S5E3 Antisemitism: Israel, Anti-Zionism, and the politics of hate
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Hi, MediaStormers. Welcome to your Friday Deep Dive. Hi, Tilda. Hi, I'm here too. You are.

How are you today? I'm good, but I think I have an injury from editing this podcast. Is it like finger cramp? Beyond that though. So my arm started hurting and it was hurting when I was making like a very particular move. And I was confused because I was like, what is this movement that is making it hurt so much? And then I started doing some editing for this podcast and I was like, oh my God, it's repetitive strain injury from...

from a particular editing movement you know when you like zoom in and out of the timeline yeah you can't see it but I was like oh my gosh I pulled a muscle from editing so that's how dedicated I am to you media stormers it's like real blood sweat and tears going into this thing I know that's how much I love you and it's not because of all the tragedies happening in the world it's because it's really hard work zooming in and out of the timeline yeah it really is guys don't try it get an editor

Okay, yes, this is your Friday Deep Dive. And today we're doing an episode that was directly requested by a listener some time ago and we've been wanting to do it for a while. And actually, every single episode so far this season was suggested by either a guest or a listener. Oh yeah. Yeah. God, we're so good at listening. Yeah, that is how much we love you guys. So what is the topic? So today's topic, as we said, suggested by a listener is anti-Semitism.

What is antisemitism? It's hostility to or prejudice against Jewish people. Antisemitism is, of course, a long-standing and historical issue, but it's intensifying in the current moment.

Now, hate crime figures are notoriously difficult to pin down, but the Metropolitan Police reported a 300% increase in anti-Semitic hate crimes in 2023, rising from 562 incidents to 1,729 in a year.

Why is this happening? Well, we'll dig into that on this episode. But it's no secret, sadly, that the rise of the far right has seen neo-Nazi politics re-enter the mainstream, shattering a massive taboo in post-war Western societies. And another global crisis fuelling polarisation and racism of many shades is, of course, the ongoing conflict in Palestine.

The state of Israel's combined vulnerability and violence in the region has been used on the one hand to justify indiscriminate, racist rage against Jewish people, and on the other, to appropriate the fight against anti-Semitism as justification for an array of war crimes. It's complicated in this political climate, but the thing that cuts through politicization is lived experience.

The violence in Israel and Gaza has had terrible consequences for Jewish people here at home. The number of people in Britain with anti-Semitic attitudes rose by 50% in just 12 months. The fight against anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, they are one. Tonight, a political taboo has been shattered.

A far-right party winning a state election in Germany for the first time since the Nazis. Welcome to MediaStorm, the news podcast that starts with the people who are normally asked last. I'm Matilda Mallinson. And I'm Helena Wadier. This week's MediaStorm. Antisemitism. No one's political weapon. Welcome to the MediaStorm studio. Our guest today is an author, global expert in corruption in the arms trade and former South African politician.

The son of a Holocaust survivor, he was the first MP to introduce a motion on the Holocaust in the South African Parliament, where he served in the country's post-apartheid government as a member of Nelson Mandela's ANC. For the second time, welcome to MediaStorm, Andrew Feinstein. Thank you so much. It's great to be here. That is a hell of a CV. Can I just say, do you ever hear it and just think...

Yeah, all right. You know what? Not at all. It just happened to be where I was at a particular time in my life. And when you're in that moment, you don't realize what you're involved in. And it's only sort of subsequently when I refer to Nelson Mandela as my former boss and people's sort of jaws drop that I think, oh, my gosh. Yeah. You never know when history happens. Exactly. Exactly. And I think it's

It's a function of circumstance. I mean, obviously, I'd been involved in the struggle against apartheid, and I'd had to leave the country in 1986 at very short notice. And if anyone had said to me, oh, don't worry, because, you know, in eight years' time, you'll be a member of parliament, we'll be in government, etc., etc.,

