In a comprehensive dismantling, Anglo-Israeli Raoul Wootliff rebuts British far-right agitator Tommy Robinson’s professed reformation from peddler of antisemitism to staunch ally of the Jewish people. Wootliff writes in the wake of Robinson’s visit to Israel, at the invitation of Diaspora Affairs Minister Chikli, and concludes: ‘Taking antisemitism seriously means rejecting not only those who hate Jews outright but also those who use that hatred for their own redemption. The only adequate response is to refuse the premise.’
A Pilgrimage of Rebranding
Last month, Tommy Robinson arrived in Israel. The former leader of the English Defence League and long-time agitator against Islam documented the trip in a stream of social media videos and posts, filmed across Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and several towns in the south of the country. He met with right-wing activists and a handful of political figures, visited communities near the Gaza border, and repeatedly declared Israel ‘the world’s front line against terror.’ He described the country as a model of national strength and moral clarity, ‘a nation that still knows who it is,’ and contrasted it with what he called ‘Britain’s decline under multiculturalism.’
The trip was presented as a moral reckoning. Imagery of Robinson before an Israeli flag, at Yad Vashem, speaking from ‘the Holy Land,’ was meant to suggest transformation: that a man long condemned for bigotry had become an ally of the Jews, that ‘patriots’ stand with the Jewish state against shared enemies.
His visit came as antisemitic attacks in Britain and across Europe have surged to levels unseen in decades, with Jewish schools under guard and synagogues routinely targeted. Against that backdrop, gestures of solidarity can appear seductive, even when their source may provoke unease.
Yet beneath the performance of friendship lay a familiar pattern. Robinson’s rhetoric throughout the trip, praising Jewish strength while condemning ‘liberal elites,’ revealed not repentance but repositioning. His pilgrimage was a calculated act of rebranding, an attempt to recast an anti-Muslim demagogue as a defender of Jewish civilisation.
For over a decade, Robinson’s entire public persona has revolved around portraying Islam as an existential threat to Britain and Western civilisation. His professed solidarity with Jews grows directly from that worldview: if Muslims are the enemy, then Israel, as the state supposedly confronting them, becomes the model and the ally.
This shift did not occur overnight. For several years, Robinson has been cultivating a narrative that blends admiration for Israel with resentment toward Jews who do not share his politics. His praise for Israel comes hand-in-hand with attacks on ‘liberal Jews’ and Jewish institutions in Britain. The journey to Israel was not an end but a culmination of an evolution, an ideological grammar, that began, in writing, with a document whose title exposed its essence: The Jewish Question.
‘The Jewish Question’ Asked Again
To understand Robinson’s ideological trajectory, one must return to his 2022 essay The Jewish Question, published on, and later deleted from, his Urban Scoop website. It remains his most explicit statement about Jews and Jewish power. The title itself evokes a grim lineage: once a debate over Jewish belonging in 19th-century Europe, it became Nazi Germany’s justification for extermination. To resurrect it in 2022 is an act of continuity, not inquiry.
The 9,000-word essay begins by defending Kanye West’s claim that Jews control the media. ‘[Kanye] was telling truths others fear to say,’ Robinson writes, arguing that the backlash against West only proved his point. He insists that ‘every major media network and record label is run by the same small group’ and that ‘to question it is to be destroyed.’ This reframes the old conspiracy of Jewish control through the modern vocabulary of censorship, cancel culture, and grievance. The logic is circular. Antisemitic speech supposedly proves Jewish power because it provokes condemnation, and condemnation supposedly proves the conspiracy because it silences dissent.
From there, Robinson turns to the Anti-Defamation League, calling it ‘a totalitarian organisation weaponised by Obama’s people to criminalise conservatives.’ He lists the ADL’s corporate partners – PayPal, Google, Coca-Cola – as evidence of a ‘Jewish-corporate alliance.’ He claims that ‘liberal Jewish elites dominate culture and redefine racism to target white people.’ Later, Robinson extends this racialisation into the cultural sphere, insisting that Hollywood, finance, and media are ‘a den of depraved mega-rich elites’ overwhelmingly controlled by ‘left-leaning Jews.’
He goes further still, merging traditional antisemitic myths of Jewish manipulation with modern racial politics. Propagating the white nationalist ‘Great Replacement’ theory, Robinson alleges that Jews are today complicit in a deliberate campaign to ‘replace white Europeans’ through immigration and multiculturalism. He cites a 2010 video of Jewish academic Barbara Spectre as proof of ‘a Jewish-led transformation of Europe.’ His statement that ‘I can totally understand why some people turn into Jew-obsessed Hitler-loving idiots when they hear someone like her,’ frames antisemitism not as hatred but as reaction, even moral logic.
