Denis MacShane In today’s Ha’aretz, Britain’s’s former Minister for Europe, Denis MacShane, pens a trenchant critique of English anti-Semitism, bitingly entitled: “Wake up to the anti-Semitism, you complacent British middle classes.” MacShane has seen hard times recently, but today’s intervention demonstrates that he is still a vital voice on the global scene. In this new piece, MacShane castigates the English middle classes, as well as the U.K. Employment Tribunal, and calls for a thorough review of strategies to combat anti-Semitism. MacShane, who resigned his seat in parliament last year in the wake of a financial scandal, has long been a stalwart enemy of all forms of anti-Semitism. MacShane concedes, in an effective bit of self-criticism, that he tends to see anti-Semitism everywhere: Just before the 1997 election a row broke out when the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung described Britain’s then Foreign Secretary, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, as “the Jew Rifkind…” In my diary of the time, I recorded a dinner exchange in Islington, north London between two old university friends: “We have a big discussion on anti-Semitism after the Rifkind row. The main protagonists are Jonathan, who says it’s everywhere, and Flavia who says it doesn’t exist. Thus the two worlds of England today. A caring, liberal, wholly English upper-middle class woman who has simply never encountered anti-Semitism and an earnest, engaged, energetic Jew like Jonathan who has never stopped encountering it. I side with Jonathan of course, and it remains a big problem that the rising intolerance, whether it is about Jews or Muslims, is simply not understood by many decent people in this country.” MacShane reviews this entry in trying to make sense of the recent case of Fraser vs. UCU, which this blog has analyzed before. See Lesley Klaff (“Employment Tribunal Sanctions Antisemitism”) and Harold Brackman (“Which is the Englishman Here, and Which the Jew? Or Is It the Zionist?”), as well as our x-post, (“David Hirsh on the English Academic Anti-Semitism Case, Fraser vs. UCU“) MacShane concludes that his countrymen are generally incapable of understanding the contemporary resurgence of anti-Semitism: Trying to persuade the complacent, comfortable, critical-of-Israel middle classes in England that anti-Semitism is a live problem and one that constantly manifests itself in new forms is an uphill task. Giles Fraser (no relation to Ronnie), is England’s most prominent Anglican priest, and wrote recently that “Even assimilated Jews are not always protected by their integration with surrounding society.” MacShane sees the Fraser ruling as confirmation of this problem: Sadly, an English judicial tribunal has just confirmed the Rev. Fraser’s thesis. To read in full the banal, contemptuous dismissal of Ronnie Fraser’s efforts to show that a one-sided ban on contacts with Jewish academics in Israel, decreed by the U.K.’s University and College Union (of lecturers), was an assault on his existence as a Jew, was a miserable experience. MacShane is not surprised that the U.K.’s Employment Tribunal was incapable of grasping Fraser’s arguments. To Ronnie Fraser’s brave legal team I expressed my concern that employment law judges were not people who were intellectually equipped to deal with the UCU’s action against Jews in the U.K. and in Israel. But they believed that the law exists to protect the individual against a powerful, wealthy organization like a trade union. They were wrong. The ugliness of the tribunal findings beggars belief. The European Union’s definition of anti-Semitism is dismissed. The work of the House of Commons Committee of Inquiry into anti-Semitism that I chaired – which forced a change in government policy to acknowledge anti-Semitic attacks – is rubbished. The efforts of Fraser to use the law are openly insulted. The view of an important public Commission of Inquiry into the 1993 racist murder of a black youth, Stephen Lawrence, which stated that the police are obliged to investigate crimes that the victim of discrimination or attacks believes to be motivated by racial or religious hatred, is thrown away. MacShane tries to explain the tribunal’s weakness: I was a witness at the tribunal, and it was clear that I was facing three middle-class English people who – like my friend that I noted in my diary – just refused to accept that anti-Semitism is a contemporary problem. I looked at their implacable, indifferent, bored faces and knew the case was lost. But sometime it is better to fight and lose than wait for a perfect moment when your case and cause will emerge triumphant. In conclusion, MacShane calls for a thorough review of efforts to combat anti-Semitism. Those engaged in combating anti-Semitism in Britain are down-hearted. But although I am not Jewish, I am proud to have been linked with the cause Ronnie Fraser stood for. The struggle goes on despite the faint-hearts and the self-righteous, those who express their wisdom after the event, who wish it had never been engaged. What is needed now is a major review of the last decade of combating anti-Semitism and hate of Israel. The EU’s indifference to the open commemoration of Waffen SS Jew-killers in Lithuania and Latvia, as well as the entry into mainstream is worrying. … The struggle against anti-Semitism is more relevant than ever; but working out the best strategy and tactics for the next decade of work is now overdue. We agree that the campaign against global anti-Semitism would profit from strategic review. Whether existing forums, such as the Global Forum in Jerusalem, are adequate to the task, remains an open question.