As we gathered in the classroom on my first day at secondary school, our form master asked each of us where we had come from. “Yavneh,” said one of my fellow Jewish pupils.
“I asked you what school you were at, not what you had for breakfast,” replied the teacher.
I saw no other evidence in my subsequent seven years at the school that this teacher was in any way antisemitic. But the remark has stuck with me through the next 50 years, because it seems to me to sum up a certain attitude to Jews ot hostile – no, no, antisemitism is awful. But much as we admire so much about the Jews, let’s be honest: they are not quite like us. They are a bit exotic. A bit different. Not that that’s a bad thing, old chap, but you lot do stick together. And good for you!
It’s an attitude that has reasserted itself with some vigour in the aftermath of October 7, most noticeably in the outpourings of a particular type of public intellectual.
Earlier this month a young Jewish woman, Bella Wallersteiner, posted about the impact of the weekly hate marches: “Another weekend when I am unable to travel into central London. It’s not protest, it’s intimidation.” Her post, I’m sure, expressed the sentiment of a large majority of British Jews. To most Jews it would have been an unremarkable statement of the obvious.
But not to the much-lauded and eminent historian William Dalrymple, whose ire it aroused. He replied: “Forget 30,000 dead in Gaza, tens of thousands more in prison without charge, five MILLION in stateless serfdom, forget 75 years of torture, rape, dispossession, humiliation and occupation, IT’S ALL ABOUT YOU, Bella.”
The spectacle of a high-profile middle-aged male historian with 1.2 million followers on Twitter/X remonstrating with a young Jewish woman online who has simply expressed a sincerely held and widely shared opinion was, to put it charitably, unedifying.
Dalrymple has long been one of the most highly regarded writers in his field. He has won the Wolfson History Prize, the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize, the Hemingway, the Kapuciski, the Arthur Ross Medal of the US Council on Foreign Relations, the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year and, in 2018, he was awarded the President’s Medal of the British Academy, the Academy’s highest honour, for “outstanding service to the cause of the humanities and social sciences”.
But since October 7 his social media feed has become almost unhinged in its obsession with Israel and those who support Israel’s right to defend itself.
I should be clear that I am not alleging Dalrymple is antisemitic. But you don’t have to be an antisemite to have a particular response to Jews. And since October 7, Dalrymple’s social media posts reveal a very particular view.
When other Jews told him on the site that they too feel intimidated by the marches, he effectively told them that they were wrong, pointing to the (actually very small) number of Jews who have attended the protests – as if that means anything. There were, of course, Jews who supported Jeremy Corbyn. That meant nothing other than that there were indeed some Jews who supported Jeremy Corbyn – the likes of Jewish Voice for Labour.
Indeed, earlier this month, Dalrymple wrote of Neturei Karta, the fringe cult of Charedi Jews who have protested against Israel’s military operation (because they support Iran, attack the existence of Israel, ally themselves with Holocaust deniers and oppose Israel at every opportunity no matter how appalling the company): “They are heroes.”
This lack of regard for basic research – it would have taken Dalrymple ten seconds to find out that Neturei Karta are plain nasty – is almost astonishing from one of the world’s leading historians. Almost so, because his loathing of Israel and Israel’s supporters appears to have so clouded his mind that it has become par for the course.
There are any number of idiots obsessed with Jews and Israel on social media. Anyone who speaks up for Israel is used to dealing with – and often ignoring – them. But Dalrymple is no idiot. He matters. Which means that what he posts matters – and can have consequences. In December, for example, Dalrymple posted that Jake Wallis Simons, the editor of this newspaper, was an “Islamophobe & notorious hater of the Palestinians”. On being told by that this was defamatory, he deleted the post. But the damage was done. had been screenshot and remains in circulation (including in rather bizarre “Evil Zionist Monster” assemblage ).
I could go on with more of his obsession, but it’s all in the same vein. Dalrymple is one of a long line of posh Arabists who have for many years inhabited the upper strata of British society (and, notoriously, the Foreign Office), most obviously since Lawrence of Arabia. This pro-Arabism morphed into anti-Zionism after the creation of the Jewish state in 1948. For the likes of Sir Ian Gilmour, the late Tory MP, the idea of the Jew as a creature with its own state was unconscionable.
I have followed Dalrymple on Twitter/X for many years. Until October 7 he was clearly anti-Zionist, but not especially notably so. Something has changed, however. Not that I will now get to find out what: last week he blocked me.
