This letter was published in The Jerusalem Post on 17/4/24:
Sir:
I am writing to vehemently disagree with the views expressed by Batya Ungar-Sargon in the article “The working class is the Jews’ and Israel’s biggest supporter” (J. Post, April 12). As a member of the working class, growing up in the slum of Bethnal Green in the East End of London, with my father a cabinet maker, we experienced the full force of working class anti-Semitism. It was violent and prevalent (as documented in my autobiographical novel “Amanuensis”).
In fact, it was the kings, princes and aristocracy that protected the Jews in Europe for their own financial interests, since they were not allowed to practice usury. Once the era of monarchy began to be overthrown, the masses of peoples showed themselves to be virulently anti-Semitic. Theodor Herzl noted this when he was in Paris reporting on the Dreyfus case, how it was the mob of ordinary citizens who were baying for Jewish blood, and it was the intellectual writer Emile Zola who opposed them.
Ordinary working people, in Britain, Germany, France and throughout Europe were endemically anti-Semitic, and most of them cooperated with the Nazi Holocaust. In Eastern Europe and Russia it was the workers who carried out the pogroms. There may be a difference between the working classes in America and Europe, but not a sufficiently different culture that it will make any significant difference. In Britain the Unions are traditionally anti-Semitic.
I managed to escape the working class by getting an education at Cambridge University, where I experienced middle class anti-Semitism, it was more condescending and less violent. Typically a fellow student said to me” Oh, you’re Jewish, how interesting, I’ve never met a Jew before.” And it was difficult to find lodging once the bigoted landladies realized you were a Jew. Unfortunately all classes throughout the former Christian and Muslim worlds (the Arab “street”) and the secular leftist world are endemically anti-Semitic, and the working class is the worst of them all.
Jack Cohen, Professor, Beersheva
IsBlog 