Anti-Semitism with a ‘caring’ face

Prejudice is one of those things - like white shoes or Germans - for which there are very few excuses made. If someone is stingy (stinginess being the halitosis of the soul, as I always say), there′s always some do-gooding bystander who′ll stand up for them and say "Oh, but they′re just scared of being poor/they used to be poor!"

If someone′s a child abuser, even, some jerk will pop up and pipe "Ooo, it′s not their fault - it probably happened to them, too, when they were children! The abused abuse!" Which is patently untrue to anyone with even the flimsiest grasp on mathematics in general and fractions in particular; around three-quarters of child abuse victims are girls, but three-quarters of child abusers aren′t women, are they? Duh!

But you won′t find many people trying to explain why a person is prejudiced. "Oh, they′re just ignorant!" is the best you′ll get. And it may well be true. Which is why the sight of "clever" people showing prejudice seems singularly grotesque. What′s their excuse?

I′m asking this right now because a couple of weeks ago, on April 22, Britain′s Association of University Teachers - an organization representing over 48,000 professional swots - voted to ban all contact with two Israeli universities, and asked its executive committee to consider a boycott against a third, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Israel was accused of being "a colonial apartheid state" worse than South Africa, a "regime" worthy of "removal," and its universities of repressing academic freedom. Needless to say, this show of spite received rapturous applause; well, Britain is currently playing host to the biggest ever annual number of violent anti-Semitic attacks, both on people and on property, since the 1930s. Who can blame the teachers, so conscious of their uncoolness, for wanting to get "down wiv the kidz"? They′re too respectable to daub swastikas on a synagogue - but it sure feels good to band together and bully them Israeli academics!

Just imagine; for once, the swots aren′t having their books ripped up in front of them by a gang of thugs - they′re the ones doing the ripping. But if we learned nothing else from the Shoah, you′d think we′d have learned that the seductive power of herd-mentality cruelty can suck in the most unlikely people; it sucked in the Germans, for instance, almost all of them, a nation thought by many to be the most cultured and civilized in Northern Europe. And now, 60 years after the rough-necked Brits showed the cultured Krauts the true meaning of civilization, we are going through our own dark night of the anti-Semitic soul.

In one way this turn of events is as unexpected as it is cruel - after all, in this country it tends to be academics who react to anything from mild censorship to book-burning with "That′s how Hitler started!" That they are now doing something Hitler would thoroughly approve of, and did - barring contact with Jews - seems to have escaped them. But in another way, it makes logical, horrible sense. It′s not so long since English academia saw nothing wrong with having Jewish quotients as a matter of course, lest the "best" universities be overrun by those unnaturally smart Hebes. Far from flying in the face of English academic freedom, maybe the latest haters are simply reverting to type.

I′ve always loved being English - but more and more these days, living through this latest, almost post-modern plague of anti-Semitism with a "caring" face, I wish it was a club that I could resign from, as opposed to a flag I carry in my blood. Trust me, with all your trials and tribulations, you lot don′t know how lucky you are. Because you will never, ever be ashamed of and embarrassed by your country the way I am increasingly ashamed of and embarrassed by mine.

You′re too damn good-looking for your own good, you′re humorless and you don′t know the meaning of "please" and "thank you" - but you′re not bullies, and you never will be. It makes me sad to think that just a few years ago, I thought that last thing about my people, too. I don′t anymore.

Julie Burchill is a columnist for The Times of London.