Play the ball, not the man, goes the maxim. But sometimes you really do need to play the man, because the man – in this case, Khawaja Asif, the Pakistan defence minister – is the point.
Last week, after the US and Iran took up the offer of his boss, Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, to host talks between the US and Iran, Asif posted his thoughts on X: "Israel is evil and a curse for humanity, while peace talks are underway in Islamabad, genocide is being committed in Lebanon…I hope and pray people who created this cancerous state on Palestinians land to get rid of European Jews burn in hell.”
It would have been more surprising if Asif had not at some point revealed his desire for Zionists to burn in hell. Pakistan has never recognised Israel’s existence, and he recently said the Muslim world should treat Israel and India as “true and eternal enemies.” Asif is not exactly backwards in coming forwards with his view of Israel.
But – this is the bit about playing the man – one has to conclude that like many of the most crazed Jew-haters, Asif is not the brightest spark in the firmament. How did he react to the widespread coverage his tweet received? He deleted it.
It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Pakistan’s defence minister that when you publish a statement that the world notices, you don’t obliterate all memory of it simply by deleting it, then pretending – as he is now doing – that you didn’t actually say it.
Given his status as a minister in Pakistan, you’d think Asif might actually have stood by his comment. It’s not as if Jew hate is a disqualifier to public office in Pakistan, where open antisemitism is the norm. Indeed, given where we now are here in the UK, there are a number of British MPs and wannabe MPs one could easily imagine posting the same words as Asif and then absolutely not later deleting them.
But while we aren’t – yet – at the levels of open and widely supported Jew hate to be found in Pakistan, there has been a barely less insidious development here. Sentiments which have been classic antisemitic themes for centuries have entered the mainstream, voiced by people who would never consider themselves to be in any way antisemitic, merely “open minded” commentators and analysts.
Take Lewis Goodall, one of the News Agent podcasters alongside Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel, and a phone-in host on LBC. Goodall is the archetypal left-liberal “progressive”, one of those people whose views on any given subject can be predicted with total accuracy because he never deviates by a jot from the ideological catechism. When he speaks on Israel, it is entirely predictable what he will say but also instructive, because it confirms the received progressive wisdom. Sure enough, last week Goodall opined for his listeners.
He suggested not only that Israel is malign, but that this tiny state somehow controls the world –an accusation that eerily echoes the classic antisemitic conspiracy theory of Jewish world domination, here repackaged with the Jewish state standing in for the Jews.
“The entire fate of the world and stability of the world is constantly driven by the actions of Israel, that many people believe increasingly acts like something of a rogue state... Are we powerless in this? Are we powerless in the West, in Britain and Europe and the United States? Are we powerless, increasingly, to determine our own fate and the stability of the world? Because ultimately, Israel is in the driving seat.”
It’s quite something, isn’t it? Goodall – who, as I say, I am sure doesn’t consider he has the least animus against Jews – is spouting rhetoric about Israeli control of the world itself that leaves everyone else powerless (to be accurate, he poses it as question in a neat rhetorical trick).
Leave aside that if you’re going to call out a "rogue state” you might want at least to mention Iran which, having murdered tens of thousands of its own people, then bombed 13 of its neighbour states in a single week and effectively closed off the Strait of Hormuz. Instead, ponder this: is there a single country Israel has ever attacked that has never attacked Israel, threatened to wipe if off the map or provided a sanctuary for groups and individuals who plan and carry out attacks on Israel and Israelis? The answer, of course, is not one, ever. If you don’t want to have Israel defend itself against you, don’t attack Israel. It’s really that simple.
Instead, Goodall is pushing on a mainstream radio station a narrative that is inseparable from that of antisemites; inseparable, because it is the same narrative.
On Saturday, for example, there was a mass demonstration in support of the proscribed organisation Palestine Action, at which over 500 people were arrested. One woman, who described herself as a youth worker and “antiracist mum” was interviewed at the demo.
She was there, she said, because of the “Zionist parasites” who have “infiltrated” government and control politicians like puppets. She then explained, with no irony because, of course, we are beyond irony now, how “I teach white people how to be even less racist”.
This is where we now are.
To get more from opinion, click here to sign up for our free Editor's Picks newsletter.