A man on a BBC panel asked where racial hatred comes from. Rachel Millward struggled to answer. The honest answer is four hundred years old, and a television studio in 2026 still cannot accommodate it
At our May Day/Wellingborough Diggers Festival last night we had Alexei Sayle. He made exactly the same point about the growing links between Zionists and Israel and the far right, particularly with people like Tommy nine names and some in the Jewish establishment. Quite bizarre, but has a certain logic if you define your politics around support for Israel or discrediting the progressive left through allegations of "antisemitism".
Antisemitism means hostility to Jewish people as Jewish people. Zionism is a political project with a history, a state apparatus, a land policy, and a legal framework. Criticising a political project is not hatred of the people some of its adherents claim to represent. The conflation of the two is not a confusion. It is a strategy, developed in part through instruments like the IHRA working definition, deployed in institutional settings to suppress political speech rather than identify genuine hatred.
Opposing the dispossession of Palestinians in the West Bank is not antisemitism. Saying so does not require qualification. It is a position held by substantial parts of the Israeli legal community, by the International Court of Justice, by the overwhelming majority of international human rights organisations, and by a significant and growing minority of Jewish diaspora communities who find the conflation itself an insult.
None of which means antisemitism does not exist or does not matter on the left. It does, and it takes forms that deserve serious examination: the reach for conspiratorial frameworks, the way “Zionist” can collapse into a free-floating signifier that starts to mean something close to “powerful Jew,” the double standard applied to Israeli conduct versus comparable conduct by states the left treats as friendly. These weaken the case for Palestinian rights. They do not validate the conflation you are making.
The right to remain in your home, not to have your land confiscated, not to be killed with impunity: that is the minimum threshold of human rights law. Calling it antisemitism does not make it so.
Let's try one last time shall we? If you chant "From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free" - free from whom exactly? And what about the right of British children to attend school without regular drills against terrorist attack? Or even our citizens walk down the street without fearing attack? I mean this is happening on YOUR streets against YOUR citizens.
You raised the right of British children to attend school without fear. I agree with you. No child should live like that.
What about the children in Gaza? Forty thousand dead, the majority civilians, thousands of them under the age of ten. Did they deserve it? I am asking the same question you asked me, with the same seriousness you asked it. If the answer is no, then we agree that the killing of children is wrong regardless of who is doing it and regardless of which flag is on the plane or tank that kills them.
That is not a complicated position. It is the only consistent one. The difficulty, it seems, is that you are only willing to apply it in one direction.
Textbook whataboutery. I'm not the one writing a substack disregarding your the genuine fears of British jews. I'm pointing it out to you. Go away, speak to some of your jewish friends, talk to jewish parents then come back and write one, just one substack highlighting their concerns.
You want me to acknowledge the fears of British Jews. I already have, in the piece you appear not to have read:
"Antisemitism does not map onto this schema identically... But it functions within the same logic: a ranked hierarchy of human worth, and a scapegoating mechanism that becomes most virulent during periods of ruling-class crisis."
And: "Some on the left have failed to hold the line between criticism of Israel and hatred of Jews, and that failure has been real and damaging. Some within Muslim communities have crossed that line too."
I named it. I analysed it. I placed it in historical context rather than using it as a rhetorical weapon in an argument about something else. That is what journalism looks like. This conversation has not looked like that.
Bollocks. You are an anti-semite too mealy mouthed to actually admit it. If you believe, say, that "Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea", free of whom exactly?
Antisemitism doesn’t make sense to conscientious people. When you type ‘You hate Jews’ it’s either baffling or it’s readable as being written in bad faith.
Very many of us that have seen now mostly censored footage of maimed and burned people in Gaza are agnostics and humanists; we’ll be happy when all the religions are gone in their own time. We don’t want people of Jewish or Muslim heritage suffering along the way. Even if you won’t be honest on here, in the middle of the source of the hysteria, ask yourself what is the Craig Harry the other side of his typing ‘You just hate Jews’.
I ask again, if you chant "From the river to the sea, Palestine wi be free" - free of whom? And I can promise you if you support all these pro-Palestinian marches that the majority of British Jews find chilling, many of the marchers have visceral hatred of all jews. Not something I can support
You read "from the river to the sea" as a call for eradication. Fine. Let us take that reading seriously for a moment.
