TELEVISION: How to spot a Good Jew
An End to the Affair [BBC2]
What a wacky, loveable, card that Gerald Kaufman is, eh? Did you see his programme about Israel, An End to the Affair? (BBC2, September 7th). Plenty of stuff about those weird guys dressed in black with beards and sidelocks who, in Gerald’s words, and to his palpable distaste, ‘infest’ the streets of Jerusalem. Many distressed Arab women burying their dead. Nice rabid soundbites from hysterical American settlers of ‘Samaria’. And he can sound off himself about Sharon’s ‘policy to murder disabled Arabs’ (a new one on me). But then he slips in a shot of himself smiling as he gawps round an Israeli Elvis memorabilia centre (‘I saw Elvis Presley at the Wailing Wall’ T-shirts), and that shows that he’s a regular guy, right? Just expressing the opinions of every Mr. Average.
I’m not going to rehearse here all the arguments over Israel/Palestine. For the record, I’m a mildly observant Jew who is not a Zionist and who is opposed to the policies of Mr. Sharon, but is a strong supporter of Israel as the only outpost of democracy and freedom between - well, I’m inclined to say between the UK and the USA. What I want to examine are the motives of Mr. Kaufman and of the BBC in producing this one-hour documentary which, incidentally, was consciously broadcast during the Jewish New Year holiday such that those who were deliberately attacked in it - orthodox Jews - would have no chance of seeing it or responding to it. And when I say ‘attacked’ I mean that the programme consciously offered a number of what might easily be construed as incitements to racism against Jews. Moreover I will indicate that the personal attitudes broadcast by Mr. Kaufman have possibly significant implications for UK politics.
Gerald Kaufman was born in 1930, in his own words into 'a strictly observant but loving' home (carrying, please note, the implication that this combination was or is somehow unusual). He thus belongs to a generation, which until quite recently has dominated Anglo-Jewish opinion, that is always keen to ‘spot the Nazi’. If there are problems it is convenient to lay them at the feet of one big baddie. This role has been taken at various times by Colonel Nasser, Sheik Yamani, Eduard Shevardnaze (conveniently homophonous) and Yasser Arafat. For Kaufman, that daring controversialist/self-publicist, no-one fits the role better than Ariel Sharon, the ‘blustering bully’ and ‘war criminal’ he indicted in his Commons speech of April this year, who has made Israel ‘an international pariah’.
Mr Kaufman’s affair with Israel, the death of which the programme mourned, began of course after the Second World War when he was (although he could never now admit it) a Zionist. In the heady days of the foundation of the state of Israel, Zionism was generally considered as that oxymoron, a socialist nationalist movement (not to be confused in any way with that recently defeated National Socialist movement). The Zionists with whom Kaufman emoted (but never sufficiently to give up the chance of a British political career), and with whom he still maintains relations as evidenced by his film, were the settlers who wished to transform themselves into horny-handed sons of toil in collective farms (kibbutzim) and create what they thought would be a ‘true’ manifestation of Communism. (Hence Russia’s withholding its veto when the nation was created by the UN).The kibbutzim were early drivers of Israel’s reconstruction and productivity and leaders from the left (largely Germans or ‘cultured’ Russians and Poles) naturally formed the country’s political aristocracy.
As the country has developed economically and changed socially (especially by the large-scale ‘non-Western’ immigration from the former USSR, and from Asian and African countries) the prosperity and influence of the kibbutzim and their socialist political principles have declined. The kibbutzniks now only form a small proportion of the population, and much of the Mount Carmel around Haifa and the area around (Israeli) Jerusalem, he complains, are now built over with horrid blocks of flats to house these others. This, it is clear, is what upsets Kaufman greatly: Israel now contains too many of the wrong kind of Jews. (It is interestingly, exactly, the attitude held by Victor Klemperer in his diaries of 1930s Germany - of Jewish descent himself, he originally felt it might be no bad thing if Hitler could deal with all those nasty Polish Jews not as cultured as he and his circle. Of course, Klemperer found himself ultimately destined for a death-train, and escaped only because . . . well, read the diaries.
Kaufman’s resentment at the ‘wrong sort’ is the core of the tantrum represented by ‘The End of An Affair’. The programme is part of a sustained campaign by Kaufman over recent months; the same resentment lies behind, for example, his Commons speech and his statements a few weeks earlier at a conference organised by the Zayed Centre for Co-Ordination and Follow-Up (ZCCF). For those who have never heard of this organization, it is a ‘mechanism to highlight the concept of Arab Solidarity’ and named after (and presumably financed by) H.H. Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan, President of the United Arab Emirates. The ZCCF proclaims that it is staunchly against anti-Semitism, but as it also denies that Jews are Semites (‘It is history which says that most of the world Jews are descendants of Japhet, and have no relation whatsoever with the Semites’, ‘the major aim of the Centre was to provide scientifically established facts which would reveal the malicious uses of the term “Anti-Semitism” throughout the history of the Israeli/Arab struggle’), this proclamation is not as reassuring as it might be.