I would have offered them a straitjacket. I mean, at that time, was the party that you were part of even, was it still seen as a terrorist organization? Of course. It was regarded as a terrorist organization. Nelson Mandela was described by both Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher as a terrorist. In fact, Thatcher privately encouraged the apartheid state

to have Mandela killed in jail because she thought it was too dangerous to keep him alive. There's the first scoop of the episode. Honestly, we could and we should at some point do a whole episode. Absolutely, I'd love to. But all of this will inform, I think, what we're going to talk about today, which is anti-Semitism. And for listeners, we'll also be hearing a little bit later on from Alex Kane, senior staff reporter at Jewish Currents, a US magazine founded in 1946 after the collapse, of course, of the Nazi regime in Germany.

in Europe. He'll share some American media insights. He just couldn't quite join us live in the studio due to time zone differences, and it would be a bit too early in the morning for him to discuss such a heavy topic. Antisemitism is, of course, in today's political climate, quite a divisive and explosive subject, but it shouldn't be. It's racism, discrimination, hate, and it's on the rise.

From January to June 2024, the British charity Community Security Trust recorded reports of 1,978 anti-Jewish hate incidents, up from 964 in the first half of 2023. That's a rise in line with the police statistics we shared in the intro.

And the report relies on self-reported incidents, so the likelihood is it's a shy estimate. Andrew, most of us don't see discrimination that doesn't happen to us. So could you just share with us what does anti-Semitism look like in the UK today? I'm going to start a bit earlier. My own experience of anti-Semitism, I'm Jewish and very proudly Jewish.

And when I was growing up in apartheid South Africa, a state run by avowed neo-Nazis, I'll never forget my mom would take us to football practice in her little old Mini, me and a few friends. And one day there were too many of us to get into the car. And one of the guys just sort of dropped a little thought. How do you get 12 Jews into a Mini?

you put a half-cent piece on the back seat and i didn't fully understand it at the time i think i was nine and my mom just exploded which was very unlike her and afterwards i sort of asked her and she explained to me anti-semitism

is the hatred of Jews as Jews, and that this was an example because it assumed we were all money-grubbing, awful people. And it's this notion that all Jews think with one mind, that all Jews are alike, et cetera, et cetera. So anti-Semitism is something that I've obviously experienced myself, as have most Jews. It's something that was a huge part of my growing up because my mom was a Holocaust survivor. In Britain today, I think we importantly need to put it in context.

One incident of anti-Semitism is one incident too much, because as you say, this is a form of racism. It's a vile form of racism. But we also shouldn't get obsessed by just one form of racism. So we have to consider anti-Semitism in the context, particularly at the moment, because of what is happening in Israel-Palestine, of Islamophobia at the same time. Now, there has definitely been an increase in anti-Semitism over the last couple of years in Britain, which is horrific.

At the same time, there's been an even larger increase in Islamophobia. And we need to be aware of that because as Nelson Mandela used to say, you are either against each and every form of racism or you're part of the racism problem. And I think it's important for us to understand that being the victim of racism and abuse isn't a competition. And sometimes when we think that anti-Semitism should be treated as exceptional and it's more important than Islamophobia or anti-black racism or whatever else,

I think we get ourselves caught up in problems. But there is no doubt that it is rising. And that's partly, in my opinion, a function of our politics having moved so far to the right of racist politicians becoming completely mainstreamed that a lot of people feel enabled to give expression to what are vile racist thoughts.

And to a large extent, why anti-Semitism is at the front of that is unfortunately because of the state of Israel. There has been an attempt by arms of the Israeli state, by supporters of the Israeli state, to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is a hatred of Jews as Jews.

And therefore, in my opinion, to equate anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism is incredibly dangerous. Of course, anti-Zionism can be used to be anti-Semitic. But to then draw from that, that all anti-Zionism is anti-Semitic, given that many Jews are anti-Zionist, is obviously an absurdity.