Though Robinson repeatedly insists that he does not ‘blame all Jews,’ his qualification collapses under the weight of his argument – because he blames Jews collectively, except those who fit his politics. He accuses ‘liberal’ and ‘left-wing Jews’ of betraying traditional values and creating ‘a hostile environment for ordinary Jews.’ He praises ‘strong conservative Jews’ for defending Israel and condemns others as ‘weak and self-hating.’ The division exactly echoes the old pattern of separating the ‘good Jew’ who assimilates from the ‘bad Jew’ who corrupts. The supposed respect masks a hierarchy that rewards submission and punishes dissent.
This document laid the foundation for Robinson’s later self-presentation. His visit to Israel in 2025 did not contradict his essay; it completed it.
The Yom Kippur Attack
Three years after the publication of The Jewish Question, and just two weeks before his trip to Israel, Robinson posted a video following the killing of two Jewish men in a terrorist attack at a synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur. What might have been an occasion for sympathy quickly revealed the continuity between his earlier essay and his 2025 persona.
Responding directly to the attack, he accused ‘liberal elites’ of ‘spending years cuddling up to Islam and mass immigration,’ and claimed that Jewish communal leaders had ‘created the very problem they now face.’ He contrasted these figures with ‘real Zionist Jews’ who ‘stand strong, not weak,’ describing Israel’s right-wing government as the authentic voice of world Jewry and dismissing liberal Jews as ‘traitors to their own people.’
Referring to the danger facing the Jewish community, Robinson said, ‘The liberal Jews have created the hostile environment for ordinary Jews.’ That line distilled the core argument of The Jewish Question: antisemitism is not the fault of antisemites but of Jews themselves, or at least of the wrong kind of Jews.
Robinson draws a moral line between ‘elitist liberal Jews,’ whom he blamed for multiculturalism and what he called ‘appeasement of Islam,’ and ‘strong conservative Jews,’ whom he praised for embracing nationalism. By dividing the Jewish community along ideological lines, he presented himself as a better defender of Jews than their own institutions.
This framing recasts antisemitism as a problem Jews should solve by altering their politics. The logic, as traced by David Nirenberg in Anti-Judaism: A Western Tradition, is ancient: that Jews bring hostility upon themselves through disloyalty or cosmopolitanism, and that redemption lies in conformity to the dominant culture. Robinson’s version modernises this idea for the age of culture wars. His ‘ordinary Jews’ are those who share his worldview; the rest are complicit in their own victimisation.
This inversion of victimhood absolves the bigot while indicting the victim. It also reinforces Robinson’s self-image as a truth-teller besieged by elites. By redefining antisemitism as a form of moral correction, he cloaks prejudice in the language of protection.
In this way, the Manchester video functions as a bridge between Robinson’s writing and his mobilisation. It marks the moment when conspiracy hardened into ideology, and when the rhetoric of admiration became the language of authority. His hostility toward ‘liberal Jews’ was no longer an aside; it had become the central plank of his identity as a self-declared ally of Israel.
The Ideological Core: Conditional Love
What unites Robinson’s essay and his later statements is the logic of conditional love. His professed admiration for Jews depends entirely on their usefulness to his political project. When Jews embody toughness, nationalism, and defiance, he venerates them; when they speak of ethics, pluralism, or compassion, he dismisses them as weak or ‘woke.’
During his visit, Robinson repeatedly praised Israel as ‘the front line of the West’ and ‘a nation that still knows who it is.’ These phrases intend to flatter, yet beneath the admiration lies a rebuke to Britain, a lament for what he sees as his country’s decline into self-doubt.
The same logic that casts Muslims as invaders casts Jews as defenders of the gates. Robinson’s admiration for Israel is inseparable from his hostility toward Muslims; in his worldview, solidarity is built not on shared values but on shared enemies. His praise of Jews is thus the inverted face of his contempt for Islam. Even if sincere, it would remain inseparable from the exclusionary logic that defines his politics.
This is not a new phenomenon. Throughout modern European history, the right has often expressed admiration for Jews when they seemed to confirm right-wing ideals. In the mid-1890s, Theodor Herzl watched with alarm as Karl Lueger, Vienna’s newly elected mayor, built his rise on antisemitic populism while assuring Jewish acquaintances that he alone would ‘decide who is a Jew.’ Herzl, aghast, concluded that Jews would never find enduring security in Europe. In the 1930s, fascists praised Zionism as proof that races should live apart. After 9/11, Israel was idealised as the vanguard of a global struggle with Islam. In every case, Jews were admired not as people but as instruments of another ideology’s self-definition.