Mr Kaufman was ‘ashamed that members of the Israeli Labour Party are members of the current Israeli government’ Sharon is ‘a criminal of war (sic). He has been responsible for the war against Lebanon and he represents the self-destruction of Israel . . . I have never imagined that the Israeli people are too crazy (sic again - sic as a dog as Dorothy Parker had it) to choose Sharon as their Prime Minister’. In other words, democracy is OK as long as it’s people who think exactly like me and my friends that vote - otherwise it’s a criminal conspiracy. How the democrat Sheik Zayed must have applauded.
Anyone watching Mr Kaufman’s programme, in which he repeatedly insinuated that his criticisms were made far more in sorrow than in anger, would have little doubt that it is these ‘wrong Jews’ who are Sharon’s principal partners in crime. We were shown the streets of Jerusalem along which were walking sinister figures dressed in black, with hats, beards and sidelocks. We could hear the revulsion in Mr Kaufman’s voice as he told of his disgust at finding these people ‘infesting’ the country he had once loved. We were shown settlers of American origin and/or those who professed 'ultra-orthodox' religious opinions as those who were betraying Mr Kaufman’s dream and provoking violence, nationalism and anti-Arab violence. Our presenter seemed particularly peeved that his remaining kibbutz-friends were not motivated to denounce these ‘others’ as much as he would have wished; the fact that they had genuine fears that, given half a chance, Arabs might sweep Jews ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ into the Mediterranean was not broached. What Kaufman did take a malicious pleasure in expressing, however, was the vile idea that Israel, possessing a nuclear bomb, might detonate it in a form of mass suicide when it proved helpless under a future Arab attack - a grotesque slander at which even Gerald Kaufman’s left-thinking Israeli friend blanched, before giving a convinced and convincing refutation. No doubt however we will see this putative apocalypse regularly henceforth by anti-Israeli propagandists as a potential Israeli ‘horror’ waiting to be released on the world.
Let’s go back to those Hasidim (ultra-orthodox Jews) wandering through Jerusalem. Mr Kaufman’s choice of descriptor, ‘infestation’, is highly suggestive. The idea of Jews, particularly those who don’t look like the rest of us, as an 'infestation' is alarmingly reminiscent of the vocabulary of nineteenth century anti-Semitic politics. 'Infestation' became, of course, a key word in Nazi propaganda. It would be interesting to understand Mr. Kaufman's motives and justification for employing this term. Had, for example, a BNP propaganda film taken in his own constituency shown Asians and Muslims in the streets of Manchester Gorton and expressed concern about them 'infesting' British streets I have no doubt that Mr. Kaufman would (rightly) have been the first to complain of racism. Orthodox Jews dressed exactly as in Mr. Kaufman's film walk (or 'infest' as he would have it) the streets of Stamford Hill in London, and Mr. Kaufman (with the help of the BBC) has used language thugs and racists employ in circumstances, to them, little different.
It’s hard for me, hardly consumed by self-love, to avoid the conclusion so often expressed by Mr Kaufman’s Anglo-Jewish critics, (and which he himself seems to exult as being, in his opinion, self-evidently incorrect), that Gerald Kaufman is a ‘self-hating Jew’. He is bullish about his credentials; ‘I am the last person in the world to be anti-Semitic . . . I am pro-Israel . . . I am obviously pro-Jew’ (BBC interview, 15th March 2002). But in his self-appointed role as a spokesman for caring Jewry (a role in which, incidentally, he is not recognised by the Anglo-Jewish community or indeed by anyone outside the BBC or the world of Labour politics), the Jews with whom he chooses to identify are a very small specific sub-set. Those who are religious, who are not socialist, who are not supporters of the German-Jewish cultural traditions are out of the loop (Einstein, Epstein, Mendelssohn, Mahler, Eisenstein and Billy Wilder are quoted in his Commons speech as being ‘the Jewish people[e’s] . . . gifts to civilised discourse’ - tough luck Moses, Maimonides and Spinoza). They are the horrid people who live in those nasty blocks of flats desecrating Mr Kaufman’s secular vision of a Holy Land - so unlike, of course, the municipal housing estates with which Labour has devoted itself in Britain throughout Mr Kaufman’s career to gerrymander its majorities. They are the nasty folk who insist on exercising their right of democratic choice and vote for people that Gerald Kaufman doesn’t like, who are not his mates. When Mr Kaufman in the early days of the Israeli state, supported the Right of Return, a fundamental part of Israel’s constitution, they just weren’t the Jews he can have had in mind at all. It’s a bit like the mindset twenty years ago, when Margaret Thatcher ‘may have been a woman, but she sure wasn’t a sister’.
