How the Left Turned Against the Jews

April 2012

Political and personal betrayals filled her life. But as Colin Shindler shows in his Israel and the European Left (Continuum, £17.99), her embrace of anti-Semitism would have struck her fellow Communists as no betrayal at all.

Before I go further, I should say that Shindler's book is superb: a well-written and meticulously researched history of the horrors and ironies of the last 100 years. He shows how screaming stereotypes and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories developed by Marxists — not by fascists or Islamists or Catholic and Orthodox nationalists, but by the Left — have survived while all around has changed.

Given the cramped nature of British debate, I doubt if it will be widely reviewed. The right-wing press won't like it because it is not a conventional denunciation of the Left. Shindler is a properly impartial historian, but when his beliefs show through he reveals himself to be a social democrat rather than an Israel-firster or man of the Right. The left-wing press won't like it for the same reason Caliban did not like the sight of his face in the mirror. Beyond the ideological divide lies the almost taboo nature of Shindler's subject. Conventional wisdom does not regard Communism with the same abhorrence as fascism, even though if you want to be an accountant about it and add up the skulls of the dead, you will find that the Communists murdered many more people than the fascists did, began murdering before fascists came to power and carried on murdering after the fascists had gone. Yet few can bring themselves to see fascism and Communism as moral equivalents. Even Robert Conquest, who mapped the crimes of Stalin, and had been mocked by the know-nothing Left of his day as a Cold War fantasist, said he thought the Nazis were worse than the Communists. He couldn't explain why, they just felt worse.

A part of the explanation for the double standard is that the allies overthrew the Nazis in 1945 and opened their archives. The democratic world could read what they had done. China's archives on Mao, the greatest criminal of the 20th century, remain closed. Perhaps historians will never read them in full. More important than the scarcity of source material is the woozy feeling that Communism's aims — equality, universal fraternity — were noble, whereas not even Germans and Italians can now find reasons to applaud racist theories of German or Italian domination.

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August 5th, 2012
7:08 PM

Nick, 95% of your article is totally correct and i am in full agreement with it. As far as the "difficulties", between the two sides which will go down as the understatement of the 20th and 21st century there is, and for some reason i cannot find it now, where you speak about a Jewish and Palistinian state. Ordinarily i would say that even to think like that after so many years is rubbish, but because i have too much respect for you just let me say in no uncertain terms fuhgeddaboudit. Israel would never trust the Palestinians to arm themselves and no self-respecting Palestinian nation would agree to anything less. This little item has more potential conflict about it than if they were talking about 100 JERUSALEMS. Naturally neither side ever got that far because they argue about RELATIVELY minor issues, but just wait, this one will eclipse all of the others including JERUSALEM. A 2 state solution concept never had a chance in the past. NOTHING HAS CHANGED. IT IS STILL THE SAME. Manny

tewks

June 29th, 2012
12:06 PM

Ed Walker knows very little history. About 750,000 Arabs left or were driven out when they started a war against Israel. Yet about 850,000 Jews were driven out of Iraq and Arab countries. It is like the massive transfers of population that occurred when British India was divided into India and Pakistan, yet so much trendy opinion falsely thinks population movement only went one way.

Ganpat Ram

June 3rd, 2012
3:06 AM

It is worth noting that George Orwell whom Cohen presumably respects was a stern critic of the Jewish claim to Palestine.

June 1st, 2012
3:06 AM

I would like to know how Mr Cohen can state, apparently without fear of contradiction, that the book was "meticulously researched". Was he there at the time the researched was performed? Or is it just that Mr Cohen is making the irrational jump in believing that quantity of data supplied demonstrates quality of research of data.

AnonymousGanpat Ram

June 1st, 2012
12:06 AM

Why cannot we have some elementary honesty in this debate? I am a Hindu who has plenty to be critical about regarding Islam. But since when has it been a crime to be critical of the Zionist project? If Cohen is even a little informed on this topic he must know that it was not until the Holocaust and the founding of Israel that the majority of Jews world-wide became favourable to the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine. Until then Zionists were never more than a significant minority even among Jews. What would Cohen feel if the entity he calls the Left, as if it were a single undifferentiated bloc - if the Left actually did what he wants and ceased to question the idea of Zionism? Would even Cohen be happy? Would he not find it strange that a political project that involved depriving a native population of Arabs of the right to control their own land in favour of people coming from Europe and America on the flimsy pretex that their ancestors had been the majority there a few thousand years ago......Would a Left which refused to question this claim not be considered a little unbalanced? The truth is that one can accept Israel as a reality due to the Holocaust and the events of the 1940s but that does not mean one denies that an injustice was done to the Arabs. Even Ben-Gurion forthrightly admitted it. He declared that had he been as Arab he would never have accepted the claims of the Zionists. He was an honest man.