I wonder if quickly for our listeners, just define for us anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, what you mean by those terms. So Zionism is a political ideology that believes that the only way to protect Jewish people or the best way to protect Jewish people is by having a Jewish homeland, a Jewish state, which is what the state of Israel is today. Anti-Zionism, which interestingly at the time that Zionism was developed, was also developed

by Jewish intellectuals, but it had exactly the opposite view. It was an ideology that believed that creating a Jewish state or a Jewish homeland, in fact, undermined the safety of Jewish people and made them even more of a target. And they were therefore anti-Zionist.

Now, there was nothing about anti-Zionism that was in any way anti-Semitic. These were all Jewish intellectuals. Today, even in Israel, there are tens of thousands of Jewish Israelis who are anti-Zionist.

who live in a state that they don't believe should exist as a purely Jewish state. They believe that it should be a completely democratic state where every citizen is treated equally before the law. And then as against that, as I mentioned earlier, anti-Semitism, and we need to understand it very simply. There's no need to try and make complex what is a very simple concept. Anti-Semitism is a hatred of Jews as Jews.

Am I reading correctly then that to be anti-Zionist, you are not necessarily even saying that there shouldn't be a state of Israel, but that there shouldn't be a Jewish state in that land because the Jewish state in that land would by nature be an apartheid state. It would be undemocratic because there are non-Jewish Arab populations there. That's exactly the point. So what this tells us

is if we actually analyze the way in which anti-Semitism is being weaponized for a far-right political agenda, in so doing, it has turned the world upside down. Because the state of Israel today

is prepared to label Jews who are not uncritical of the state of Israel as anti-Semites, while at the same time the state of Israel, amongst its closest relationships, are obviously with Donald Trump's administration, who has his supporters, when they invade the capital over two years ago, standing with an Israeli flag and the chap next to him is wearing a T-shirt saying six million was not enough.

The state of Israel is incredibly close to Nehendra Modi, the Indian prime minister whose entire political philosophy is based on anti-Semitism. Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister who uses anti-Semitic imagery in every single election campaign. I have Jewish friends in Germany who have been beaten up by the German police because they're critical of Israel. This is a country that has led to genocides

And it is allowing the agents of that state to attack Jews because of their political views as Jews. That is the state of the world in which we live today.

Thank you. Now, I think that false equivalence between anti-Semitism is going to be a big theme in this discussion. And the first place we like to look here at MediaStorm is, of course, the media. Absolutely. So let's take a look at some recent media mishaps in spotlighting and calling out anti-Semitism.

Now, when the first Free Palestine, Palestine Solidarity or ceasefire marches began happening in London and across the UK, there was a lot of misinformation about the nature of the marches. Misinformation that was either started by or spread by the media.

Towards the end of 2023, then Home Secretary Suella Braverman described the demonstrators as being involved in hate marches. She said tens of thousands of people had taken to the streets and had chanted for the erasure of Israel from the map.

Now crucially there have been some displays of antisemitism by individuals and groups attending these rallies. These people are neither associated with the organizers nor are they championing the cause for which these marches are organized, but they should be identified and penalized.

Thing is, they should be called for what they are, not pro-ceasefire or pro-Palestine solidarity campaigners, but racist anti-Semites. Conflating them with an entire popular cause, as you've described, not only serves a deeply political agenda, but is probably pretty panicking for people deemed at risk.

Just to give you a sense of this conflation, in March 2024, the previous government's counter-extremism commissioner, Robin Simcox, said London had become a no-go zone for Jews during the weekend ceasefire marches and wrote about an increase in extremist disruption in the Telegraph.

