy to slander and antisemitic canards about Israel in the old tradition of blood libel. That's why the Jewish slanderers of Israel - Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Steven Rose - are so popular among neo-Nazis, white supremacists and Muslims, as well as the antisemites of the Left. Under strong pressure, traitors appear with regularity, and provide the ever-interested public with all needed argumentation for why their enemy is right.

I am not sure how strong the pressure on the Jews is in England. I appreciate the possibility that some of them have been brain-washed by the increasingly antisemitic environment in Great Britain into seeing the root of the Arabs-Israel problem in Israel's attacking innocent Arabs rather then in the sworn rejection of Israel's right to exist by Arabs. I do know, however, that compared to the Soviet Jews imprisoned in the Soviet Union, the British Jews and their "leadership" have an additional and much nobler option than slander and betrayal: emigration - to Israel. Instead, they have succeeded - without any KGB pressure and truly voluntarily - in organizing "Anti-Zionist" antisemitic committees. Mazel tov.