John Lister

To put in perspective the UK's new crackdown on a largely non-existent antisemitism problem in schools, remember that more than 2,000 young British Jews are believed to have headed off to Israel to help its military commit genocide in Gaza. The government has done nothing to stop them going. Meanwhile, British police have been repeatedly handed details of potential war crimes suspects but so far have failed to investigate, arrest or charge any of them. Powell, the UK’s education secretary, has told Sky News: “I don’t think that our schools should be a place where it’s about making protests and statements about geopolitical events around the world.” And yet only a year ago her predecessor, Bridget Phillipson, who set up the Bell review, was filmed in British classrooms with primary schoolchildren waving Ukrainian flags. Despite Powell’s new prohibition, many Jewish pupils will continue to be encouraged by their schools to identify strongly with the foreign state of Israel – a state almost permanently mired, in the worst possible way, in “geopolitical events”. If it is important for British children to identify with and support Ukraine’s white children through their suffering, why is it not possible – why is it antisemitism – for British children to similarly identify with and support the brown children of Gaza as they go through far greater suffering? It is hard to imagine an answer that is not racist to its core. Whatever the government claims, these double standards are not driven by principle. They are not about antisemitism. This is about protecting Israel. Burnham entered office apologising for how his predecessor, Starmer, “got it wrong” at the outset of Israel’s slaughter in Gaza. But his government is now doubling down on what Labour got equally wrong in the years leading up to the genocide – when it dedicated its energies to crushing the section of the party led by Corbyn that was warning of Israel’s deeply racist character and of what it was likely to do to the Palestinians. The gencoide has vindicated Corbyn and the left in the most horrifying manner possible. No matter. As with the current attacks on Zack Polanski of the Greens, none of this is really about antisemitism. It is about Israel. It is about the British establishment and the billionaire class protecting their interests both in the war industries Israel is so central to and in the oil-rich Middle East, where Israel acts as the West’s attack dog. This is about crushing dissent to prop up a crumbling western political order, led by a greedy, belligerent narcissist in the White House, as it is afflicted by collapse on every front: economic, environmental, political and social. Dissatisfaction and unrest are growing. Violence is simmering. Bullying children into saluting the Israeli flag will not halt the decline. It simply underscores how much the “liberal” western order has lost the plot. This is an extract from my latest article A new UK hierarchy of racism will gag Israel critics from Westminster to the playground. Find a link to the rest in the reply post below ⬇️