March organisers made a point that many Jewish people attend the marches, a point that was often left out in media discussion. March organisers also placed blame back on ministers such as Robin Simcox for frightening the Jewish community. Andrew, you've attended the marches yourself. What have your experiences of the marches been like? First of all, I have to preface what I say about the marches by saying I think

In the world today, not just in Britain, the US particularly, but in the so-called Western world, what some people refer to as the global North, our politics are in crisis. Because of the economics of politics and the amount of power involved in politics, it is the least moral amongst us who go into politics. And I say this as what Al Gore would describe as a recovering politician. You know, you mentioned Suella Braverman. It's extraordinary that someone who is so hate-filled, every time they open their mouths,

is the person describing these marches as hate marches. But this is the reality of our politics. And unfortunately, part of the reason, in my opinion, that this has come about is because the media is no longer doing its job. The media, unfortunately...

has become a vessel for the trumpeting of a lot of the very worst, and this is I'm talking about the sort of what we'd refer to as the traditional or mainstream media, of the trumpeting of some of the worst excesses in our politics. Rather than actually analyzing them and critiquing them, they're simply trumpeting them, which is why we've seen, thank goodness,

the rise of alternative media and why so many people are getting so much of their news and information from podcasts, for instance, which I think is a great thing. So to come back to the marches, I've spoken in marches. I've been involved with some of the organizers, some of whom are Jewish, by the way, the organizers themselves. Let's not forget this. And I've marched. And they are the exact opposite of hate marches. There is a solidarity and a coming together of

of sentient human beings, human beings who feel for other human beings. There is a huge Jewish block on every march. So I do not recognize this notion of hate-filled marches. And as I say, I think it comes largely from the hate that is consuming the people who enunciate these sorts of views.

Yeah, I spoke to Holocaust survivors at the marches. That's the only time I've ever spoken to them. It's not hard when you're there to find, you know, many, many Jewish campaigners. And, you know, either the media is not even turning up to these rallies to fact check the hate that they are just regurgitating from politicians, you know, or they don't care to fact check

Absolutely. And when we stir up fear indiscriminately, it makes it hard to, you know, identify the real causes for fear. And when we falsely use hate to diminish anything and anyone that doesn't agree with us, we often miss hate within our own ranks. Now, the kind of anti-Semitism that...

has occasionally appeared at these marches, for example. They often appear in every sector of society, including most of the political parties condemning these marches for it, and also by some of the most influential and powerful individuals in our society. Now, sadly, there is no shortage of examples of this in recent headlines, examples of people with extreme power demonstrating anti-Semitism, and chunks of the media have been accused of downplaying it when it is powerful people.

One example, of course, is Elon Musk and his hotly contested salute. At an event following Trump's swearing in as US president, Musk twice made a gesture that appeared to be the Heil Hitler salute banned for its Nazi links in Germany. I'm sure you've all seen the footage. The gesture was as much celebrated as a Nazi salute by white nationalists as it was condemned as one by anti-hate groups and, of course, political rivals.

Musk later responded to criticisms of his behaviour on X, tweeting, Firstly, I want to draw listeners' attention to something that may not have come onto their radar, but it's

It came onto mind due to friends in South Africa. I used to work there. I imagine it probably crossed your radar as well. Right, some South Africans recognize this salute instantly as one used in the context of apartheid by pro-Hitler, white supremacist, Afrikaner resistance movement.

Now, South African-born Musk, of course, grew up in the context of apartheid. He has also repeatedly claimed that the country is now oppressing white people who, just for context, own 77% of the land in South Africa, despite being 7% of the population. Andrew, you grew up in apartheid South Africa and you encountered firsthand the anti-Semitism that often went hand-in-hand with white supremacism.

Did you happen to make this connection with the Musk salute? Absolutely. I mean, unfortunately, Elon Musk is a creation of apartheid South Africa. He feels to me like a child of Hendrik Verwoerdt, who was the racist Nazi, who was the architect

of apartheid after the Second World War. Elon Musk grew up in Pretoria, which was the sort of center of the apartheid state. His family left apartheid South Africa when there was the first inkling we might become a democracy in which all were treated equally.

In the first gigafactory of Tesla, gigafactories are these huge factories where the cars get made, there is an area where all black workers have to work that management refer to as the ghetto. There is an ongoing court case about this in the United States of America. This is a guy who has internalized racism to deal with his own insecurities growing up in a racist state.

