As I See It: The false equation of Jew-hatred and Islamophobia

Desperate to build bridges to Muslims through interfaith work, Jewish leaders are minimizing evidence of Muslim extremism which otherwise risks driving the interfaith show off the road.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews, the main representative body of the Jewish community in the UK, managed last week to get itself into a terrible mess.

It issued a joint statement with the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), which not only stated that the Middle East conflict must not poison community relations but also condemned “the targeting of civilians” which was “against our religious traditions.”

This unspecific formulation implied the Board was condemning Israel as well as Hamas for having targeted civilians in Operation Protective Edge. In the row that then erupted, the Board protested that the phrase could only relate to Hamas since Israel never targeted civilians.

But the MCB claimed the Board had agreed the phrase covered both sides. So the Board enabled the MCB to crow – falsely but plausibly – that the Jews had condemned Israel for war crimes. People were left scratching their heads at how the Board could have been quite so foolish; indeed, how it could have collaborated at all with the MCB which, along with its affiliates, has links to Islamic extremists, a history of support for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and whose past leaders have described Israel as “the Zionist terrorist state.” The explanation lies at root in the UK Jewish leadership’s misguided and dangerous strategy for dealing with Britain’s Muslims. This error – which is on display in other Western Diaspora communities too – has placed the Jewish community on the wrong side in the struggle against Islamic extremism. Desperate to build bridges to Muslims through interfaith work, Jewish leaders are minimizing evidence of Muslim extremism which otherwise risks driving the interfaith show off the road.

The Jewish leadership also wants to demonstrate to the wider society that it cares about something beyond Jewish interests. As a result of all this, it has seized upon the apparent common ground of two similarly beleaguered minorities. There is some truth here. Both communities are affected by the attacks on infant male circumcision and ritual slaughter of food animals. However, the mistake the Jewish community has made is to claim that both Jews and Muslims therefore suffer from similar prejudices.

The joint statement with the MCB condemned anti-Semitism and Islamophobia as if they were equivalent forms of bigotry. Not so. Jew-hatred is entirely irrational.

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