When you reach your sixties, you realise you have learned certain lessons along the way. Life’s too short to make filo pastry; the last horse in that accumulator never wins; and at some point, people always reveal their true selves.
Let’s call that last lesson Pollard’s Law, because I’ve always liked the idea of having a law named after me. Pollard’s Law applies in every walk of life but I’ve long maintained that it’s especially true in public life. No matter how carefully constructed a persona may be, at some point something will happen that exposes the reality. We’ve all read, for example, about rabbis who give sermons about family values and turn out to have had a string of affairs. The façade always crumbles.
Back in the early 2000s I did a regular slot on a radio programme, and I was often paired with the commentator Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. I’ll not stand on ceremony: I couldn’t stand her. She had identikit left-liberal views on everything which she trotted out with that air of moral superiority that so many on the left affect. Above all, as a self-proclaimed anti-racist she seemed to view almost everything through the prism of race.
Alibhai-Brown has built a successful career on the back of being an anti-racist. Well, guess what: a few days ago Alibhai-Brown posted something on social media which instantly reminded me of Pollard’s Law: “Uber Zionist Margaret Hodge will, we hear, become Ofcom chair after uber Zionist Michael Grade steps down. A two step solution to ensure the Palestine & Palestinian suffering are denied proper coverage. And the Israeli state gets away with atrocities.”
“Uber Zionist” is an interesting way of describing Hodge and Grade. They are, in reality, no more Zionist than any random Jew. Israel is not a cause with which Lord Grade is particularly associated. He has criticised some BBC coverage of it, but that’s been more in his guise as a former chairman. As for Baroness Hodge: for most of her career, on the rare occasions she mentioned Israel it was to criticise Israeli policy towards the Palestinians, and Judaism played little role in her public life. Until, that is, 2015 - when Corbynite antisemites in the Labour Party targeted her precisely because she was Jewish.
And, as is not unusual, it was her own direct experience of this antisemitism that led Baroness Hodge to identify more publicly as a Jew. But even then, her stance has remained critical of much Israeli policy – especially of Benjamin Netanyahu.
In other words, the only way either Hodge or Grade can be considered “uber Zionists” is if anyone who identifies as a Jew and believes in Israel’s right to exist – in other words almost every Jew – is an “uber Zionist”. So we can drop the “uber” (although as David Hirsh posted in response to Alibhai-Brown: “An uber-Zionist is someone who nods politely while their driver explains that in this neighbourhood you have to watch out for people-carriers because they pull out without looking”). In which case her objection is to Zionists being appointed to chair Ofcom.
The next day Alibhai-Brown then posted a follow up, as if she had suddenly twigged that people might start to draw conclusions from her original post: “A declaration because I will for sure be accused of being an antisemite. I support the rights of Jewish people to have a homeland. Which is Israel.”
I am sure the people of Israel will be overjoyed to have the support of Yasmin Albhai-Brown, but I would simply point out that it her statement a non-sequitur. She can – and plainly does – accept the right of Israel to exist and at the same time object – and just as plainly does – to “uber Zionists” being appointed to chair Ofcom.
Or, to put it another way: it is a matter of supreme indifference whether Alibhai-Brown supports the right of Israel to exist, just as it is of no interest whether she supports the right of France, Germany or anywhere else to exist. What is of interest is the point that she herself made – that it is wrong for one “uber Zionist” to follow another. And that is where Pollard’s Law applies.
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