Now, anybody who thinks that that wasn't a Nazi salute should just be aware of the reality that two days later, Elon Musk appeared as the keynote speaker of the neo-Nazi far right wing German movement

The AFD. In December, Musk publicly endorsed the German Alternative for Deutschland, or AFD, a far-right political party with deep ties to the neo-Nazi movement. Its founder and former leader, Alexander Golan, has said that Germany should be proud of its soldiers in the world wars and that people should no longer reproach Germans for World War II. Another prominent AFD leader openly plays with Nazi themes, shouting at meetings, everything for Germany. A Nazi stormtrooper slogan banned in Germany.

This is the thing. The main media debate that followed the salute was whether or not it was a salute rather than an intricate looking at Elon Musk's ties to the far right. It's not just the Nazi salute that has shown us that Musk is anti-Semitic and racist.

Elon Musk did something yesterday. He retweeted a post, a highly offensive anti-Semitic post. What do you know about that? He sure did. You guys, the post was by a user on X that claimed the Jewish community's push, quote, hatred against whites. He responded saying, quote, you have said the actual truth.

Just, you know, I just want to pull this back to, again, the real life impact that this can have on people, on Jewish people who are living in a society where

Neo-Nazi views, Nazi views are being normalized. A second recent example of very high profile anti-Semitism lately has been Kanye West, who shockingly ran an ad during the Super Bowl, right, which means it was aired nationally across Fox TV stations. And this ad directed people to a website where they would find one item on sale.

A swastika t-shirt listed HH01, HH, an acronym signifying Heil Hitler. And now once again, as with Musk, many, many media rushed to diminish industry responsibility in facilitating his disgusting stunt. Variety reported that his ad couldn't have set off any red flags at the time because, you know, at the time the swastika...

shirt wasn't listed on the website. The Fox CEO emailed all staff saying the advert was, quote, completely outside of our station's control. And yet, West has repeatedly, publicly proclaimed himself to be a Nazi. Weeks before the ad, he went on a multi-day anti-Semitic rant on X. He wrote, I love Hitler, now what? He wrote, tellingly, Elon stole my Nazi swag.

A couple of years ago, he was literally banned from Instagram and X for anti-Semitic comments. Musk brought him back. He has since had to remove him again. West has a social media following of more than 31 million people. What is the impact of global celebrities displaying attitudes like this with practical media, public, political impunity, you know, on real people?

The impact of this is terrifying because impressionable, young predominantly but not exclusively people will see this and think, it's actually okay for me to behave like a Nazi. And let's just bear in mind how Nazis behave. They slaughtered 12 million people.

Six million of whom were Jewish and they were slaughtered because they were Jewish. Six million of whom were slaughtered because they were either gay or queer, because they were physically or mentally impaired in some way, because they were travelers, because they were socialists or communists. So the fact that he's actually making money out of being a Nazi should be illegal.

Its impact on our society is terrifying. And I fear that unless we do something about it, people are going to die as a consequence of this sort of complete insanity from people like Kanye West and Elon Musk. And this is where we go from the territory of being angry about this.

to being deeply, deeply concerned about what the actual consequences might be. And unfortunately, our politicians and our media, again, are responsible for this because they make big stories out of all of this insanity. So much of this...

narrative in the mainstream is a politics of division. It's this mechanism of turning people needlessly against each other that only serves the oppressors. It comes back to the nature of our politics. Our politicians

generate fear so they can claim falsely that they can protect us from whatever the fear they're generating is. And it starts with my own member of parliament, Keir Starmer, who has aided, abetted, enabled and facilitated racism. And that someone like Keir Starmer, who's clearly an intelligent human being, says people who arrived in this country on boats must go back to where they came from.

