Iain Dale, MD of Biteback Publishing, has acquired world rights to The Left’s Jewish Problem: Corbyn, Israel and Anti-Semitism by Dave Rich.
Relations between British Jews and the left are in crisis. Jewish supporters are deserting Labour under Jeremy Corbyn, who thinks Israel has an ‘apartheid system’. Yet until the 1980s the British left was broadly pro-Israel. This change did not happen by chance: political activists made it happen.
In this timely book, Dr Dave Rich examines how the anti-Israel left of Jeremy Corbyn, Ken Livingstone and George Galloway was born out of anti-apartheid campaigns, revealing why activists chose Palestine and how they sold their cause to the rest of the left.
This anti-Israel fervour has anti-Semitic consequences. In the 1970s and 1980s, Jewish students found their Jewish societies banned at some British universities by leftists who thought that Zionism was racist. Today, conspiracy theories circulate and protestors declare ‘We are all Hezbollah’. Based on new academic research into the origins of this phenomenon, combined with the author’s daily work observing contemporary anti-Semitism and political extremism, this book brings new insight to a controversial and complex subject. It explains how arguments over anti-Semitism divide the left, with Israel, anti-Semitism and Jews becoming vehicles for much bigger political issues. This is the left’s ‘Jewish Problem’, and it seems to be getting worse.
Dave Rich said: ‘When I began this work over twenty years ago, if somebody denied the Holocaust and thought there was a Zionist conspiracy controlling Washington DC then they probably supported the BNP. Nowadays they could have a ‘Corbyn4PM’ slogan on their Twitter profile or support one of Britain’s Islamist organisations. This should trouble anyone who cares about racism, anti-Semitism and the future of the left.’
Iain Dale said: ‘Anti-Semitism has existed for centuries but for the first time in my adult lifetime it is now a mainstream political issue. This important book explains how parts of the left of British politics have come to tolerate overt anti-Semitism, while at the same time being highly critical of all other forms of racism.'
The Left’s Jewish Problem will be published in September and supported by a major press campaign.
Dave Rich is Deputy Director of Communications at the Community Security Trust (CST) and an Associate Research Fellow of the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism.
For more information please contact victoria.gilder@bitebackpublishing.com or call 020 7091 1260