Why Social Justice Warriors Can’t Deal With Antisemitism

This fundamental connection between “social justice” and anti-Jewish attitudes is denied by those circles—for whom any dissent is seen as proof positive of being “right-wing” and therefore evil. This is why their attempts to tackle anti-Jewish bigotry are doomed to failure.

In Britain, Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer has made a determined effort to rid his party of the stain of antisemitism that spread so brazenly under his hard-left predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn. The fruits of these efforts were manifest at the party’s annual conference this week. In his keynote speech, Starmer not only repeated his pledge to “rip out antisemitism by the roots,” but also spoke warmly of Israel and referred to the historic solidarity between Labour and its Israeli counterpart.

The significance of this speech was not that it was made by Starmer, a decent man married to a Jewish woman. It was that it received a standing ovation from party members who, instead of waving Palestinian flags en masse as they have done at Labour conferences as recently as last year, sang “God Save the King”—a monarchical first for the party whose customary sing-along choice is “The Red Flag.”

Whether or not this was the result of careful stage management, there seems little doubt that those in the hall had been genuinely revolted by their party’s epidemic of anti-Jewish bigotry and were relieved that Starmer had acted against it with such resolve.

But the openly anti-Jewish hard-left still exists within the party. And in “progressive” circles throughout the West, anti-Zionism and antisemitism are still rampant.

To realize this, you only have to imagine the reaction from liberal Britain and America if Israel is forced to escalate its attempts to quash the increasing levels of Arab radicalization and terrorist violence in the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria, or if it is forced to take military action in Gaza to suppress any renewed attacks from there.

Moreover, while Starmer boasted that Labour was now Britain’s “centrist” party, he is also the leader who in 2020 “took the knee” in support of Black Lives Matter, and who has struggled to say what a woman is. Any leader who refuses to face down these orthodoxies, which invert right and wrong and deny both rationality and moral responsibility, won’t reduce anti-Jewish and anti-Israel bigotry.

For the fate of Western civilization is linked to its attitude towards the Jews. To be anti-West is invariably to be anti-Jew or anti-Israel; to be anti-Jew or anti-Israel is invariably to undermine Western civilization. As Ruth Wisse writes: “The war against the Jews remains, as it has always been, a war of ideas against the Torah’s civilizing laws.”

British and American Jews with their heads stuck in the “progressive” sand need to realize that the alliance they must make in order to defend both the Jewish people and the West is not with social justice warriors but with those who oppose them.