Overall returns since this government came to office are now 9,400. That's up almost 6,000 since the end of August. Enforced returns are up almost a fifth on the same period last year. He's referring to refugees, to people who are in the worst conditions of their lives, who are fleeing conflicts that Britain has

is often enabling and profiting from through the sale of weaponry. This is the level

of our political discourse in this country. What this is, is incitement to hatred and disunity. And all of our mainstream politicians are using it in order to further their political careers. And it disgusts me. I can agree with you more that Labour's like theatre around punishing refugees who have

fled war via the only routes available to them, routes which happened to be illegal because the last conservative government criminalized them. I think that that is straight out of the Nazi playbook. I don't think that's an exaggeration. Absolutely. I would agree with you entirely. And we should remember that Keir Starmer weaponized anti-Semitism to become leader of the Labour Party. They took probably the most anti-racist member of parliament and they labeled him an anti-Semite.

Now, obviously, I'm talking about Jeremy Corbyn. Throughout his time as Labour leader, the party was plagued with accusations of anti-Semitism. Now, Jeremy Corbyn has been suspended from the Labour Party over his reaction to a report condemning Labour's handling of the issue. The report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission identified serious failings in the Labour Party leadership's attempts to tackle anti-Semitism.

Now, Jeremy Corbyn is someone I've known for decades through his involvement in the anti-apartheid struggle and his international peace work. I happen to be a friend of Jeremy's and I'm very proud of that. I don't mind what people think of Jeremy Corbyn. The point here is the double standards and that today in the world, it is the anti-racists who are being called racist.

Maybe something worth acknowledging and recognizing is that while yes, the time we are living in is shifting dangerously towards an extreme version of what we would call right wing, you know, politics in a very binary way of defining left right politics. Anti-Semitism is not exclusively a problem on the right. Yes, as you've just very strongly demonstrated, the

the identification of anti-Semitism among labor groups was very clearly weaponized. And I think one of the biggest takeaways we have from today's episode is that, you know, anti-Semitism is not your political weapon wherever you stand. But there is evidence that, you know, it is not necessarily just like a right-wing thing. 21% of the... I'm just going to read you, yeah, a figure from an EU survey, which basically said like,

like a fifth of perpetrators of anti-Semitic harassment were described as left wing by the recipients of this abuse. And at the peak of the anti-Semitism crisis in the UK Labour Party in 2019, 42% of British Jews said that they would seriously consider leaving the country if Jeremy Corbyn became prime minister at that time. Right.

So when you look at those sort of figures, you've got to look at the methodology. That's what investigators do. So you are asking, of course, there is anti-Semitism everywhere.

On the left. I think let's just address that because yes, the campaign was weaponized. I want to say something else about that. I have been politically active in the most racist state that had existed until that time in the post-World War II world, in South Africa. And of course, I've seen various forms of racism on the left. But let me tell you something that is so blatantly obvious.

to anybody who has been engaged in politics for any length of time. The amount of racism, including anti-Semitism, that comes from the right is so much bigger than the racism you find on the left. And the reality is the scaremongering about the Labour Party and about Jeremy Corbyn was to me particularly ironic. Why? Because the EHRC decides to do a report specifically into anti-Semitism in the Labour Party,

That wasn't about anti-Semitism. That was about the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn and the massive fear of the British establishment of Jeremy Corbyn, somebody who said he would suspend all British arms sales.

to non-democratic governments on the day he came into office. That's what terrifies people, okay? And the way in which the media projects what Jeremy Corbyn is. The LSE, the London School of Economics, did a survey that found that 74% of the statements that Jeremy Corbyn made during the 2017 election campaign were misrepresented by the media. 74%. So the point I'm trying to make

is let's not skew the narrative and that what we need to look at is the real picture, not just in Britain but globally. And that picture, whether we like it or not, shows that political entities to the right of the political spectrum, and of course we're defining this in very normative terms, and especially political entities to the far right of the political spectrum, exhibit far, far greater instances of

of racism, including anti-Semitism? Absolutely. But doesn't that whole discussion we just had, I mean, doesn't that point to the issue here, which is that as soon as anti-Semitism or any kind of racism is weaponized, as soon as, you know, the investigation to anti-Semitism is actually a political campaign, we stop talking about anti-Semitism, it becomes about politics. No, we don't. You know, why do you say we stop talking about anti-Semitism?

