Is it my style that the Wiesenthal lot don't like? My prose style, or the hairstyle in my photo? It is, to be honest, rather hard to work out, because next to a photo of me – looking, no doubt, just like Hermine Braunsteiner-Ryan – they've simply chucked a chunk of text from a column I wrote in July. The column was about the limits of multiculturalism. In it, I criticised the bad manners of some of my Hasidic Jewish neighbours and, much more importantly, certain practices, in different religious communities, which conflict with some of the values in British society – free speech, sexual equality, gay rights, the rights of children not to be mutilated by their parents – that have been hardest won. The bad manners, I argued, were the acceptable face of multiculturalism. Some of the practices weren't.
The column, it's true, created a bit of a stir. On the blogosphere, I was Stoke Newington's answer to Eichmann. In my email inbox, however, I was Julian Assange, and with almost as many offers of what we might politely call marriage. Some of them, or at least some of the messages of support, were from people called Solomon, Symons or Greenfeld. Some were from some of my Hasidic Jewish neighbours. Some of them wanted to meet me, to tell me more about the pressures of living in a community that "survives because of the virtual imprisonment of its participants". Fearing discovery, they, at the last minute, didn't.
The day after Twitter's not-so-secret Santa, I had an email from an Orthodox Jew ("you may even," he said, "say 'Ultra' Orthodox") from New York. He had, he said, seen the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's list. "What you said," he said, "is not anti-Semitic. I apologise to you for their wrong". A Jewish man in Canada wrote to say that the Simon Wiesenthal Centre "purposely gave an inaccurate impression" and that he had written to them to complain. Another said that the Wiesenthal Centre had been "irresponsible". Another that they were "obviously desperate". The Wiesenthal Centre, he said, was, "quite simply, not serious".
Well, I don't know if they're desperate, but they seem pretty damn serious to me. They, and their friends in this country, seem pretty damn serious that anyone, anywhere, who criticises the behaviour of anyone who happens to be Jewish should be stuck in the stocks and slapped with a label that marks them out as not just racist, but a hater of a particular, entire race, so that when anyone puts their name in Google, what pops up is words like "anti-Semitic", "prick" and "bigot". They seem pretty damn serious that their support for "Jewish Rights in the World" translates into direct support of Israel, too. "Had enough of Israel-bashing?" asks the Wiesenthal website. "Act now!" To speed things along, it has even written the letter. "To the President, Prime Minister and Leaders of Israel," it says. "We are with you!! Don't heed the world's Israel-bashers. We, Jewish and non-Jewish lovers of peace, are with you in your just defensive war against Hamas terror."
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