Sam Stodel was a “faithful and sympathetic friend” of the Irish Socialist Federation which had its first formal meeting in New York on March 29, 1907.  He was in the house where the gathering took place but “because the group feared ridicule if a Jew were admitted as a member, Stodel was excluded from the business session”. 

Obviously not a man to hold a grudge, he nipped out to the shops to buy beer, ham and cheese for the Irishmen. That story is in Samuel Levenson’s biography of James Connolly[i]. The context was that Connolly was in the process of creating an American organisation “of men and women of Irish race and extraction”. The kindest thing you can say is that they were trying to organise Irish immigrants, however the treatment of Stodel is indefensible. Anyone looking to paint Connolly as antisemitic will have trouble explaining away his leaflet in Yiddish to Dublin voters when he returned to Ireland.

Henry Hyndman, a contemporary of Connolly’s was an early populariser of Marx in English and is credited with establishing the first British socialist organisation, the Social Democratic Federation. He was a roaring Jew hater. His lowlights include “The foreign Jews in the East End form a clique hostile to English socialism.” His best known quote is “The Jew capitalist is the real ruler of Europe.” It is hardly surprising that Marx and Engels broke with him.

The arson attack on Hatzola ambulances in Golders Green was a nasty reminder that while Hyndman is largely forgotten, his ideas are thriving in sections of what would probably describe itself as the left, but can more accurately be considered an antisemitic, conspiracist swamp. Chris Williamson deputy leader of the Workers (sic) Party of Britain unconsciously echoed Hyndman when he shared a tweet claiming the “health secretary is controlled by the zionist jewish lobby.”

Jewish Voice for Liberation issued a statement condemning the attack on the charity as antisemitic. No other explanation is possible you might think. Apparently not. “Maybe it was an insurance job”, “what proof is there that it was antisemitic”, “it was a Mossad false flag”, “maybe it was antisemitic, but have you seen what the Israelis are doing”. These are among the least bonkers and offensive of the responses.

Missing from any of this is the fact that Jihad Al Shamie murdered people in a synagogue in Manchester less than six months ago. He was a hardcore sectarian fanatic, albeit one who was given an easy ride by sections of the left. A few days ago, a friend whose partner is Jewish were anxious about visiting a family grave for the first time in a couple of years because they were worried it would have been desecrated.

The conflation of every Jewish organisation with support for Israel is reactionary and anti-working class. More than that, it is irrelevant if a religious organisation such as a charity is comprised of people who are pro-Zionist. Sectarian, antisemitic attacks on Jewish organisations are not a protest against Israel. They are the toxic ideas of thinkers like Hyndman applied in the 21^st century.  

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[i] Levenson: James Connolly p.137