COMMENTARY
by Tom Wilson
November 10, 2014

The Guardian is well known for its slanted reporting on Israel and has done much to earn its position as Britain’s anti-Zionist paper of choice. Yet quite often one gets the impression that the Guardian’sproblem with the Jewish state may actually extend to being more of a problem with Jews in general. Take the reaction to Julie Burchill’s latest book Unchosen: the memoirs of a philosemite. In response to Burchill’s love letter to the Jews the Guardian has hit back with not one, but two hatchet jobs ripping Burchill, her book, and her philosemitism to pieces. But eventually one has to ask: if this newspaper has such a problem with those who have anything nice to say about Jews, then what does the Guardian really think about Jews themselves?

The Guardian now has this sort of thing down to an art, and so of course both pieces are written by Jews: Hadley Freeman and Will Self. Although in his case Self would prefer that we say ex-Jew; apparently he finds Jewishness so distasteful that he claims to have renounced his. This barely noticed abdication took place back in 2006 in protest at events surrounding Israel’s Second Lebanon War. Israel’s critics endlessly insist their antipathy toward the country has nothing to do with it being Jewish, and yet almost as often we have characters like Self and Shlomo Sand affirming Israel’s Jewishness and more to the point adding that they find the place so abhorrent that they can’t bear to remain Jews any longer.

Fitting then that the Guardian had Self review Burchill’s book alongside Sand’s How I Stopped Being a Jew. And just as Sand is held up as infinitely wise for having recognized the error of having been born a Jew, so Burchill is castigated for her error of having professed her love for Jews. Self asserts that he won’t dignify Burchill’s latest work with the description “book,” instead labeling it simply a “Jewalogue.” But then purportedly taken with concern for the welfare of the very people he couldn’t stand being part of, Self accuses Burchill of actually assisting anti-Semites through her “exaltation of specific – and implicitly genetic – Jewish characteristics.”…..

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