Joanne Gerber

May 20th, 2012
3:05 AM

Actually, even though totalitarian Communist regimes killed a lot more people than the Nazis (and don't forget, the Communist regimes were around a lot longer), there is one way in which the Nazis were worse. Although the regimes of Stalin, Mao, etc. were tyrannies, at least the ideals of Marxism itself were humanitarian, something good people could believe in, at least early on: worker's solidarity, social justice, equality, etc. Nazi ideology, on the other hand, was evil at its core. Stalinism was a corruption of Marxist socialism. Nazism didn't have to be corrupted; it was putrid from the start.

CS Barnett

May 2nd, 2012
5:05 AM

Please, go research the facts about Israel.There was no ethnic cleansing.That is completely false.As a matter of fact,when the early Zionists arrived to clear the swamps, and make the unyielding earth fertile and productive, the Arab neighbors originally did not mind.The Jews in short order employed the Arabs , who liked the jobs and the food grown. Hadassah came in and provided education, clean clothes, hygienic areas,healthcare, and modern medicine for the Jews and the Arabs.Then, the British Mandate's administrators , who were highly anti-Semitic and opposed to the Balfour Declaration and its provisions, arrived in the early Twenties. They proceeded to instigate the Arabs against the Jews and they used the Arabs to do their dirty work and propagandized releases and reports placing blame on the Arabs. There is an excellent account of this history in a book written many years ago by an eyewitness, a Dutch, Christian, journalist and writer, of exceptional reach, resources, and sources, experience, an observation.His name is Pierre Van Paassen. He was enormously respected and in this book and others provides interviews and accounts featuring almost every leader, politically and religiously, and policymaker in the 20's, '30's, and '40's.The specific book to which I refer is " Forgotten Ally ." There is history recorded by Van Paassen that will astound you, if you are an American, a British citizen, or a Jew, an Arab/Muslim, or Christian. I, also, recommend, " Myths and Facts" by Eli Hertz.

richard landes

April 29th, 2012
6:04 PM

Ed: India and Pakistan were created out of a massive massacre and ethnic cleansing (in the millions of dead, tens of millions of displaced). that doesn't bother you? it doesn't bother you that while 20% of the Israeli population is Arab Muslim, the planned Palestinian state won't allow any Jews to live there? do you object to the czechs ethnically cleansing the germans after WWII?

sergio

April 21st, 2012
7:04 AM

Ironic, but the entire topic reminds me of today’s unconventional attitude among Iraqi communists. Traditionally, most Iraqi lefties (and their prominent leaders) were from the South, and as we all know, 90% or more of Iraqi’s Southern inhabitants are Shiite Muslims. Now, despite being one of the oldest communist parties in the region with a history that expands more than seven decades, and seeing that except for a short period (between 1958 and 1963) they’ve hardly ever been in power and were savagely prosecuted since 1963 when The Baath party first came to power, where the surviving majority either flee to hide up north, among the Kurdish freedom fighters, or seek asylum in Western and Eastern capitals. It is rather perplexing and hard to believe that today (and since the fall of Saddam) and after a lifelong struggle and wait, they have thrown themselves in the arms of Shiite religion leaders and their first and foremost loyalty is to their religious and ethnic background, rather than their long held “communist values and aspirations”. Mind you, all despite the paradox in principles and communist’s traditional point of view on religion…!? On that note and on the same token; I can’t help but wonder: Generally speaking and when it came to the crunch; what really came first to a Jewish communist, is it the loyalty to his religion-bound ethnicity, or communist principles and values!? Just a thought

drakool muncher

April 17th, 2012
2:04 PM

Stalins mother was Jewish. 82% of the commie bolshevik leadership were Jews. Stalin suckered Hitler. Stalin started WW2. The Russians were supposed to go into Poland AT THE SAME TIME AS THE GERMANS - AND MEET IN THE MIDDLE. Stalin held back to make the Germans look like the bad guys, the Allies declared war on Germany and then the Russians went into Poland achieving all of their objectives. No one declared war on the Russians. Stalin was about to invade Germany and the West when Hitler realised what he was up to Hitler had no choice but to invade the commie USSR. Stalin outsmarted everyone, including Hitler. Stalin started World War 2.

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