Many years ago I sat near someone at work who I found repulsive in almost every way. He was hard left, and as a fellow columnist he would share with readers opinions I regarded as dangerous and vile. I viewed him with a form of disgust.
That’s not the full story, though. We obviously each knew we had very different views – I was also employed to share my thoughts with readers. But we had a kind of unspoken pact and neither of us would go for each other in what you might call real life. We confined our mutual loathing to print and even then we never attacked each other personally. We each played the ball, not the man. We rubbed along.
The fact that we had such low regard for each other was of course exacerbated by our jobs. We spent every day writing about politics, policy and the news. There was no hiding place for either of us. But a version of that dynamic plays out all the time in offices across the land – people who for whatever reason loathe one of their colleagues but who keep that loathing to themselves and get on with their job. That’s how society works.
Imagine if, instead, work colleagues were not only always open about their personal views of each other but would only consent to working alongside people who held similar views. Office life simply could not work.
Which brings us to Gerard McCarthy, an actor who was due to appear in a production at London’s Soho Theatre with Dame Maureen Lipman. Last week McCarthy pulled out. As he put it: “Because of views she has publicly and repeatedly expressed regarding Israel and Palestine, I did not feel comfortable personally promoting her involvement. I did not ask for her casting to be reconsidered or expect anyone else to share my position. I simply chose not to use my own platform to promote someone whose political views are at odds with my own.”
Let’s strip away the bluster and be clear what is actually going on here. McCarthy has pulled out of a play because of the presence of an iconic actress who has expressed views shared by the overwhelming majority of Jews.
McCarthy represents a growing pattern in the arts, reported on in depth by the JC, which seeks to ostracise from public life any Jewish artist who refuses to disavow Israel. More than that, the likes of McCarthy seek to impose a form of catechism which has to be adopted by Jews to permit their continued presence.
If Dame Maureen was to prostrate herself before the self-declared community of the good as if in some sort of Cultural Revolution struggle session, then to renounce her previous support for Israel and utter a form of words which condemned Israel, she would immediately become a useful Jew.
For the haters, the “AsaJew” is the most priced of all propaganda tools. Their Jewishness is the opposite of a source of ostracism but rather provides a stick with which to beat those Jews who refuse to comply with the haters’ demands.
Not, of course, that Dame Maureen would ever do any of this. Instead, she suffers repeated antisemitic abuse and requires protection for her physical security – the reality of life for Jews in the public eye. And the fact that she dares to support the right of the Jewish state to exist, let alone to defend itself from terror, is more than enough for the likes of McCarthy to boycott her.
This is where we now are.
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