Anyone who’s ever had a conversation with a Corbynista will know it’s impossible to talk to these people about anti-Semitism. The minute you mention the world’s oldest hatred their ‘buts’ come flying. ‘But what about Islamophobia?’, they say. ‘But what about other forms of racism?’, they cry. It’s like a tic, an involuntary ideological spasm that makes them mouth that intrusive ‘BUT’ before you’ve even got through all six syllables of ‘anti-Semitism’.

For those of us who have tried to draw attention to rising Jew hatred in recent years, it is incredibly frustrating. I’ve been ‘butted’ in numerous TV and radio debates. You come to expect it. You know if your media sparring partner is a leftist of the Corbynista kind that they will interrupt you when you raise anti-Jewish racism. ‘Other racisms!’, they’ll wail, almost convulsing as they do. Yes, we know there are other racisms. And that all are bad. But we’re talking about anti-Semitism now. Is that all right?

The term ‘hierarchy of racism’ is nauseating

This week I’ve been reminded of this trembling lefty aversion to focused conversation about anti-Semitism. The Corbynista Labour MP Zarah Sultana has made waves by accusing her party of being ‘institutionally Islamophobic’. Labour operates a ‘hierarchy of racism’, she says. This term is normally used by the broader left to describe their perception that Labour has treated anti-Semitism more seriously than – you guessed it – other racisms.

Sultana is fuming with Keir Starmer for failing to back a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war. She suggests his blindspot on the suffering of Palestinians reveals deeper, darker prejudices in the party. ‘I would go as far as saying [Labour] is institutionally racist’, she says. The ‘briefings that come out, the kind of language that is used, the policies that we’re willing to say are fine and acceptable’ – all speak, she thinks, to an ingrained race hate in Labour.

A couple of questions. Firstly, if Labour is ‘institutionally racist’, why are you still in it? Why, presumably, will you go door-knocking for it next year? If I thought a party was racist to its core, institutionally, I would not go anywhere near it. And yet Sultana happily sits on the racist party’s benches in parliament. She’s happy to be a member of the racist party. She’ll gladly canvas for it, though I hope she isn’t surprised if people slam the door in her face with a curt: ‘We don’t vote for racists.’

There’s a glaring contradiction in the modern left. They freak out at anyone who shares a platform with a ‘racist’. ‘Don’t legitimise hatred!’, they say. And yet they cosy up to a party which, in their words, is racist. So aren’t they legitimising hate? Isn’t Sultana providing moral cover for institutionalised bigotry by remaining a representative of a racist party? There’s two possible explanations for this weird discrepancy. Either these people don’t actually have a principled objection to hanging out with racists. Or – this one’s more likely in my view – they’re ramping up the accusation of ‘institutional racism’ just to get on Starmer’s wick but they don’t really believe it.

My second question for Sultana is the more difficult one: is this really the right time to draw attention to Islamophobia? To change the subject, basically? Europe is experiencing one of the worst explosions in anti-Semitism for decades. Synagogues are being firebombed. Jews’ homes are being daubed with Stars of David. Jewish schools have closed to protect student safety. Posters of the Jews kidnapped by the fascists of Hamas are being torn down or desecrated with vile graffiti.

It has reached crisis levels. Anti-Semitism, as a specific blight, with specific historical roots, deserves our undivided attention. The great moral challenge facing Europe right now is what can be done about the savage rebirth of Jew hate. Anything that distracts from this challenge, anything that derails the hard conversations we must have if we are to defend not only our Jewish citizens but enlightened civilisation itself, is a menace, in my view.

To be clear, I don’t think Sultana is purposely derailing the discussion. I have no doubt she receives abuse from hard-right bigots who hate the sight of a young Muslim woman in the Commons. But I do think something sinister is afoot in the identitarian left, even if it is probably instinctive rather than malicious. I think their urge to drag all eyes back to Islamophobia, even as the Jews of Europe fret for their future, is an intuitive effort to reclaim the mantle of victimhood. At a time when an individual’s cultural authority is intimately bound up with their levels of alleged social suffering, it makes sense that there would be this strange, unsightly rush to say, ‘It isn’t only Jews who have it bad, you know’.

I must say, I find the term ‘hierarchy of racism’ nauseating. To me it’s a left version of the far right’s poisonous blather about ‘Jewish privilege’. In both cases we’re encouraged to believe that Jews are being favoured, whether by banks and Hollywood, in the far right’s fever dreams, or by the Labour establishment, in Corbynistas’. If tackling the scourge of anti-Semitism is being ‘privileged’ right now, it’s because it is running riot, and all good people should be talking about that.