rabbi Ephraim Mirvis : Anti-Zionism does not equate to antisemitism

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Anti-Zionism does not equate to antisemitism
Letters: Chief rabbi Ephraim Mirvis attacks the Labour party by launching a defence of Zionism which turns it from a political ideology (that can be supported or opposed) into a religion that is beyond question. We British Jews reject this…
theguardian.com


In his Daily Telegraph article on which you report (Chief rabbi: Labour has severe problem with antisemitism, theguardian.com, 4 May), Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis said the antisemitism crisis engulfing Labour had “lifted the lid” on bigotry.
He joins in the sensationalist allegations of antisemitism in the Labour party, where the headlines’ decibel level is in inverse proportion to the evidence supporting them. Ignoring the more serious anti-Muslim racism in electoral politics, Rabbi Mirvis attacks the Labour party by launching a defence of Zionism which turns it from a political ideology (that can be supported or opposed) into a religion that is beyond question. We British Jews reject this categorically.
Mirvis attacks as “antisemitic” those who separate Judaism from Zionism. Yet most Jews who perished in the Holocaust were indifferent to Zionism and many opposed it. In the last municipal elections in Europe’s largest Jewish community, in Poland, just before the second world war, Poland’s Jews voted overwhelmingly for the secular, anti-Zionist, socialists of the Bund, while Zionist parties got derisory votes. Is Rabbi Mirvis recasting those victims of the Holocaust posthumously as enemies of Judaism and therefore as antisemites?
George Abendstern
Seymour Alexander
Julia Bard
Sue Bard
Graham Bash
Craig Berman
Rica Bird
Haim Bresheeth
Elizabeth Carola
Linda Clair
Jim Cohen
Norman Crane
Wendy Crane
Judith Cravitz
Mike Cushman
Ivor Dembina
Stephen Deutsch
Mark Elf
Thomas Eisner
Nancy Elan
Liz Elkind
Pia Feig
Deborah Fink
Kenny Fryde
Carolyn Gelenter
Claire Glasman
Sarah Glynn
David Gordon
Helen Gordon
May Gordon
Tony Greenstein
Jan Hardy
Abe Hayeem
Rosamine Hayeem
Marion Hersh
Lorraine Huddle
Selma James
Riva Joffe
Michael Kalmanovitz
Roisin Kalmanovitz
Richard Kuper
Pam Laurance
Leah Levane
Mike Leigh
Rachel Lever
Rosalind Levy
Les Levidow
Susanne Levin
Barrie Levine
Sue Lieberman
Yosefa Loshitzky
Ruth London
Catherine Lyons
Moshe Machover
Henry Maitles
Beryl Maizels
Miriam Margolyes
Helen Marks
John McArdle
Martine Miel
Mica Nava
Diana Neslen
Esther Neslen
Susan Pashkoff
Juliet Peston
Roland Rance
Frances Rifkin
Leon Rosselson
Michael Rosen
David Rosenberg
Jonathan Rosenhead
Maureen Rothstein
Ian Saville
Alexei Sayle
Amanda Sebesteyn
Glyn Secker
Suzanne Senior
Roger Silverman
Vanessa Stilwell
Inbar Tamari
David Turner
Philip Wadler
Jackie Walker
Naomi Wayne
Sam Weinstein
Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi
Ben Young
Aliya Yule
• Ephraim Mirvis’s latest warning (Chief rabbi says universities are tarnished by anti-Zionism, 9 May) further establishes, or is trying to further establish, that in Britain today any radical denying of the legitimacy of Israel’s existence, at least in its present location, is antisemitism. Specific criticisms of particular Israeli governments may be permitted (perhaps), but anti-Zionism equals antisemitism, period.
In 1903 the British government offered the early Zionist movement an isolated area of what is now Kenya for a national home for the Jews, a proposal that split the Zionists into opposing camps. One favoured acceptance, but the other insisted that a Jewish homeland, and future Jewish state, could only be in the historic homeland in Palestine. The second camp won, and the proposal was refused.
I am one of those who regrets that rejection. Does this make me a Jewish antisemite?
Roger Schafir
London

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