Earlier, I issued some furious tweets about last night's Zoom meeting of 'Labour Against The Witchhunt'. Specifically, Norman Finkelstein's comments, which the Jewish Chronicle reported on here:

https://www.thejc.com/news/uk/norman-finkelstein-praises-holocaust-denier-david-irving-at-pro-corbyn-group-meeting-1.502134

But I made a BIG mistake. I hadn't watched it first.

That's a basic, schoolboy error for which I apologise. Note to self: Shaun, before spouting your mouth off and making a prat of yourself, always check the primary source first.

Other than basic journalistic integrity, there two reasons above all why I should've done that.

1. Because I'm more familiar than most with the games played by the JC and particularly, Lee Harpin: a man disgraced many times over, for whom there are no consequences for anything.

2. Because I'm also more familiar than most with Finkelstein's brilliant work.

I read The Holocaust Industry when I was in my early 20s. I found it both hugely brave and utterly superb. Finkelstein has been true to that bravery and - unlike Harpin - to immense intellectual rigour throughout his career. He's a fine historian and just as fine a man.

So when I read the comments about what he'd said at the meeting, I was bewildered. Angry. I felt really let down by a genuine hero of mine. I was completely wrong in that. Mea culpa.

Here's what he actually said. From 1:04:48 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=MSjlMHNkEWg&feature=emb_title

There's plenty to agree or disagree with in his always provocative take on things. But what, contrary to the JC's risible view, was he actually doing?

1. Insisting that freedom of speech is sacrosanct at all times.

2. Doing the historian's job: treating evil as banal.

By which, I don't mean for a single second that he's in any way oblivious to the evil of the Nazis. Quite the contrary: this man lost his family in the Holocaust. He knows what happened better than almost anyone.

What I mean is: he's trying to take the emotion out of it.

One of the reasons for that is because freedom of speech includes the freedom to offend, gratuitously. Which was Noam Chomsky's exact position when excoriated for his foreword to a book by a Holocaust denier.

Yet Chomsky also said this:

“Even to enter into the arena of debate on the question of whether the Nazis carried out such atrocities is already to lose one’s humanity”.

Which is where Finkelstein errs.

Not scandalously so; I understand the point he was trying to make. My grandmother lost much of her extended family in the Holocaust too - and her story and courage are central to my entire view of the world.

Yet that hasn't stopped me - a historian as a student - asking myself: "Why has the Holocaust been treated as uniquely evil? Aren't slavery, the Armenian Genocide, the Holodomor, the Cambodian Killing Fields, just as important? Don't all victims matter just as much?"

I particularly lament the failure of many who discuss the Holocaust to highlight that, as well as 6 million of my fellow Jews, the Nazis also slaughtered homosexuals, the mentally ill, the disabled, the Romany, political and civilian opponents. Their suffering matters too.

But there's a problem in Finkelstein's approach to all this; quite a serious flaw. Because the answer to "why has the Holocaust been treated as uniquely important?" isn't "Israel", or "the Israeli lobby", or politics.

It's entirely to do with WHY it happened.

Why had the Jewish people suffered relentless persecution, pogroms and all manner of abuse for 2000 years? It's specifically because we had no home; nowhere we could be safe.

That doesn't apply to Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists or Sikhs. But it did to us.

And because it did apply to us, it meant that the Jews were deliberately isolated from the rest of society: so evil rulers could blame us whenever anything went wrong. In particular, many Jews became moneylenders because we weren't allowed to do anything else.

That's where the 'rich Jew' trope comes from: how we were treated by others for 2000 years.

And because we had no home, it also meant that racist rulers could depict us as "polluting" the "bloodstream" of their nations. Hitler wasn't the first to do that at all.

In the inter-war years, as we came under increasing threat not just in Germany, but across plenty of Europe besides, what did Europe do? Nothing. Even after the Holocaust, 250,000 Jews remained in refugee camps in Europe until 1952. Imagine that. Just picture it.

All that context is why Zionism as it's understood by most Jews is abundantly necessary. Why a Jewish nation state is abundantly necessary. And why I will defend its right to exist with every breath in my body.

But Finkelstein, too dry for his own good, ignores the context.

Again, I understand why. He's being the same hard nosed historian he's always been. But there are some contexts which cannot be ignored. Especially those relating to Holocaust denial, as practiced by the appalling David Irving.

At school, when I first learnt about the Holocaust, I remember our teacher emphasising how important it was to learn and absorb the facts. She told us that in future, some people would try to pretend it had never happened.

I was bewildered. "Why? How can anyone deny this?"

The answer's simple. Those who seek to deny the Holocaust do so:

- Specifically to hurt the Jewish people

- Because they're racist against the Jewish people

- To try and justify to themselves their sick, sick world view. And worse: try and popularise it too.

As we've all seen over the last decade, when a lie is repeated often enough, it becomes the truth. In other words: Holocaust denial is quite a large step towards the Holocaust someday happening again. As a result, it falls outside the bounds of legitimate free speech.

Chomsky essentially understood that. Finkelstein doesn't appear to. I find that... strange, but as a fan of his, I forgive him.

To his credit, in his comments, he drew the comparison with slavery. "Why should slavery denial be considered a crime?", or words to that effect.

But here's the thing. Imagine, for a single second, all those first to employ the defence of free speech on Israel whenever something like this comes up also doing so regarding slavery, or any form of racism whatsoever against black people or other minorities.

Of course they wouldn't - and quite rightly.

Imagine going up to a black person whose distant family had been slaves and saying "that historian denying your family's own history? I disagree with him, but it's his freedom of speech. And besides, he's quite a good historian".

Denying these atrocities involves denying the facts, making up offensive nonsense, and denying the actual lived experiences of entire peoples. Entire races. And that can't be treated as banal, even though Finkelstein's profession calls for cold, detached objectivity.

Which is where he takes it just a bit too far. But when he describes the behaviour of, for example, Mark Regev, as far more offensive, I agree with him. For Regev's government committed horrendous atrocities - and sought to defend the indefensible at every turn.

To finish, though, there's a couple of points I'd like to make.

1. Chris Williamson, Jackie Walker et al seem intent on only listening to Jewish voices they agree with. They're in an echo chamber: whether consciously or otherwise.

Echo chambers, indeed, always grow out of siege mentalities: "Are you with us or against us?" It's human nature when feeling under constant attack... but it's also deeply foolish and won't achieve anything good.

When the vast majority of British Jews think the Labour Párty was institutionally antisemitic, the first thing to do is listen to them and try to understand WHY. And no: the 'why' cannot ALL be explained by the media. Partly, yes; but nothing like all of it.

2. Finally, I want to return to the point I made earlier about WHY a nation state for the Jewish people has always been so critical. History, in fact, says it's a matter of life and death.

If you're going to critique Zionism, if you're going to call Israel an 'apartheid state' or whatever else, it is incumbent upon you to understand:

- Why Israel came about

- Why it was necessary for it to come about

- Why treating Zionism as a dirty word will offend most Jews.

Far too many people don't try to do any of this. Which sadly, is pretty much the intellectually bankrupt equivalent of when the alt-right tell black people to stop moaning about slavery or endemic racism.

Black lives matter. Black history matters.

And so do Jewish lives and Jewish history... and Palestinian lives and Palestinian history.

The common link here? Immense trauma, cruelty and suffering over many centuries. The correct response? Compassion, empathy, knowledge and understanding.

None of which I displayed in my original remarks about all this at all. I can and must do better.

But then, so must we all.