31 January 2020. Brexit Day

One day, a historian will study how antisemitism has developed in 21st Britain. (S)he may want to see what the newspapers published on Jan 31st, when Brexit became effective. What did the readers of the Guardian, largely Leftist middle-class Remainers, anxious for the impact that Brexit may have on their status, found on their newspaper? And here is what The Guardian offers today to such a reader.

The review of a novel, set in Belgium, a Country where kosher meat is forbidden and on Carnival antisemitic floats roam the streets. Main characters are a family of Modern Orthodox Jews, extremely suspicious towards Iranian, devoted to the cult of endogamy, who refused being told that antisemitism is caused by “being tight as a fort”, but hey, they are not totally bad, they are good with money.

Then the historian will move to the readers’ letters and will find an unchallenged academic opinion, according which the only way to achieve stable peace in the Middle East is to replace Israel with a State which will erase the Law of Return and deprive the Jews of a place to find shelter in case of persecution.

The only reason why the Israelis don’t like this idea is that they are fond of their “illusion of genetic difference”. No Israeli law mentions genetic, but who cares, professor speaks.

Then the historian may want to explore what the academics were telling among themselves on the same day. (S)he may come across the tweets by Yair Wallach,

He believes that Netanyahu’s Israel (a tiny Country with less than 7 mils inhabitants, currently without Government, whose PM may end up in prison in a few weeks) is “the cutting edge”, nonetheless of a global right-wing conspiracy which involves Bolsonaro’s Brazil, Trump’s America, Orban’s Hungary. Le Pen’s France and Salvini’s Italy, plus of course nationalist India and why not Putin. More or less half of the world’s population, led by the leader of a party who is not able to build a government coalition even after having won two elections.

Of course nor the Belgian novel, nor the letter by the academic, neither the tweet by Yair Wallach are antisemitic. They may have elements of truth, each of them. It will be up to the historian, as much as it is today to the anguished Guardian reader to connect the dots. The reader may look for a scapegoat, may wonder who is going to get richer and stronger at his expenses in the new economic and political scenario. The Guardian is suggesting an answer. And the historian will study the consequences.