Robinson’s invocation of Israel continues this pattern. His ‘support’ transforms Jewish history into validation for English nationalism. When he praises Israeli resilience, he is really mourning British weakness. When he speaks of ‘a people who never apologise,’ he is lamenting what he sees as his own nation’s moral exhaustion. His philosemitism is therefore a form of projection: he loves in Jews what he believes his own culture has lost.
Such admiration is not real friendship. It is another mode of control. By idealising Jews as moral exemplars and warriors against decadence, Robinson confines them to an ideological role. He reduces Israel to a monument of strength rather than a society of argument and complexity. What appears as praise is in fact a demand to perform certainty on behalf of others. Conditional love, like hatred, seeks mastery rather than mutual respect.
The Far Right’s Philosemitic Turn
Robinson’s newfound affinity for Israel does not exist in isolation but as part of a wider ideological current reshaping the European right. Across Europe, and in North America, the populist right has discovered the political utility of professing love for Jews. What once trafficked in open antisemitism now recasts itself as the Jews’ protector. Far right politicians from across Europe speak admiringly of Israel’s nationalism and military strength, presenting the Jewish state as a model for their own societies.
This represents a striking transformation. As Ruth Wodak details, for much of the twentieth century, these movements viewed Jews as threats to national cohesion; today, they often praise them as symbols of national resolve. In some contexts, this has produced genuine improvements in relations with Jewish communities. Public recognition of Jewish suffering, support for Israel, and rejection of Islamist extremism have opened channels for dialogue and reduced some forms of explicit antisemitism. It would be too simple to deny that in certain quarters, this shift reflects real change.
Yet admiration alone does not equal respect. The far right’s philosemitism is often cynically strategic. By embracing Israel, these movements seek to sanitise themselves, to claim continuity with Western civilisation rather than hostility to it. Israel becomes a convenient symbol: proof that national identity and Western values can coexist, that strength need not contradict modernity. The same leaders who once denounced ‘rootless cosmopolitans’ now praise Israel’s rootedness. The rhetoric has changed, but the underlying fixation on purity and belonging has not.
In Hungary, Viktor Orbán has perfected this balancing act. He speaks reverently of Jewish suffering and highlights his government’s friendship with Israel, while invoking conspiratorial language about global elites that echoes older antisemitic tropes. Marine Le Pen’s National Rally defends Israel’s right to self-protection even as it courts voters drawn from the Vichy-era far right. Donald Trump and his allies praise Jewish success and champion Jerusalem while recycling insinuations about loyalty and control that would once have been condemned as antisemitic. These gestures of admiration carry undertones of public praise serving as moral camouflage.
Robinson’s rhetoric follows this pattern. His talk of ‘shared values’ and ‘defending the West’ replaces religious hatred with the language of cultural struggle. While he warns that Muslims are ‘taking over Britain,’ he points to Israel as proof that strong nations can resist cultural invasion. To many observers, that might seem like progress, a man once consumed by hatred now expressing admiration. Yet the structure of thought remains unchanged. The Jew is still a mirror in which Europe defines itself, still a vessel for its anxieties about decline and identity.
The philo-semitic turn replaces open hostility with admiration, but leaves the underlying dynamic intact: Jews become symbols of strength, not participants in their own story. It imagines them as emblems rather than as varied individuals or communities. The far right’s new affection may reflect progress from one of the hatreds of the past, but it remains conditional and self-serving. What once was a theology of contempt has simply evolved into a politics of utility.
The Mirror on the Left
The instinct to instrumentalise Jews is not confined to the right. To see how deeply it runs across the political spectrum, and to grasp the danger it poses, one need only recall the Corbyn era in Britain. The antisemitism crisis that engulfed the Labour Party between 2015 and 2020 rested on a similar logic: the division of Jews into good and bad according to political loyalty.
In the Corbynite worldview, writes Dave Rich, ‘Zionists’ are villains: powerful, reactionary, complicit in oppression. ‘Real Jews’ are those who opposed Israel and endorsed socialism. The first were agents of empire; the second, allies of the oppressed. In Robinson’s rhetoric, the categories are reversed but the grammar is identical. His ‘elitist liberal Jews’ correspond to Corbyn’s ‘Zionists’; his ‘strong conservative Jews’ to Corbyn’s ‘Jews committed to social justice’. Both sides erase Jewish diversity and assign moral worth according to ideological fit.
