Jews matter, but only if they agree

In recent years I have come to the conclusion that we do not matter for who we are, but rather for what we believe.  At the time of writing, Ken Livingstone – formerly the mayor of London – has been suspended for a year by the Labour Party to punish him for remarks he made which supposedly brought the party into disrepute.

A lot of people have alleged that his remarks were anti-semitic, whereas Livingstone has replied – and I believe him – that at least one Jewish woman has told him that what he said was true.

It is widely reported that he called Adolf Hitler a Zionist, which he denies.  I am not sure exactly what he said, but so far as I can make out he asserted that Hitler struck a deal with Zionists in the 1930s.  I believe it is true that during the 1930s Hitler encouraged Jews to leave Germany and settle in Palestine.

If Ken Livingstone’s crime is merely to state a fact, then we might expect the furore to be short-lived, and yet he continues to make the headlines.  At least one newspaper comment writer has argued that nowadays you can find a historian who will support almost any point of view, which may be a fair comment, but does any historian of the 1930s deny that Hitler’s national socialist regime encouraged Jewish emigration?

I have just read another comment by Dan Hodges (who is the son of a former Labour MP).  He rants that:

Where once they [the Labour Party] raged against intolerance and prejudice, now they shrug it off.

He continues: Labour is now a racist party ... But it’s not just a racist party; it’s an apartheid one. Jews are tolerated, but only as second-class citizens.

He fails to explain how any rational person – whether Jewish or gentile – could possibly be offended by Livingstone’s remarks.  This is presumably because he knows perfectly well that the remarks were not offensive.

He concludes with an allusion to Niemoeller’s prayer, but fails to explain in what sense anyone in the Labour Party is coming for the Jews.  They are not, and I wonder how many Jewish people actually agree with him on this point.

So far as I can make out, Dan Hodges is not Jewish.  He is however a typical establishment figure.  In Britain today, Jews matter if they are offended by whatever the likes of Hodges consider to be anti-semitic.  If they are not offended, then they must expect to be ignored.
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Related previous posts include:
The politics of denial
Jeremy Corbyn is close to the truth