Itamar Ben-Gvir. Bezalel Smotrich. Both currently serving in the Israeli government. Smotrich has stated publicly that Palestinians do not exist as a people. Ben-Gvir's party traces its lineage to Meir Kahane, designated a terrorist organisation by the United States. These are not fringe voices outside the tent. They are inside the cabinet. Smotrich has called for the erasure of Palestinian villages. Settler violence in the West Bank, documented by the UN and by Israeli human rights organisations including B'Tselem, has displaced thousands of Palestinians from land they have farmed for generations. This is not rhetorical. It is happening now, with state protection and in some cases state participation.
So: eradication as a political programme, backed by ministers, funded by the state, carried out on the ground. You are troubled by a chant. I am troubled by both. The difference between us is that I am willing to say so about both.
Thanks Paul. I could not believe the dishonest takes on X, though I should have expected them. What concerns me more is the number of prominent Jewish figures on there who are drifting toward remigration rhetoric. The far right is not their friend. It never has been.
I'm arguing that it mirrors the use of immigration as a wedge issue by the far right. In this scenario elements of the left see the (from memory) 750k British Jews are little more than collateral damage. I find that cynical and appalling. My views on Gaza and the West Bank haven't changed since the last century. What has changed are increased attacks on British jews
What has changed is that Netanyahu has spent three years dependent on Ben-Gvir and Smotrich to keep his government alive. Those ministers have armed settlers, presided over a sharp rise in Palestinian deaths in the West Bank, and cheered on a military campaign in Gaza that has killed tens of thousands of civilians. That is the context in which anger has risen, and in which some of that anger has curdled into something uglier.
That is not an excuse for antisemitic attacks. It is an explanation of the conditions that produce them. And if we are serious about protecting British Jewish communities, we have to be honest about what is driving the hostility rather than treating all criticism of Israeli government policy as the source of the problem. It is not. The source of the problem is largely the far right, with a secondary current running through communities that have watched Gaza on their phones for two years and lost the distinction between a state and its Jewish citizens.
Holding that distinction clearly is the left's job. I agree we have not always done it well enough.
I do not write pieces proving I am not things I am not. That is not journalism. You have spent this entire exchange demanding I demonstrate my innocence rather than defending a single one of your positions. You could not explain why opposing home and land evictions is antisemitism. You could not apply your concern for children to Gaza. You could not acknowledge that ministers in the current Israeli government advocate positions indistinguishable from the eradication you claim to oppose. Now you want a Substack piece. Get a grip.
No I'm certain of what you are. There is no argument. You are the type of left winger who conflates capital and jews and reaches the conclusion that many of our problems land right there. I don't need to acknowledge anything, any more than British jews have to explain Israel - we are not publishing contentious polemics on the internet. The fact is you can't present a piece broadly sympathetic to British jews. Tge cognitive dissonance would be too great
I quoted directly from a passage from the article you are responding to. Not from this conversation. From the piece itself. You just told me I cannot write sympathetically about British Jews. I already had. You either did not read it or you read it and are pretending otherwise. You have failed to enage with any of my points, not one. One of us is not arguing in good faith and it isn't me. The piece stands.
"Antisemitism does not map onto this schema identically. It has a longer pre-capitalist history, running through religious persecution and medieval exclusion long before the age of colonial expansion. But it functions within the same logic: a ranked hierarchy of human worth, and a scapegoating mechanism that becomes most virulent during periods of ruling-class crisis. When capital needs a visible enemy that is not capital itself, when economic pain needs a human face to absorb the blame, antisemitism has historically been the instrument of choice.
In 2026 Britain it does not come from one place. The far right has always carried it. Some on the left have failed to hold the line between criticism of Israel and hatred of Jews, and that failure has been real and damaging. Some within Muslim communities have crossed that line too."
You also write "What you cannot do, if you are serious about where this comes from, is name those sources while refusing to name the soil they are growing in. For two years, Muslim communities in this country have watched tens of thousands of Palestinians killed in Gaza – many of them children, most of them killed with weapons that the British government licensed and supplied". I will concede that without this caveat what you write above is balanced and reasonable (again without the caveat)
At our May Day/Wellingborough Diggers Festival last night we had Alexei Sayle. He made exactly the same point about the growing links between Zionists and Israel and the far right, particularly with people like Tommy nine names and some in the Jewish establishment. Quite bizarre, but has a certain logic if you define your politics around support for Israel or discrediting the progressive left through allegations of "antisemitism".