Manchester Gorton’s finest doesn’t of course say how otherwise these ‘wrong Jews’ should be housed in Israel - or, if they shouldn’t be in Israel, where he would have them relocate. Back to Yemen, North Africa, Iraq? Back in the former Soviet Union? Those who originate from America of course should doubtless go straight back, but he doesn’t suggest what might happen to the others, who between them constitute by far the greatest proportion of Jewish immigrants and are thus responsible for most of Israel’s political shift. In fact, he doesn’t even mention them. The uninformed viewer would gather from the programme that, apart from ‘the right-wing thug’ Sharon, (BBC interview 15th March) there are only three types of Jews in Israel: good lefties, mad Americans and wicked fundamentalists. This misrepresentation from one who is putting himself forward as an authority can only be regarded as deliberate. Mr Kaufman's attempt to allocate political blame in Israel almost entirely to the 'religious right', although doubtless not racist, has an inescapably racialist tone.
The decision of the BBC to screen this programme at a time when no observant Jew might have watched it, during the New Year holiday, at a stroke deprived those who were attacked in the programme of the right to reply. This was not a case of the BBC being unaware of the implications of the timing; the Jewish Board of Deputies (the representative body for British Jews) had been in touch with the BBC advising them of this. Fiona Macaulay, who is the Board of Deputies’ Public Affairs Director (and also a member of the NUJ) asked for a pre-broadcast copy either for the Board or for herself as a journalist - other journalists had been issued with such copies - but this request was refused. The whole concept of the programme then, its content, its style and even the timing of its broadcast, can only be construed as a deliberate act of provocation by Mr Kaufman and the BBC. Its racist connotations, were they conscious, would be thoroughly evil; beng accidental, they are culpable.
Israel has mighty - in fact Almighty - problems, and as it happens I agree with Mr Kaufman that general Sharon cannot solve them. But I unreservedly disagree with him that Kaufman can solve them. His solution can only be extrapolated as cancelling the franchise of all those who disagree with his views. This is standard New Labour strategy, of course, but I prefer, unlike Blair and his brethren, to trust democracy to come up with the right answers. If Ariel Sharon doesn't bring peace, the Israelis will vote him out and replace him with someone who will - they are quite smart enough for the right man or woman to come forward. It would also be a help of course if someone smart and reliable came forward from the Palestinian side able to make and guarantee peace, a task which Yasser Arafat clearly cannot perform - this was a vacuum on which Mr Kaufman didn't comment. Opinion polls in Israel show that in such circumstances a clear majority of the Jewish population would be in favour of instant negotiations. What makes a nil contribution is for Gerald Kaufman to breeze by on BBC (that is, your and my) money, shaft his personal bugaboos and then retreat back to Westminster and the NFT.
And here we come to an unspoken subtext. Cancelling awkward people’s franchises is no novelty to Kaufman. He has already been subject to pressures to unseat him from Muslims in his own constituency. The Labour Party banned a number of Muslim members of the Gorton constituency party on the grounds that their nominations were unacceptable, and thus prevented them from taking part in the subsequent Parliamentary selection process. A later Labour Party enquiry then found that these members had been wrongly banned. This saga, along with other similar stories is examined by Kingsley Purdam, (‘Democracy in Practice: Muslims and the Labour Party at the Local Level’, Politics, 2001, vol 21(3), p. 150. The Labour Party, incidentally, has declined to make public the reports of either Gorton enquiry).
Mr Purdam further points out the growing Muslim political constituency in the UK and the importance to the Labour Party of retaining this support - some figures show that 92% of Asians supported Labour in the 1997 General Election. The Labour Party however still takes a ‘colonialist’ attitude to this support (as witness the Gorton episode) which risks leading to its alienation. Purdam quotes elected Muslim Labour councillors as saying (op. cit., p. 153):
‘The Labour party has used Asians - so have the Tories. It is time Muslims and Indians built strong base . . . and beat the bastards at their own game’.‘Labour Party officials only come round looking sympathetic when they want support’.
‘There is no commitment to Muslim issues’.
Support by prominent politicians of overseas Muslim causes could thus be a useful alternative to allowing democratic Muslim participation in the Labour Party. Mr Kaufman, although 72, clearly intends to soldier on to the bitter end (and in his case it will be extremely bitter). For his media credentials he needs to be able to present as a Good Jew; in Gorton he needs to be able to present as a good to Muslims. I don’t think I need to point out the lessons, about patronising voters through tokenism: we Tories can learn from all this.
We are none of us perfect; between now and the Day of Atonement (September 15th/16th) I and many other Jews will be reciting the Hebrew prayer Al Kheit listing the sins for which we seek forgiveness. Perhaps Gerald would like to join me in synagogue to recite the lines about ‘the sin we have sinned before Thee by evil speech . . . the sin we have sinned before thee by an arrogant mien . . . the sin we have sinned before thee by contentiousness’. And maybe Greg Dyke could join in on ‘the sin we have sinned before thee by a breach of trust’.
Allen Buchler's grandmother arrived in Britain as an illegal immigrant from Moldova in 1903. He is hoping David Blunkett won't catch up with him.
Allen Buchler, September 9, 2002 02:21 AM