Pickthall condemns the Board of Deputies of British Jews’ recent call for the Conservatives to sack Sir Alan Duncan for his comments on Israel, and defends the rights of all British citizens to have, and to scrutinise, so-called “dual loyalties”.
It should be remembered that Sir Alan in no way singled out Jewish members of government for inappropriate loyalty to Israel, making the factual issue of alleged antisemitic animus against specific persons completely moot.
Yet the Deputies claim the notion of “dual loyalties” is an inherently antisemitic trope. This claim must be utterly rejected as an attempt to close down legitimate debate and scrutiny.
Pickthall notes that many citizens, of Jewish, Muslim, and other backgrounds, have transnational loyalties of various kinds, and many more have vested interests that may bias their judgment on different issues.
This is in no way a problem. Britain allows dual citizenship and does not demand unswerving devotion to the state from its law-abiding subjects. The notion that citizens must set aside all other loyalties is authoritarian in inclination.
Equally, however, Pickthall makes the common sense point that it is appropriate to scrutinise these loyalties in a balanced way when they bear heavily on controversial issues. This is all that examining the possibility of dual loyalties in the Israel-Palestine question entails.
This legitimate scrutiny must extend to the role of Israeli state agents in Conservative Friends of Israel and its Labour counterpart, for which there is ample prima facie evidence. There is no reason to shy away from a rigorous examination of the influence of foreign states and non-state actors in British politics; doing so is a necessary part of healthy democratic debate.
It is even more important not to be cowed in this scrutiny by baseless accusations when the consequences are so serious; in this case, that Britain may be complicit in serious human rights violations and potential ethnic cleansing or genocide.
The Board of Deputies has no business policing public discourse on the Middle East. Sir Alan has the right to raise his concerns about the recent distortion of Britain’s longstanding policy of balance in the region, and Pickthall defends his right, and that of all citizens, to free speech on this issue.
Indeed, one might also scrutinise the dual loyalty deplorably displayed by Humza Yousaf at the beginning of this whole business. Sir Alan is right to raise his concerns – dual loyalties must be inspected.