It was a Paul Simon song around 1972. It was upbeat and fun and it was playing everywhere. It was called, “Me and Julio down by the school yard.”
I recall a line in it that said, “We was all on the cover of Newsweek.”
The song came back into my mind in 2022 when I found myself, if not on the cover, but in the pages of Newsweek. I had publicly ended a three-decade long association with the BBC over what I felt was their inexcusable and institutional antisemitism.
I wrote the full story in The Jewish Press at the time.
It is not easy leaving an organization or a job which you’ve come to see as your “home” and you feel a part of. I had appeared on countless BBC TV and Radio shows. I wrote and broadcast hundreds of scripts as well as writing several shows. Suddenly, I had to make a decision about who I was and what I stood for. In the end the choice, although sad, was quite straightforward.
It is a choice that is being presented to America’s Jews as the general election looms. We, (I became a citizen in 2019) will have to choose whether or not to leave a party that has been home and where we belonged for generations. The dilemma we face is accepting, as Elon Musk recently said, “The Democratic Party is rapidly becoming antisemitic.”
That’s difficult. A marriage partner who has loved and remained true to their spouse, routinely rejects evidence they’re cheating on them, even when everyone else can see it.
When Kamala Harris took up the mantle of the Democratic Party’s nominee for President, she lost no time in reinforcing doubts Jews have about her.
Benjamin Netanyahu came to Washington to address a joint session of the Congress and Kamala found herself unable to attend. Her reason, a pre-planned address to a college sorority, was so risible as to be a clear insult to a key American ally whose country is involved in a war for its very existence.
This was not the first indication that Ms. Harris is less than enthusiastic about Israel. Since Hamas’s October 7 “Mini Holocaust” she has touted the line about Israel doing more to minimize casualties. She ignores the statistics and facts that it has done more to minimize civilian casualties than any other army in a recent conflict. She spoke out in support of pro-Hamas student protests with their accompanying intimidation of Jewish students just weeks after the October 7 slaughter, to cite only two examples.
Naturally, I sympathize with American Jews tied by generational and family traditions to a party that was seen by so many as the party of the little guy and the poor.
Perhaps it will help Jews to absorb the truth that things have changed, if I tell them the story of their current situation, but make it sound as though I’m telling them about someone else instead.
That’s actually a technique friends use to break the news about a husband or a wife’s infidelity. They recount the story of someone else and the more the victim recognizes parallels between that person’s story and their own, the more likely the penny will drop.
So let me share the story about a Jewish community who trusted and believed in another political party that they, their parents and grandparents had always supported. This party too stood for the poorest members of society, and a determination to share wealth with as many as possible.
That community is the one I came from before I moved to the United States and became an American citizen, the United Kingdom.
The UK had its general election on July 4 of this year and the Labour Party swept to power in a landslide.
Its new leader, Sir Keir Starmer, had wrested the party away from a takeover by the antisemitic Far-Left and back towards the center. In one of many interesting parallels with the Democratic Party, Jewish voters were encouraged that the new leader, although non-Jewish, had a Jewish spouse.
In just three weeks since taking office, ecstatic Jewish members of Labour who had returned to join the party, have been shocked and appalled by the direction it has taken. In quick succession its Foreign Secretary, David Lammy visited Israel and demanded an immediate cease-fire. Hamas supporters routinely clamor for that because Hamas is losing. They want to give them a chance to get back on their feet.
Next was the removal of the previous Conservative government’s opposition to the International Criminal Court’s attempt to serve arrest warrants on Israel’s Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes. This outrage has been well demonstrated to have no legal merit or even legality.
Then the Labour government announced that it is reactivating funding for UNWRA. You know, U N W R A! the UN entity which has been found to be an adjunct of Hamas and whose employees took part in the October 7 Pogrom.
The Labour Government has additionally started leaking that it is about to stop arms sales to Israel too. Leaking is the usual device governments employ to prepare the ground before dropping a controversial decision, so you can expect that bombshell soon too.
British Jewry is reeling from the betrayal and the speed and number of attacks on Britain’s Jewish community. British Jews realize of course that these changes will signal to antisemites across the country that Jews are even more fair game than before.
The UK’s Chief Rabbi has asked for a meeting with Sir Keir Starmer to express his distress and dismay (good luck with that!). Jewish representative bodies have written to make their shock clear (too bad old boy!).
The UK’s Jewish Chronicle reported that UK Jewish representative organizations released a joint statement condemning the new government’s decisions.
They said they were “concerned” that the Labour government has made a “significant shift in policy away from Israel being a key UK ally.” Communal bodies fear the UK is now “at odds with our allies” and that the move marks a “strategic and moral error.”
Someone who doesn’t want to accept that their marriage is in trouble, routinely rejects the evidence of their partner’s betrayal.
All the clues and hints that the marriage between British Jews and the new British government was falling apart were apparent to anyone who was watching it from the outside.
The current divorce is painful and ugly and the separation will be costly.
I know it is difficult to face up to the fact that things have changed in a relationship, that a marriage is over and you have to walk away. That doesn’t make the truth any less inevitable.
A choice is being presented to America’s Jews. We now have to choose between a party that we felt part of and was a home to us for generations, or seek a different relationship.
It may well be that the alternative on offer, is for many, less than ideal. It is though one that welcomes us and still sees Israel as America’s ally.
In the end then, what choice do we have?
