Michael Coren is the author of the forthcoming memoir Heaping Coals: From Media Firebrand to Anglican Priest.
I spend three weeks in Britain every year, but my latest return to the country where I spent my first 30 years was a little different. I can say with confidence that I’ll never again be at the opening night of a play in one of the world great theatres watching actors such as John Lithgow saying my name.
An explanation, as they say, is in order.
In 1983 I had my first job in journalism at Britain’s prestigious New Statesman magazine. The editor asked me to speak to the world-renowned children’s author Roald Dahl after he’d made some troubling remarks about Jews, describing them as “a race of people” who had “switched so rapidly from victims to barbarous murderers,” among other things.
I was 24-years-old, inexperienced, and in awe of the man I was about to challenge. But the author of Matilda, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and The Fantastic Mr Fox was willing and polite.
And then he said this: “There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity, maybe it’s a kind of lack of generosity towards non-Jews” and “I mean, there’s always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere. Even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason.” He then implied Jewish cowardice; he was in the Second World War, he explained, and never saw any Jewish soldiers.
I said that my Jewish grandfather won numerous medals and was wounded in Sicily, that 1.5 million Jews fought in the allied armies, many giving their lives. The realization that I had Jewish heritage didn’t throw him one bit, and the conversation ended in the same coldly polite manner in which it had begun.
The interview caused quite a fuss, but Mr. Dahl seemed to escape too much criticism. It took the Dahl family three decades to offer an apology, around the same time that Netflix bought the author’s entire catalogue for almost US$700-million.
The writer and director Mark Rosenblatt emailed me three years ago and asked if we could speak. Now comes a play, Giant, at the Royal Court Theatre about Mr. Dahl’s sordid views. My concern is less how people will react to the theatrical quality of the play than to its contents. When Mr. Dahl spewed his garbage, I assumed that I’d have almost total sympathy. Now, not so much.
I regard myself as being extremely balanced when it comes to Israel and Palestine. I’ve visited the region many times, spent six months living in Israel, and have interviewed and criticized leaders on both sides. I have three Jewish grandparents, and while I’m a Christian and a priest I’ve no illusions about my identity. To an antisemite, I’m Jewish. Worse, a Jew in disguise. If you doubt me, spend some on my social media account or read my emails.
Oct. 7 was a watershed moment. The dehumanization and slaughter of mostly unarmed Jewish people rekindled the trauma not just of the Holocaust but atavistic collective memories of pogroms.
Israel’s response in Gaza, which has been horrifying to many Jewish people, was grasped as a legitimizing tool: “I’m not antisemitic, I’m anti-Zionist” was the cry.
But even if someone is a Zionist, is that person a liberal Israeli, committed to justice for Palestinians and opposed to war, or a militant settler obsessed with expansion and dominance? Is Zionism a colonial ideology based on Jewish nationalism, or a product of generations of persecution and rejection, a desperate reaction of people who worked for assimilation and acceptance and were repeatedly, murderously, repulsed? These are questions seldom asked by people whose ignorance of the Jewish experience and narrative is sometimes shocking.
Then there are the traditional antisemites, relatively few in number but stirring the pot whenever they can. The horrors we are witnessing in the Middle East have emboldened them in ways not seen in 75 years. Holocaust denial or minimization, and grotesque stereotypes and lies abound online. Antisemitic incidents – verbal and physical – have surged this past year.
Of course, there are unquestioning supporters of Israel who have long used allegations of antisemitism to marginalize criticism of Israeli policies, but that canard has rightly lost its sting.
It has to be possible to have a conversation that leaves room for nuance and empathy. I shouldn’t have to wonder if giving our children Hebrew middle names was a mistake. I should be able to discuss Zionism without being threatened. I shouldn’t have to explain my politics merely due to my ethnicity. Otherwise that swine Roald Dahl has got away with it again.