I think any instance of antisemitism is best treated as an opportunity for learning and growing. I'm not comfortable with the boycott, and I've noticed that very few of us are actually doing it.

So, instead, I'm going to instead do a thread, explaining what antisemitism is.

Antisemitism is different to many other prejudices. Whereas anti-Black racism is about keeping one group of people constantly lower, antisemitism is about having one group in the middle.

Since medieval times, Jews have been treated as a buffer caste for the rich.

In medieval Europe, Jews were effectively pets of the monarchs. We could not have land, access professions or attend universities.

We were confined to our own communities and mostly limited by the aristocracy to financial sectors - money lending and tax collection.

This meant that, when things were good, Jews could appear as a privileged caste within Europe.

That way, when things went bad, the monarchy and aristocracy had someone to blame. They blamed the Jews.

The upper classes would agitate for anti-Jewish uprisings, or pogroms.

Pogroms were a great way to direct righteous anger against Europe's outsider caste. Ordinary people attacked Jewish people and communities instead of the aristocracy.

Then the monarch would expel the Jews, cementing their popularity- and removing their debts with their lenders!

This is why medieval Jews were constantly mobile. They were pushed from place to place by the aristocracy, confined to distasteful jobs and used as a pressure valve to stop poor people from uprising.

Antisemitism came in waves. Jews would enjoy a period of relative privilege and security, followed by a period of anti-Jewish violence, followed by expulsion.

Before the Inquisition, Jews in Spain were safe and prosperous. Before the Nazis, Berlin was a Jewish haven.

In order to keep antisemitism going, the aristocracy made up stories about Jews to make us seem really scary.

The most popular one was that Jews stole Christian children and drank their blood. That was the story about William of Norwich and Hugh of Lincoln.

(NB It's not true!)

One of the most popular periods for antisemitism was the Crusades. When 'Christian' kings went out to battle for the Holy Land, they treated Jews as an internal fifth column - wreckers who wanted to stop their military plans. Many Jews were killed by Crusaders on their way.

Later, when Europe expanded from monarchies to Empires, they exported antisemitism out with them.

They exported their stories: the story of Jews stealing Christians for blood was literally promoted by the French Embassy in Damascus.

Powers spread antisemitic myths.

Not only did the colonisers export antisemitic myths, they also exported the tools of divide and conquer that they had learnt at home.

So they turned Jews into an administrative caste in some of their colonies (similar, for example, to Indians in West Africa).

This meant that Jews in the French colony of Tunisia were given some small privileges over the Muslims and other North Africans.

Then guess who got the blame when independent movements started to protest against France? The French Europeans were, of course, fine...

In every country, when things get bad, the upper classes tell a story to blame Jews and push away blame from themselves.

In Russia, the Tsarists put out a fake set of minutes called 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion', which they claimed showed a Jewish plot for world control

Unfortunately, in the 21st Century, people still fall for this antisemitic trick. They blame Jews for the problems in society rather than looking at the structures that make their lives hard.

This is even worse in difficult times, like, say, economic downturns or pandemics.

But it doesn't have to be this way. We don't have to be divided from each other while the rich get away with it.

Jews want the same things as everyone else: decent housing, safe communities, fairly paid jobs, a healthy society.

We can work for those things together.

Let me be very clear.

Black people are not my enemy. Immigrants are not my enemy. Other minorities are not my enemy.

Jews are not your enemy.

Our enemy is the class that wants to keep us divided, fighting each other for scraps.