There have been many times in politics -- and more frequently since the rise of social media -- when that has felt like the most appropriate response to an outrageous statement. But never more so than when the 2013 remarks of Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the UK s opposition Labour Party, about British Zionists were revealed by the Daily Mail newspaper:
"[British Zionists] clearly have two problems. One is they don t want to study history, and secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, they don t understand English irony either... They needed two lessons, which we could perhaps help them with."
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My immediate thought was "Does he mean me?" I m British and I m a Zionist. I m not Jewish -- I m actually a Scottish Catholic -- but I am a Zionist since I fully support the right of the state of Israel to exist, the right of Jews worldwide to have a homeland and the right to self-determination.
The other words fit me too.
I ve lived in this country for a very long time -- most of my life in fact. And as a Scot, maybe I don t really get English irony. But did he mean me? How can one get to the truth?
The police have a simple test. In any investigation, they say the most important question to start with is "Who are his friends?"
Well, who are Jeremy s friends in this attack on Zionists?
"Go, Jezza!" went one tweet from an enthusiastic supporter who saw the news article as part of what he termed a "hysterical #Zionist media campaign." Unfortunately for Corbyn, this enthusiastic supporter was none other than Nick Griffin, the former leader of the fascist British National Party and a man who calls himself a "Lifelong white rights fighter."
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To be honest, unfortunate isn t the word -- it is disgusting that the words of the leader of the Labour Party can be endorsed by such a man. And the nauseating thing is that this is not the first time.
Former KKK leader David Duke was effusive in his praise of Jeremy Corbyn s election as Labour leader:
"It s a really good kind of evolutionary thing, isn t it, when people are beginning to recognize Zionist power and ultimately the Jewish establishment power in Britain and in the western world."
Anti-Zionism, I always thought, was the anti-Semitism of fools. But these words by Jeremy Corbyn show something far darker.
He certainly uses English idioms, but the one that is most contemptible of all -- the lower middle-class racism that masquerades as false exasperation -- is that people won t just fit in.
They ve lived here "all their lives." They haven t "studied history." They don t understand "English." If Boris Johnson had used these words of Black or Asian Britons, then Corbyn would have been the first to be self-righteously tweeting. But he felt free to say them of British Zionists, and I am finding it very hard to believe that by this he did not mean British Jews.
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Jeremy Corbyn claims he has an unblemished track record of fighting racism. These words contradict that. Read properly, they are terrifying. Some find the idea that British Jews need a lesson the most frightening of his comments. I disagree. Less often quoted is the part where Corbyn refers to "thankfully silent Zionists" -- that is as sinister a statement as it is shocking.
David Duke uses the words Zionist and Jew interchangeably. It is, indeed, a distinction without a difference. No attack on Zionism makes sense when applied to non-Jewish Zionists like me. No wonder this is the hill on which Corbyn s supporters are willing to die.
Anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism, they cry. And they have taken this all the way and used their votes on the Labour Party s ruling National Executive Committee to keep it from adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance s definition of anti-Semitism in full.
I often wondered why this was the pedantic battle they chose. I wonder no more.