The symmetry becomes unmistakable when one compares the language. As noted above, Robinson says:
‘The elitist Jews, the ones like the Board of Deputies who are pro open borders, don’t represent all Jews. Netanyahu and his government are conservatives. They’re not woke, they’re not liberal. The liberal Jews have created the hostile environment for ordinary Jews.’
Now imagine the same structure in Corbynite idiom:
‘The Zionists, the ones like the Board of Deputies who back apartheid Israel, don’t represent all Jews. Netanyahu and his government are far-right imperialists. The Zionists have created the hostile environment for ordinary Jews.’
Only the vocabulary and political orientation have changed. The division of the Jewish community into authentic and corrupt, good and bad, ordinary and elite, remains the same. Both statements deny Jewish self-definition. Both presume to decide who speaks for the Jewish people. Both claim to protect Jews from themselves.
This is the shared language of populism. Whether it calls itself progressive or patriotic, it demands moral purity through moral binaries: oppressed versus oppressor, globalist versus nationalist, civilisation versus barbarism. For both, according to Eitan Hersh and Laura Royden, Jews become a measure of ideological virtue. To be a ‘good Jew’ is to confirm the movement’s worldview; to be a ‘bad Jew’ is to expose its contradictions. Corbynites denounce Zionists for betraying socialism, and Robinson denounces liberal Jews for betraying nationalism.
The parallel has grown starker since 7 October 2023. For decades, progressive Jews have stood shoulder to shoulder with movements for social justice, speaking the language of equality and liberation. They have joined causes for refugees, minorities, and workers, guided by the belief that empathy for one group affirmed the dignity of all. Yet when Hamas massacred more than a thousand Israelis and abducted hundreds more, many of those same allies turned the moral vocabulary of the left against them. The rhetoric of liberation was suddenly used to explain, even to justify, Jewish suffering. Jews who had once been embraced as comrades were recast as colonisers.
The far right is performing the same betrayal in reverse. Robinson and his followers wrap their antisemitism in pro-Israel slogans and call it friendship. They present themselves as defenders of the Jews while using the Jewish story as a weapon in their own war against ‘woke elites.’
For the left, Jews were acceptable only when they represent social justice. For the right, Jews are acceptable only when they embody nationalist strength. Each side offers a conditional embrace that erases Jewish moral complexity. Each claims to honour Jews while demanding that they play a role written for them.
Ultimately, the far right’s embrace of certain Jews is as deceptive as the far left’s. It looks like love but demands submission. In both cases, communal authority is delegitimised and Jewish difference is recoded as fault. In both cases, Jews end up defined, blamed, and used.
Antisemitism as Ideological Grammar
Why does this pattern recur across such different ideologies? Because antisemitism functions not merely as a prejudice but as a moral language, a grammar that shapes how societies explain disorder and assign blame. It provides simplicity where reality is complex and coherence where the world feels incoherent. That, according to Nirenberg, is why it survives every ideological shift: it adapts, absorbing the vocabulary of each new age.
For Robinson, antisemitism turns social fragmentation into a story about betrayal: a once-great nation weakened from within by cosmopolitan elites. For Corbyn, it turned inequality into a story about manipulation: capitalism sustained by a ‘hidden cabal’. Both draw on the same imaginative structure. The Jew becomes the hinge between moral opposites: between power and victimhood, modernity and tradition, corruption and purity.
This flexibility explains antisemitism’s endurance. When nationalism dominates, the Jew represents cosmopolitanism. When socialism dominates, the Jew represents capital and capitalism. When globalisation is the fear, the Jew becomes the globalist. When liberalism is the target, the Jew becomes the liberal. Antisemitism does not oppose modernity; it feeds on it, translating every new political tension into a familiar moral code.
This ideological grammar is the underlying logic that gives shape to belief, the pattern that tells ideas how to form. Drawing on the Chomskyan idea that language arises from shared internal rules of structure and meaning, and on the cultural theory that meaning is produced within discourse, this model sees antisemitism as both structural and adaptive: a stable architecture of thought that renews itself through each era’s language. The words change, but the syntax endures, quietly organising how virtue and blame are assigned. To see antisemitism in this way is to recognise not a set of prejudices but a generative system of meaning that turns uncertainty into moral order.