I get called on at least a weekly basis. Wait, can we just take the tone down? Because I'm not trying to undermine anything that you just said. I just, I think that there's a really universal lying issue that anyone listening, wherever their political views may be, something that they can take away from this is,

is that we need to separate politics. It isn't a political question, it's a human question, right? It's hate or not hate. Of course it's a human question, but human questions are political questions. And I don't think one should... But hate is in all of us, right? Of course it is. That's the enemy. Of course it is. But the reality is that you can't separate issues of racism from issues of politics because politics uses issues of racism. I mean, I would agree with you that when anti-Semitism is weaponized, the idea of anti-Semitism loses its meaning because...

Because people define anti-Semitism as something to suit their political position. And what that does is it means anti-Semitism, which is very simple. Hatred of Jews as Jews, which is where we started, loses its meaning. But to say we stop speaking about anti-Semitism, the reason that I respond to that is the opposite happens when we weaponize it.

So, for instance, not a week goes by where on social media or in some event or broadcast that I'm doing, someone doesn't either call me a self-hating anti-Semitic Jew or describe my mother because she survived the Holocaust hidden in a coal cellar for three and a half years and lost dozens of her family, mainly in Auschwitz, where I've lectured on genocide prevention. And I am called...

a self-hating anti-Semitic Jew, and they say, and your mother must have been a kap, which is a Nazi collaborator, if she survived.

She was seven years old in 1938 when Austria was occupied by the Nazis. And amongst other people, a rabbi made that statement on social media. So it's not that we stop talking about anti-Semitism. It's that the weaponization of anti-Semitism is very, very dangerous for Jews.

And unfortunately, our politicians, including my own MP, who should be defending Jews in his constituency, is actually part of the mob attacking Jews in his own constituency if we happen to have political views that are different to his. That is the state we are in. Now, when we think about what this all comes down to, I agree with you entirely.

And what I appreciate about the fact that you've had this topic on today is because the weaponization of anti-Semitism undermines our ability to live in a non-racial world, to live in a world in which everybody is treated with the respect and dignity they deserve.

Andrew Feinstein, thank you for joining us. And before we lose you, is there anything that you have to plug? Is there anywhere that listeners can follow you? I'm on all of the usual social media. For my sins, I have quite a big profile on X. And look at the work of my organization, Shadow World Investigations at shadowworldinvestigations.org.

Because the world of militarism and the arms trade unfortunately has become so tied in to issues of politics, to issues of racism.

Now, before we wrap up, one more person we want to hear from for some insights into what this debate and topic looks like in the US is Alex Kane. Welcome, Alex. Thank you for joining me. Thanks for having me on. So we asked our guest, Andrew Feinstein, about what anti-Semitism in the UK looks like today. What does it look like in the US? Is anti-Semitism escalating?

Yeah, it's a complicated question. I think it's clear that, particularly in the time period that I've been focusing on issues around anti-Semitism and the politics of Israel-Palestine and where they intersect, that it has been on the rise and there's a number of various trigger points that we can point to, I think, that have been on the rise.

Beginning in 2015 and 2016, we had the rise of Donald Trump as a major political force and that empowered the so-called alt-right, which was openly white supremacist and was a coalition of neo-Nazis and online trolls and that far-right political spectrum. In between, we saw that, of course, sort of culminate in the infamous Charlottesville protests and riot that resulted in the death of Heather Heyer in 2017.

That was an important trigger point, but I think probably the more recent trigger point

was October 7th and the aftermath. When Israel began its genocidal campaign in retaliation for the Hamas-led October 7th attacks, we did see a spike in anti-Semitism. This is often the case, academics have studied this, that when Israeli military operations occur, incidents of anti-Semitism spike, and we have definitely seen that in the United States. Because people in doing so are conflating

American Jews with Israeli Jews and Zionism with Judaism. And we have to, of course, be very careful to differentiate between those two because, of course, there are a large minority of Jews who are anti-Zionist. And of course, just as a general principle, people should not be holding individual Jews or individual Jewish institutions accountable for the actions of a foreign government. Now,

That said, there is also a lot of what is claimed or classified as anti-Semitism by major American Jewish organizations that, in my view and many other scholars and activists and advocates' view, is simply not anti-Semitism and is rather criticism of the Israeli government or anti-Zionism. For example, the most prominent organization that tracks anti-Semitism in the United States is the Anti-Defamation League.

