Chris Davies, MEP for the northwest of England, has resigned as the leader of the Liberal Democrat group in the European Parliament. He was not sacked because he criticized Israel or because the "Jewish lobby" forced him out.
A reader of Jewish News sent him an angry e-mail criticising him for a remark that he made a couple of weeks ago (the whole correspondence is available here) in which he said that after a visit to Auschwitz, he found it difficult to understand why "those whose history is one of such terrible oppression", ie Jews, "appear not to care that they have themselves become oppressors". She criticized him for comparing current Israeli policy to the Holocaust. He replied with a one-line e-mail: "Sounds like racism to me. I hope you enjoying wallowing in your own filth."
She responded that this was a disgraceful way to reply to a constituent's e-mail. Rather than apologise, he wrote back to her denouncing Israeli policy and the "Jewish lobby". When Jewish News asked him to comment he said that at the time he had received a number of abusive emails. He then offered to enter into a dialogue with his constituent on the condition thatn she first detail her own disagreements with Israeli policy.
Nearly a week later, Liberal Democrat Central Office reported that Chris Davies had now offered a "fulsome apology" for his remarks to the constituent. Menzies Campbell, the leader of the Lib Dems said that he had agreed with Davies that it would be proper for him to resign.
Some people will try to spin this story as an example of how the powerful and international Israel lobby is able to force the resignation of politicians who criticise Israel. So lets analyse carefully at how "the lobby" achieved this.
Firstly, Jewish News reported Chris Davies' comments which he had already put on his own website. Then a number of people sent abusive emails to Davies. Then the Jewish News reader sent him an email criticising him for comparing Israel's treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank with the Holocaust.
In the meantime, I myself had written a piece criticising Davies' use of the clichéd Jews-should-know-better argument.
Jewish News went to the leadership of the Liberal Democrats for a comment, and Menzies Campbell sacked Chris Davies (by mutual agreement).
One freebie weekly newspaper; a number of nutters sending abusive e-mails; at least one more considered e-mail writer; a sociology lecturer with a website and a CIF blog. This constellation of mighty influence will, I guarantee, be presented as a manifestation of the power of the global "Lobby" which smoothly moved into action to have this critic of Israel punished.
Chris Davies was not forced to resign because he criticised Israel but he did say a number of things that one could argue made him an unsuitable person to hold the post of Lib Dem leader in the European Parliament. None of these things include criticising Israeli policy. I believe that he is right to criticise Israeli policy.
Firstly he made use of two analogies which are routinely used not to shed light on the Israel/Palestine conflict, but to demonize Israel and to foster a commonsense popular loathing of Israel. The Israel/Palestine conflict is a nasty and long-running dispute over (on a global scale) a small amount of territory, in which neither party is entirely right or wrong. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank relies on organised daily violence, repression and humiliation of Palestinians. Many Palestinian responses to the occupation (and to the presence of Jews in Israel) have been murderous and self-defeating. But the idea that Israel is a Nazi state is absurd and offensive. There is not, and there never has been, a genocide of Palestinians; there are no Israeli gas-chambers, concentration camps or Einsatzgruppen; the numbers of deaths on both sides throughout the conflict are analogous to the number of murders that the Nazi regime routinely committed every few minutes.
The apartheid analogy is also false, employed to elicit an emotional reaction, not to clarify issues. Arabs within Israel have full citizenship, legal rights, representation in the Knesset and freedom of movement. While there is a serious problem of racism against Arabs in Israel, and this includes significant institutionalised racism, this is not an apartheid state. Things are worse in the West Bank, where Jewish settlers, backed by Israel, do live in a colonial relationship with Palestinians. But the Jewish settlers ought to go home to Israel; a peace between Israel and Palestine will not be forged in a unitary state (like the new South Africa). It will be a two state solution precisely because this is a struggle between two national communities, not a struggle against an apartheid system of racism.
So Davies made use of two demonizing analogies. He also claimed that Jews had now become "oppressors" and that they don't seem to care. This claim is particularly inflamatory in the context of the northwest of England, where the BNP is trying to organise the "white" vote and the Islamists are trying to organise the "Muslim" vote.
And then Davies insulted his constituent who criticized him by denouncing her as a racist (because he assumed she was a "Zionist") and writing "I hope you enjoying wallowing in your own filth."
He denounced what he called the "Jewish lobby" that, he claimed, has too much influence. He later said that he stood by this comment, but admitted that didn't understand the distinction between the claim that there is a "Jewish lobby" and the claim that there is a "pro-Israel" lobby. The claim that Jews have an inordinate influence is, of course, an old and well-worn antisemitic theme. This is an excellent illustration of how the formal care to avoid openly antisemitic rhetoric taken by sophisticates like Mearsheimer and Walt and Robert Fisk is missed by less sophisticated people who seek to use what they understand the respectable academics and journalists have argued.
Chris Davies is not an antisemite. He is not motivated by Jew-hatred. But he is guilty of serious negligence. Davies has gone out of his way to intervene in the Israel/Palestine conflict and he has taken an extremist position that he has fiercely defended. But he never bothered to educate himself with any seriousness about the conflict. More importantly, he never bothered to educate himself about the nature of contemporary antisemitism. He is not a racist but he has shown himself to be careless, thoughtless and ignorant about anti-Jewish racism. When he was publicly challenged over the potentially antisemitic discourse that he seemed to be buying into through ignorance, instead of stopping to think about it, he angrily refused to consider the possibility. You can be sure that he is not similarly careless, thoughtless or ignorant when it comes to anti-black racism or anti-Muslim racism. Liberals and politicians on the left don't make the same kind of "mistakes" when emailing their black or asian constituents.
Davies has not had to resign because he is a racist or because he criticized Israel or because the global Jewish Lobby has taken its revenge. He has had to resign because his laudable instinct to side with the underdog was not tempered by care, thought or self-education. His self-righteous anger at one injustice led him to close his eyes to the possibility of another.
We should not feel that we have to make a choice about whether to oppose anti-Arab racism or anti-Jewish racism. We must oppose both. If we fail to stand against both then we become partisans for the extreme end of one nationalism or the other; we become bigots, not liberals and we cannot rightfully claim to be on the left.