Seen in this light, Robinson’s Jewish Question is not an anachronism but a symptom of the present. It demonstrates how antisemitism evolves by exploiting the moral idioms of its time – inclusion, patriotism, resistance – to clothe an ancient hatred in modern dress. The continuity lies not in the slogans but in the structure, the need for a single figure or group to bear the burden of contradiction, to make a complex world seem simple.
The Temptation of Allies
In light of those very fears of the left, and sustaining worries about the right, many Jews, especially since 7 October, have been faced with a painful question: should we accept the friendship of those who once despised us if they now claim to stand with Israel? The world feels colder and more hostile. When progressive movements that once preached solidarity turned against Israel, many looked elsewhere for allies. The far right, with its loud declarations of support for Israel and denunciations of Islamist extremism, offers what seems like refuge: moral clarity, simple loyalties, and the promise of strength.
The argument for accepting such allies is born of real concerns for Jewish safety. Jewish communities across Europe and North America have seen anti-Israel hostility rise and morph into outright antisemitism, sometimes violently, sometimes deadly. In such a climate, any voice raised in support of Israel can sound like salvation. If figures like Tommy Robinson can mobilise millions to sympathise with Jews or to oppose antisemitism, some ask, why not take the help?
The instinct comes from pragmatism, not naiveté. Yet alliances of convenience always demand a reckoning. As explored in detail above, the friendship on offer is conditional, rooted in what Jews symbolise rather than who they are, and it carries a deeper cost. To be used as a symbol in another’s struggle can easily become dependency. Each alliance that legitimises exclusionary politics corrodes the ethical core that has sustained Jewish life for centuries: conscience, debate, and responsibility. The pursuit of safety at the expense of principle is no safety at all. Support at the price of silence is moral captivity.
Crucially, such alliances do not prove to be stable. The same admiration that flatters can curdle into suspicion the moment Jews cease to serve the story being told. History shows how swiftly the ‘model nation’ becomes the ‘foreign influence.’ The far right’s love for Israel lasts only as long as Israel mirrors its fantasy of strength. Already, elements of the MAGA right have begun to turn, questioning US aid to Israel, casting the war as a ‘foreign entanglement,’ and reviving conspiratorial rhetoric about Jewish influence and dual loyalty. The same voices that recently praised Israel’s resolve now ask why America should fund it, proving again how conditional this newfound affection has always been.
Robinson’s visit to Yad Vashem adds another layer to this tension. He called it ‘a very moving experience,’ saying it helped him understand ‘why this homeland, why this place of safety is so important,’ and urging that ‘we must stand together against those who seek to destroy it.’ Such sentiments deserve acknowledgment. Yet his words carried the same undercurrent as the rest of his trip: turning Jewish tragedy into a parable of strength, using the Holocaust to reaffirm his own narrative of cultural survival. True reckoning with antisemitism requires more than sympathy for its victims; it demands abandoning the conspiracies and divisions that sustain it.
In a year when antisemitic incidents have multiplied – from campus intimidation to synagogue vandalism to jihadist murder – fear drives many toward anyone who seems willing to stand with Jews. But fear cannot be the foundation of moral clarity. Jewish history teaches a different lesson: alliances built on illusion collapse. Jewish continuity has not rested on having the loudest allies, but on holding fast to values of justice, learning, and dissent.
Israel and the Cost of Strategic Friendship
If there is an elephant in the room when discussing the Jewish embrace of figures like Tommy Robinson, it is Israel’s own role. His visit to the Jewish state was not trespass but by invitation. Facilitated by Israeli officials and presented as a gesture of solidarity, it revealed how far Israel has travelled from the instincts that once guided its engagement with the far right.
For decades, Israel understood its responsibility in the postwar order, and the danger that underpinned it. Israeli leaders recognised that nationalist rhetoric about strength and purity could never be separated from the threat it posed to Jews. When Jörg Haider’s Freedom Party entered Austria’s government in 2000, Israel downgraded relations in protest. The lesson was clear: Jewish safety could never rest on alliances with those who had inherited the language of fascism, however rebranded.
That moral clarity has faded. Confronted by mounting hostility from the global left, growing isolation in international forums, and a sense of abandonment by liberal democracies, Israel has sought new partners in unexpected places. Populist governments in Europe and the American right appear to offer consistent diplomatic support, fewer moral lectures, and a tougher stance against Iran, Islamism, and migration. For a nation that feels besieged, these relationships promise solidarity without scrutiny. They seem, at times, like the friendships the democratic world has denied.
