THE government of Israel and its supporters make increasingly wild allegations of anti-semitism against anyone who thinks Israeli troops killing thousands of civilians is bad. By recklessly hitting the “anti-semitism” button, supporters of Israel’s war on Gazan civilians risk making the charge meaningless. 

I think the stupidity of this pro-war propaganda actually puts an extra duty on anti-war protesters to make efforts to stop any drift into anti-semitic attitudes at the fringes of our movements. 

Enthusiasts for the war on Gaza aren’t worried about “crying wolf” because they aren’t so interested in suppressing prejudice in the West — they just want to increase the bombing in the Middle East. But the struggle against racist prejudice of all kinds is vital to the left and anti-war movements, it’s something we have to keep up.

The wilder anti-semitism charges are a thin attempt to make the anti-war forces look like the morally charged “bad guys” — it’s an attempt to throw mud to cover up the spilled blood in Gaza — when the facts on the ground say something else.

The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) are responding to the October 7 Hamas terror attack with a war on the entire Palestinian population of Gaza, killing tens of thousands of civilian men, women and children, destroying hospitals, schools and houses. 

Their “free-fire” approach has even seen the IDF shoot at such obviously non-Hamas targets as Christian churches and Israeli hostages who had escaped from Hamas, waving white flags. This is a disgusting war. The US and Britain are doing all they can to back the killing, while our official opposition is doing its utmost to stop their MPs and members from calling for an end to the war — sacking shadow ministers and banning debates.

By contrast the international protest movement has been impressive, calling huge, grassroots demonstrations that have had real effect — we got a sense of that power when the Tory government, with some support from the Labour opposition, tried to brand anti-war protesters as “hate marchers” and supress them — or even encourage hard-right counter-demonstrators.

The protesters held firm, causing the fall of the home secretary. You can get an even stronger sense of the protest movement’s importance by listening to Benjamin Netanyahu. In December Israel’s Hayom newspaper got a recording of Netanyahu addressing local government officials. Netanyahu told them: “We need three things from the US: munitions, munitions and munitions,” but he worried that “there are huge demonstrations in Wwestern capitals,” creating political pressure that might stop the arms shipments. Israel’s prime minister said: “We need to apply counter-pressure.”

Netanyahu’s “counter-pressures” include wild charges of anti-semitism. We’ve seen pro-war newspapers and magazines print absurd nonsense like “calling for a ceasefire is an anti-semitic demand” or accusations that former Tory minister Ben Wallace is “stoking anti-semitism” by criticising the Gaza war.  

The “blood libel” is a historic, very ugly and quite specific anti-semitic smear that Jewish people sacrificed Christian children and consumed their blood. This medieval picture of Jews as vampires was used to justify mass burnings of Jewish people. 

When South Africa made an appeal to the International Court of Justice, arguing Israel may be committing “genocidal acts” in Gaza, the Israeli government denounced its reasoned legal argument as “blood libel.” 

Israel’s spokesman is more likely to reduce the meaning of the term than persuade the world that South Africa are medieval-minded folk who want to murder Jewish people. Supporters of the Gaza war’s reckless charges that any anti-war forces are anti-semitic carry a real danger that anti-semitism won’t be taken seriously. 

Anti-semitism was “dramatically overstated for political reasons” to push back Corbynism, now the charge is being made in even more ridiculous ways, which is an issue for the left. 

Jewish people are a minority who have faced deep and lethal prejudice. There is a residue of anti-semitic feeling on the right, but also in society more generally. As the anti-war forces mobilise millions of people, this will include some who — naively, or even maliciously — do carry or pick up some of these ideas. 

It’s tempting, and understandable, to just ignore the charges as they are so often hollow. But for the left, we need to thoroughly break with a politics based on racial stereotypes, so we do need to try deal with anti-semitism where it creeps back — not like a Daily Telegraph reporter desperately combing through demonstrators placards trying to find some individual to shame, but in a spirit of education, argument and persuasion. 

We need to keep up with the argument that Jewish people are not collectively responsible for the state of Israel, that Jewish religious or cultural sites should not be scenes of protests, that anti-semitic stereotypes are wrong.

One argument I personally think should very much be avoided is comparisons between Israel’s behaviour in Gaza and Nazi Germany, as in “Star of David = swastika” posters. The person holding the poster might think they are pointing to some Israeli hypocrisy, but to the crowd it just looks like they are belittling the Holocaust — or worse, celebrating it.

I also think the comparison blinds us to a more disturbing truth: the IDF in Gaza is responding to an insurgency and trying to hold onto occupied land by a war on the population, with destruction of homes, infrastructure, killings and round-ups. It is what Britain and US did in Iraq or Vietnam or Kenya or Malaya. This is what imperialism looks like, rather than an exceptional act of Israel. If we want to build an anti-imperial politics, we need to drop the crass Hitler comparisons.

At some point the protest movement is likely to force an increasingly nervous US to tell Netanyahu to rein in the war or get less munitions. The main issue is when, and how many will die before it happens. When we look back on this war, those who gave Netanyahu slack to kill will not be the heroes of this story, but the protest movement will. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t also take the issue of anti-semitism on the fringes of that movement seriously.