2 min read
As editor of the JC, I deliberately kept my views on the EU referendum off its pages. In so important a vote, it was not appropriate for the paper - let alone the editor - to take sides. Especially since I am one of the 32 per cent minority within the community - and the JC - who voted to Leave.
But now that it's over, that constraint has lifted.
To listen to some of those who voted Remain, you'd think it inconceivable that there were even 32 per cent of us in the Leave camp.
To say there's been a condescending tone to much of the post-referendum comment doesn't even come close. It's been outright contemptuous. There's an assumption by many Remainers that they alone have virtue on their side and that all Leavers are, by definition, bad people: racists and morons.
Within our community some have accused Leavers of betraying Judaism itself.
This is - how can I best put it? - an object lesson in lacking self-awareness. Debate is the essence of Judaism. Sneering at those who take a different view as pitiable individuals who do not understand decency is not.
And smug self-righteousness is not merely an unattractive trait: it is also symptomatic of the very attitude by some Eurofanatics that contributed to 52 per cent of our fellow countrymen and women wanting to vote leave.
Since last week, I have been told that I am betraying my ancestors by unleashing bigotry and that the Jews will, as always, suffer.
But in my view the very opposite is true.
It is the refusal to take any notice of the views of large swathes of the population that gives extremists life.
While it's important not to overstate it, antisemitism is a problem in Britain (and Europe) now - today, as a member of the EU.
I don't argue that it's the EU's fault. But it's ludicrous to pretend that it doesn't exist and that extremism will rather be a product of Brexit.
Certainly when times are troubled, the Jews are often the first target. But the demand from voters that we regain control over immigration is not an attack on immigrants, on foreigners or on Jews. It's an attack on being denied any say on a core issue of politics.
What is democracy if it is not control by voters of those who govern us and the decisions they take?
But if some of those decisions - such as the level and type of immigration - are off limits, it is not racist to want to return them to democratic control. It is a yearning for democracy.
Indeed, far from Brexit hurting minorities, the real problem comes when politics ignores such concerns and when the mainstream loses touch with people - sneers at them as racists and morons - and the only vehicles left to make a point are extremists.
Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Front party in France, is surging not because all the French are fascists but because the French governing class - Eurofanatical to the core - treats its voters with contempt.
That is the EU's fundamental flaw. It regards voters as uncouths who need to have what's good for them imposed on them. Look at Greece: a classic example of how and why extremists prosper.
Our freedom from the EU will make extremism less, not more, likely, as the pressure cooker is released.