In an increasingly polarised world, where international institutions often single Israel out for condemnation, relationships with sympathetic governments can serve vital diplomatic and security interests. Realpolitik demands engagement not only with liberal allies but with those willing to cooperate on intelligence, trade, or defence. Israel cannot afford the luxury of moral purity in a world where its legitimacy is continually questioned. Yet there is a distinction between pragmatic partnership and ideological alignment, between strategic engagement and symbolic endorsement. It is that line which has begun to blur.
Robinson’s invitation crossed that line. He was not welcomed by a fringe activist or private organisation, but by Israel’s own Diaspora Affairs Minister, Amichai Chikli, who also serves as the government’s official envoy on antisemitism, and who called Robinson to personally invite him hours after the Manchester synagogue attack. This was not an isolated misstep. At the Diaspora Ministry’s recent antisemitism conference in Jerusalem, Chikli hosted a number of controversial far-right European figures whose presence drew shock from across the Jewish world.
These gestures belie a worrying undertone: the state founded to represent the Jewish people echoing the language of those who divide them. They suggest that the Israeli government, rather than amplifying the voice of world Jewry, is beginning to mirror the populist right’s narrative, one that defines Jewish worth through loyalty, toughness, and ideological alignment.
In aligning with movements that instrumentalise Jewish identity to serve their own nationalist ends, Israel lends them validation. It risks confirming precisely the dynamic this essay has traced: the use of Jews not as people but as symbols, their history reinterpreted to sanctify exclusion and cultural purity.
The ultimate danger is not simply that the far right will use Israel, but that Israel will begin to use itself in the same way: as a moral emblem rather than a living society, as proof of righteousness rather than a site of self-examination. By doing so, it risks legitimising the very currents of thought that once endangered it and erasing the distinctions that gave postwar Jewish identity its moral authority. In seeking allies among those who exploit Jewish history, Israel risks becoming both symbol and conduit of the same distortion, an unwitting participant in the moral reversal it was founded to prevent.
Respect, Not Redemption
Tommy Robinson’s journey from street agitator to self-styled ally of Israel has been presented as a story of transformation. In truth, it is one of adaptation. His philo-semitism does not cancel his antisemitism; it perfects it. What began as rage against outsiders has matured into a moral theory of belonging: a story about who deserves protection, who brings destruction, and who must be re-educated to survive. His embrace of Israel is the final act in that story: hatred reborn as patronage, exclusion recast as approval with conditions.
At its core, Robinson’s worldview is a drama of civilisation in decline. The West, in his telling, is a wounded empire undone by weakness and self-doubt. The enemy is Islam, but also the liberalism that allowed it in. Salvation lies in rediscovering the purity of identity, the courage of defiance, and the moral certainty of borders. Israel becomes the parable of that salvation. Its nationalism his cure for weakness; its wars his vindication of virtue through violence. He does not love Jews so much as envy them, or rather the version he imagines: the settler, the survivor, the soldier – unashamed, unbroken, victorious. To ‘stand with Israel’ is therefore not to see Jews but to see through them, to use their story as a mirror for the West’s imagined renewal.
The ‘Jewish Question,’ whether posed in the salons of nineteenth-century Europe or twenty-first-century livestreams, has always rested on the same conceit: that Jews exist to answer for someone else’s failures. Robinson’s version is no different. It replaces theology with politics but keeps the same demand that Jews serve as proof of the West’s virtue, of Britain’s decline, of the righteousness of one tribe over another.
In this moral framework, Jews are assigned a role rather than granted an identity. Those who conform – strong, loyal, anti-Muslim – are held up as models of virtue. Those who resist – liberal, questioning – are branded weak or self-hating. Antisemitism becomes a doctrine of correction. It teaches Jews how to behave to be safe. The parallel with the far left completes the circle. Corbynism accused Jews of oppressing others; Robinson accuses them of betraying themselves. One condemns Jewish power, the other worships Jewish strength. Both deny Jews the right to self-definition.
Jews do not need to be loved. What they require is respect: for their diversity, for their arguments and ideas, for their vast and varied identities, for their culture and tradition, and for the moral inheritance that has sustained them through exile and return. They do not need to be symbols of civilisation or its collapse. They need to be recognised as a people in their own right.
Taking antisemitism seriously means rejecting not only those who hate Jews outright but also those who use that hatred for their own redemption. The only adequate response is to refuse the premise. The Jewish story is not an accessory to the West’s culture wars, nor a test of anyone’s political virtue. It is its own story, and it needs no interpreter.
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Aryeh Grossman contributed to this article.
