Deborah Maccoby 1
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal (Unpublished)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/03/27
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Let’s start on some brief developmental background for yourself for some of the audience to personalize some of the stances and development for yourself because you have had a development over time in terms of a personal perspective from real experiences and sincere critical thought reflection and reading.
Deborah Maccoby: Well, for a long time I was a leftwing Zionist. I didn’t really take any interest in politics or Zionism at all until the 1980s really and that was in response to Israel’s bombing of Lebanon but then I became a leftwing Zionist and I joined a group called Mapam UK which was linked to the Mapam party in Israel. It later became Meretz UK when Mapam in Israel became subsumed into the Meretz party. I was on the committee of Meretz UK and I was also on the committee of a group called British Friends of Peace Now linked to the Peace Now Movement in Israel and I went on summer trips to Israel and they took us to the West Bank and even to Gaza. We went to Gaza once. Everything was looking at the Palestinians from an Israeli perspective. I mean I remember when they took us to Gaza, they took us around the refugee camp but we didn’t get out of the coach because they said it wasn’t healthy. I do remember thinking at the time it’s not healthy for us to get out but they have to live here and even been feeling pretty shocked at the time but I still carried on being a Zionist until 2000 when the second Intifada broke out. I was so shocked by the brutal Israeli suppression and the way so many people in Meretz UK and other leftwing Zionists in the UK were trying to justify it. I really started to question what was happening and I asked myself what do I actually know about this conflict? The answer I gave back was, nothing. I knew nothing about it, I hardly read anything. I’d just taken a whole lot of myths that I was told in my childhood and I just accepted them.
So, I started on the course of reading and I read Benny Morris’s The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem and then I read Norman Finkelstein’s Image and Reality of The Israel- Palestine Conflict and I like Finkelstein’s books better than any other. I’ve read a whole lot of other books as well but I like Finkelstein’s books best because he brings so much humour and a kind of cutting irony which makes his books very entertaining. In 2002, I joined a group called Jews for Justice of Palestinians which had just started up after Operation Defensive Shield because there was an Israel solidarity rally in Trafalgar square organized by the Israeli Embassy in conjunction with groups like The Border Deputies and The Jewish Establishment and they managed to get 30,000 Jews to participate into Trafalgar Square. They brought coachmen from all over the country and it gave the impression that the whole British Jewish community supported what Israel was doing; the brutal reinvasion of the West Bank.
So, we realized we had to set up a Jewish group coming out openly as Jews and opposing the board of deputies on the Israeli Embassy and giving another voice to Jews. I was very active in the Jews for Justice for Palestinians until about 2015 when the whole anti-Semitism smear campaign started against Jeremy Corbyn and I joined the Labour party. And the focus has really shifted from groups like Jews for Justice for Palestinians to Jewish Voice for Labour which is a Jewish group that started up in the Labour Party to oppose the antisemitism smear campaign against… It made a contribution to the disastrous defeat that labour suffered but I don’t think it was the main reason, I think it was a contributory reason. I think the main reason was Labor’s disaster Brexit policy. I’ve written the whole lot of Brexit updates for Noman Finkelstein’s website and actually throughout my Brexit updates, I supported the idea that that it was wrong to go for a second referendum and I was very unhappy about the… I think that was the main reason really because it meant that labour betrayed the working class which had voted the Brexit, labour betrayed its working-class base and I think that was the main reason that laid the loss so disastrously but I do think the anti-Semitism smear campaign played quite a strong contributory role because it poisoned people’s minds against Corbyn.
I don’t think it could have won if it hasn’t been to the disastrous Brexit policy but I don’t think that the smear campaign would have worked on its own but since labour had this policy, the spear campaign just became another factor and make things worse. What are the questions were you thinking?
Jacobsen: Well, I think one thing if we can nail it down, kind of cover the potential angles of critique and nail it down the ideas around antisemitism in terms of definition and use at present but then also how that’s evolved. So, for instance, I know some of your commentary which I think was very apt was around, which is now a charge, I mean to critique the Israeli policy you are now antisemitic to some as a standard thing. Other ones that are a little bit more subtle and sinister in the sense of a conflation between legitimate concerns around antisemites who have antisemitic sentiments or make them public but then also trying to make an umbrella definition that includes that but then shuttles in an extra point of certain types of Israeli policy then become antisemitic. So, it’s not the former but it’s the flavour of the former inclusive of an appropriate definition of antisemitism which is a little more subtle but I think can be more sinister potentially worse over the long term because it kind of buys into this idea that the implication being there almost there are no Arab Israelis; the idea that there’s a Jewish State there in this sense.
So, then the policy is to critique the state and to critique a state that is claimed by some as a Jewish State then becomes antisemitic. So, there is a logic but I think the premises within that logical argument are invalid.
Maccoby: Yes and of course there was the whole argument about the definition…, tremendous about Labor’s changes to that. Labour actually accepted it but just wanted to make a few changes and there was a tremendous round on the board of deputies. Norman Finkelstein has written about that quite a bit. He said that the whole thing should just be completely thrown out.
Jacobsen: Yeah, I think I remember seeing that interview was with this white British man potentially and the interview was basically statement that it was amazing how basically all of elite British Society were united in this campaign of labelling him as antisemitic. And meantime, I mean I don’t wish Corona virus or covid-19 on anyone, but someone who comes straight out of what seems like lad culture, I think is the proper term in Britain, with messy hair; Boris Johnson.
Maccoby: Yes, I know I mean in a sense the British…, they were overwhelmingly supportive of…, the liberal elite. They shot themselves in the foot really because then this right-wing conservative government was elected. II think basically they didn’t want a genuine socialist, they were just so worried about how it would affect their liberal and elite privileges. So, they use antisemitism as a weapon.
Jacobsen: Yes. I think Finkelstein in that same interview made the… again, he’s usually right and I think this one, he basically this is a testing ground for Bernie Sanders and I think we’re seeing the same kind of shooting themselves in the foot. I think there was image where the Democrats with Bernie Sanders where the sword is the Democrats and then there’s Joe Biden is stabbing himself through the chest and then it’s just about to hit Trump and then Trump Dodges it and he goes, “Did I get him? Did we get him?” As you said, its shooting themselves in the foot.
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