I come from Liverpool and Alexei is an idiot. Fuck off with anti-semitism dressed up as anti "zionist" shit. You hate Jews. Just admit it
Antisemitism means hostility to Jewish people as Jewish people. Zionism is a political project with a history, a state apparatus, a land policy, and a legal framework. Criticising a political project is not hatred of the people some of its adherents claim to represent. The conflation of the two is not a confusion. It is a strategy, developed in part through instruments like the IHRA working definition, deployed in institutional settings to suppress political speech rather than identify genuine hatred.
Opposing the dispossession of Palestinians in the West Bank is not antisemitism. Saying so does not require qualification. It is a position held by substantial parts of the Israeli legal community, by the International Court of Justice, by the overwhelming majority of international human rights organisations, and by a significant and growing minority of Jewish diaspora communities who find the conflation itself an insult.
None of which means antisemitism does not exist or does not matter on the left. It does, and it takes forms that deserve serious examination: the reach for conspiratorial frameworks, the way “Zionist” can collapse into a free-floating signifier that starts to mean something close to “powerful Jew,” the double standard applied to Israeli conduct versus comparable conduct by states the left treats as friendly. These weaken the case for Palestinian rights. They do not validate the conflation you are making.
The right to remain in your home, not to have your land confiscated, not to be killed with impunity: that is the minimum threshold of human rights law. Calling it antisemitism does not make it so.
Let's try one last time shall we? If you chant "From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free" - free from whom exactly? And what about the right of British children to attend school without regular drills against terrorist attack? Or even our citizens walk down the street without fearing attack? I mean this is happening on YOUR streets against YOUR citizens.
You raised the right of British children to attend school without fear. I agree with you. No child should live like that.
What about the children in Gaza? Forty thousand dead, the majority civilians, thousands of them under the age of ten. Did they deserve it? I am asking the same question you asked me, with the same seriousness you asked it. If the answer is no, then we agree that the killing of children is wrong regardless of who is doing it and regardless of which flag is on the plane or tank that kills them.
That is not a complicated position. It is the only consistent one. The difficulty, it seems, is that you are only willing to apply it in one direction.
Textbook whataboutery. I'm not the one writing a substack disregarding your the genuine fears of British jews. I'm pointing it out to you. Go away, speak to some of your jewish friends, talk to jewish parents then come back and write one, just one substack highlighting their concerns.
You want me to acknowledge the fears of British Jews. I already have, in the piece you appear not to have read:
"Antisemitism does not map onto this schema identically... But it functions within the same logic: a ranked hierarchy of human worth, and a scapegoating mechanism that becomes most virulent during periods of ruling-class crisis."
And: "Some on the left have failed to hold the line between criticism of Israel and hatred of Jews, and that failure has been real and damaging. Some within Muslim communities have crossed that line too."
I named it. I analysed it. I placed it in historical context rather than using it as a rhetorical weapon in an argument about something else. That is what journalism looks like. This conversation has not looked like that.
Bollocks. You are an anti-semite too mealy mouthed to actually admit it. If you believe, say, that "Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea", free of whom exactly?
Antisemitism doesn’t make sense to conscientious people. When you type ‘You hate Jews’ it’s either baffling or it’s readable as being written in bad faith.
Very many of us that have seen now mostly censored footage of maimed and burned people in Gaza are agnostics and humanists; we’ll be happy when all the religions are gone in their own time. We don’t want people of Jewish or Muslim heritage suffering along the way. Even if you won’t be honest on here, in the middle of the source of the hysteria, ask yourself what is the Craig Harry the other side of his typing ‘You just hate Jews’.
What exactly are we hating?
I ask again, if you chant "From the river to the sea, Palestine wi be free" - free of whom? And I can promise you if you support all these pro-Palestinian marches that the majority of British Jews find chilling, many of the marchers have visceral hatred of all jews. Not something I can support
You read "from the river to the sea" as a call for eradication. Fine. Let us take that reading seriously for a moment.
Itamar Ben-Gvir. Bezalel Smotrich. Both currently serving in the Israeli government. Smotrich has stated publicly that Palestinians do not exist as a people. Ben-Gvir's party traces its lineage to Meir Kahane, designated a terrorist organisation by the United States. These are not fringe voices outside the tent. They are inside the cabinet. Smotrich has called for the erasure of Palestinian villages. Settler violence in the West Bank, documented by the UN and by Israeli human rights organisations including B'Tselem, has displaced thousands of Palestinians from land they have farmed for generations. This is not rhetorical. It is happening now, with state protection and in some cases state participation.