They release reports every year saying that there are massive spikes in anti-Semitism in the United States. And I don't doubt that there are, in fact, massive spikes. But the problem with the ADL data, as we have shown at Jewish Currents in a number of pieces, is that they classify basic anti-Zionist speech as anti-Semitic. And so that's where it gets difficult to actually quantify. So just to sum up, yes, it is a problem. Yes, it has spiked.

But there's also a lot of nuance and gray area within that. Is the U.S. unequivocal in its support for Israel? And if so, why? I mean, it is sort of the million dollar question here.

I mean, there has been a very large Palestine solidarity movement in the United States. And so there has been a massive shift in public opinion in terms of how people in the United States are viewing the Israeli government. But that shift in public opinion has certainly not translated into shifts in policy in the United States.

There's many reasons for that. And it also depends on what side of the political spectrum you're talking about. So on the sort of right wing side of the political spectrum, you have white Christian evangelicals who form a core of the Republican Party base, who have sort of biblical inflected worldview that sees support for Israel as integral. And

And I think that mixes in with an imperial worldview, a worldview in which the United States should be the world hegemon, the global hegemon, and that Israel is a very important partner in that. And so that's obviously...

not a worldview only shared by Christian evangelicals or only shared by people in the Republican Party, but I think it's widely shared across the Washington political establishment. I mean, after 9-11, Israel cast itself as on the front lines of fighting for Western civilization against Islamist terror. And now you have a sort of shared antipathy to Iran in the region. And then, of course, there's the domestic sort of money and politics question where

You have, over the decades, a very influential, moneyed political lobbying operation, the most famous of which, of course, is AIPAC, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. That is significant. And then I would say the last thing to consider is

is one of the reasons why Republican politicians and frankly, Democratic politicians as well are so freaked out about the Palestine solidarity movements because people are talking about issues of settler colonialism and reparations and refugee return. And all of these are issues that strike at the heart of the United States. You've long had calls to, say, issue reparations and

to black Americans and their families who were impacted by slavery, to issue reparations to indigenous Americans whose land was stolen.

And so I think people in the United States who view the United States as an exceptional nation sees calls for the right of return for Palestinians, for reparations for Palestinians, for the end of Israeli colonialism as having echoes that they do not want to hear apply to the United States. Thank you so much for that answer. Very thorough and very helpful.

I wonder just finally, does this mean that the bulk of the Jewish population in the US, they do feel attacked when people criticize Israel or the actions of the Israeli government? I think significant amounts of Jewish people do in the United States.

Not all. And I just want to say that at the outset that it's certainly not all. And there are differences even among sort of Jewish denomination. You know, there's reform Judaism, there's Orthodox Judaism. These different communities have different relationships to the state of Israel. But despite those differences, I do think there is something of a consensus for many Jews that, and this was particularly the case after October 7th, that, you know, criticizing Israel is an attack on Jews.

the basic cultural, the sort of baseline Jew in America grows up and is told that Israel is your homeland and Israelis are your people and Judaism and Zionism are one and the same. And so when you hear people attack Zionism, you hear it as an attack on Jews. And so it's not surprising when people are educated in those institutions that send that message that that is the case. Now, last thing I'll say is that

I would say that there's a significant minority of Jews, whether they say they're anti-Zionist or non-Zionist or even sort of liberal Zionists who believe in Israel as a Jewish state but are critical of Israel's occupation, don't

take it as an attack. And I think that it's a very large group of people as well. So there is no one singular Jewish community. There's a significant minority, growing minority of Jews who are horrified by Israel's actions and are speaking out just as other groups of people are speaking out against the genocide in Gaza.

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