So: eradication as a political programme, backed by ministers, funded by the state, carried out on the ground. You are troubled by a chant. I am troubled by both. The difference between us is that I am willing to say so about both.
Just as you say, she could not cover the whole of the history in that particular brief programme.
Excellent, again! ✊🏾👍
Thanks Paul. I could not believe the dishonest takes on X, though I should have expected them. What concerns me more is the number of prominent Jewish figures on there who are drifting toward remigration rhetoric. The far right is not their friend. It never has been.
I'm arguing that it mirrors the use of immigration as a wedge issue by the far right. In this scenario elements of the left see the (from memory) 750k British Jews are little more than collateral damage. I find that cynical and appalling. My views on Gaza and the West Bank haven't changed since the last century. What has changed are increased attacks on British jews
What has changed is that Netanyahu has spent three years dependent on Ben-Gvir and Smotrich to keep his government alive. Those ministers have armed settlers, presided over a sharp rise in Palestinian deaths in the West Bank, and cheered on a military campaign in Gaza that has killed tens of thousands of civilians. That is the context in which anger has risen, and in which some of that anger has curdled into something uglier.
That is not an excuse for antisemitic attacks. It is an explanation of the conditions that produce them. And if we are serious about protecting British Jewish communities, we have to be honest about what is driving the hostility rather than treating all criticism of Israeli government policy as the source of the problem. It is not. The source of the problem is largely the far right, with a secondary current running through communities that have watched Gaza on their phones for two years and lost the distinction between a state and its Jewish citizens.
Holding that distinction clearly is the left's job. I agree we have not always done it well enough.
Ok. You'll have no argument with me regarding Netantahu et al. Thanks for your time, have a good afternoon
and you.
Can you point t me to your Substack supporting Israel's right to exist? I'd be most grateful
I do not write pieces proving I am not things I am not. That is not journalism. You have spent this entire exchange demanding I demonstrate my innocence rather than defending a single one of your positions. You could not explain why opposing home and land evictions is antisemitism. You could not apply your concern for children to Gaza. You could not acknowledge that ministers in the current Israeli government advocate positions indistinguishable from the eradication you claim to oppose. Now you want a Substack piece. Get a grip.
No I'm certain of what you are. There is no argument. You are the type of left winger who conflates capital and jews and reaches the conclusion that many of our problems land right there. I don't need to acknowledge anything, any more than British jews have to explain Israel - we are not publishing contentious polemics on the internet. The fact is you can't present a piece broadly sympathetic to British jews. Tge cognitive dissonance would be too great
I quoted directly from a passage from the article you are responding to. Not from this conversation. From the piece itself. You just told me I cannot write sympathetically about British Jews. I already had. You either did not read it or you read it and are pretending otherwise. You have failed to enage with any of my points, not one. One of us is not arguing in good faith and it isn't me. The piece stands.
Ok. Please could repeat your deep sympathies for British jews (include the contextualisation if you would). I must have missed it
From the piece:
"Antisemitism does not map onto this schema identically. It has a longer pre-capitalist history, running through religious persecution and medieval exclusion long before the age of colonial expansion. But it functions within the same logic: a ranked hierarchy of human worth, and a scapegoating mechanism that becomes most virulent during periods of ruling-class crisis. When capital needs a visible enemy that is not capital itself, when economic pain needs a human face to absorb the blame, antisemitism has historically been the instrument of choice.
In 2026 Britain it does not come from one place. The far right has always carried it. Some on the left have failed to hold the line between criticism of Israel and hatred of Jews, and that failure has been real and damaging. Some within Muslim communities have crossed that line too."
There it is. You are welcome.
You also write "What you cannot do, if you are serious about where this comes from, is name those sources while refusing to name the soil they are growing in. For two years, Muslim communities in this country have watched tens of thousands of Palestinians killed in Gaza – many of them children, most of them killed with weapons that the British government licensed and supplied". I will concede that without this caveat what you write above is balanced and reasonable (again without the caveat)
They come for one of us, they come for all of us. As a man of mixed race I support my British jewish brothers and sisters