On Sunday night (29th May 2016) I interviewed Naz Shah on her visit to Leeds. The meeting was originally supposed to be at the BHH (Orthodox) Shul. After a bomb threat (which came about, so far as anyone can tell, because the ex-Chazzan decided that his family should take it on themselves to protest at what he saw as a something wrong, and they – immensely unpleasantly and foolishly – published the Shul’s email address, address and phone number upon which some of their far-right wing Jewish friends decided that blowing fellow Jews into oblivion was sensible and decent), the meeting was moved. The bomb threat also meant a police presence on the door and an armed response unit nearby – all paid for by the taxpayers of West Yorkshire because some fool wanted to pursue a grudge.

Anyway, onto the thoughts. The meeting was full (130 people). After I asked questions, the audience asked some of their own.  I found it an immensely thought provoking occasion and the reflections it prompted were not entirely comfortable. The following are my views only.

Naz Shah

1. Naz Shah is not an anti-Semite. Although her own protestations that she ‘doesn’t have an anti-Jewish bone in her body’ suggest that a bit more acceptance that we are all capable of discrimination and racism would be helpful, I don’t think anyone was left in any doubt about it.

2. Ms Shah accepted the right of Israel to exist within secure borders as a Jewish state – ‘and if that’s all that’s required to be a Zionist then I’m a Zionist’. She supports a two state solution. She accepts that for the vast majority of Jews in this country, Israel is bound up with Jewish identity and an attack on it is perceived as involving Jews.

3. Naz Shah is critical of Israel. She feels that the invasion of Gaza was disproportionate. She feels that Arabs within Israel and the occupied territories are  discriminated against, and that children are arrested for stone throwing (the Jewish Agency shaliach’s argument that ‘that stone would have killed someone’ did not seem to impress her). She wants a Palestinian State and when asked what it would look like said, ‘It would be on unoccupied territory and the people within it – Jews, Muslims and Christians – would all be free.’

4. Naz Shah is not particularly well-educated (as she said) and not hugely well-read (as she said), but she is very far from stupid. She is not massively interested in reading books as a way to shore up her knowledge – something that came as a shock to me and quite a lot of the audience. She is a practical politician and prefers meetings and discussion. She was happy to confess her ignorance and to assert it as the reason for her behaviour.

5. Naz Shah’s behaviour is unlikely to be a political ploy. The reality is that her own community is far more critical of her apology – ‘bowing to the Zionists’ – than of her initial comments. Her personal life is directly affected by her current stance and – having inherited a community in which, as she made clear, reflexive criticism of Israel was Galloway’s substitute for not taking the slightest interest in his constituency – she is facing being a not-particularly-observant Muslim woman who has palled up with the Zionists with an electorate who don’t think that is a recommendation.

6. Naz Shah actually doesn’t put anti-Semitism as her number one priority. Islamophobia is a far bigger issue for her. She did not initially see it as racism in the same way that there is racism against Black and Asian people. She thought in terms of colour and gender. That is not her position now. But anti-Semitism does not figure on her political horizon as something she must deal with in terms of her constituency.

7. Naz Shah is committed to educating her own community. She does not support indoctrinating children – part of her reason why she would no longer taken her own kids to BDS protests – and she was unhappy about Hamas dolls. But she was resistant to taking kids to the Holocaust museum because she was unsure it would work. Again, my impression was that gender issues were a bigger priority than anti-Semitism. On reflection, I wish I had asked her if she believed that Jews were the ‘canary down the coalmine’ but I didn’t.

8. Naz Shah is willing to listen to the Jewish community about BDS and accepts that an individual choice not to buy is different from a political campaign and protesting outside shops. This isn’t yet a battle we have won. But there is sensitivity there to the way we feel.

9. Naz Shah is still in the process of working out her position on many things and this is one. She accepts that what she said and did was wrong, offensive and concerning. In my view she has principles. She talked about Shabir Mohammed who she employed and who has also been suspended. She was upset for him but accepted that it was right to suspend him. She defended him in front of us.

The Jewish Community

10. I was immensely proud of our community. We packed a hall to hear someone who said very unpleasant things about us. We listened sympathetically and – with a few exceptions – with a willingness to be convinced. But, I’m not sure it goes fsr enough: when asked the question whether a Mosque would be similarly full and behaved to hear a Jew who had said something Islamophobic, Ms Shah said she hoped so. In my head, there was a question as to whether we would apologise.  

11. We do not recognise that very many people who have never knowingly met a Jew (probably about 70% of the population), don’t consider that we are at risk from discrimination. They see well-integrated, confident, by and large middle-class, white people. To them, history is interesting and shocking, but it’s history.

12. We continue to make what increasingly seem to me to be 2 huge errors in terms of our own position. First, we set the Zionist bar insanely high. Too many of us insist that criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, or that concern centring on Palestinians rather than Israelis is the same. The trouble with that is that people like Naz Shah consider themselves anti-Zionist.

13. Secondly, treat anti-Semitism as something we can do nothing about. I’m not sure I agree with this. Obviously, true haters are going to hate (just look at my Twitter feed). But I suspect that more effort to empathise with other minorities would help. So, too, would not insisting that everyone has to line up behind the Israeli government. Israelis don’t do that – why do we?

14. We continue to conflate anti-Semites with anti-Zionists, even when the issue is support for everything Israel does. Far too many people were referring to Abbas as ‘your [Shah’s] leader’. As Question Time showed – and that was a Leeds audience as well – anger doesn’t play well.

15. We have to learn that different views are simply different views. They don’t need to be freighted with anger or emotive terms. Those questions yesterday that were obviously angry were both dull and unconvincing. When people from other communities hear our community calling those supporting Yachad traitors, is it any wonder that they don’t regard themselves as Zionists? We need to grow up.

The Labour Party

16. Naz Shah isn’t a Corbynite – I suspect this was quite a shock for most people, as it was for me. She voted for Yvette Cooper. She is classed as ‘neutral’ by team Corbyn. She hadn’t met John McDonell before she became his PPS.

17. There was an effort by the Labour Party elected representatives who were present to persuade everyone that there were lots of initiatives going on which would serve our interests and allow us to make common cause with Ms Shah on other issues. I’m sure about the latter, but not the former. The reality is that Labour member after Labour members expressed themselves politically bereft. As one put it “I feel politically homeless”.

18. Naz Shah herself did not have her apology tampered with but it was delayed whilst the party cranked its machinery into gear. That was plainly a daft decision and it was something Ms Shah resented. She wanted to apologise immediately: by making her wait the party put its interests over hers.

19. The official line was to wait for Chakrabati’s enquiry, in which Naz Shah officially has confidence. Personally – and I was in the majority in the room – I don’t. The failure to define anti-Semitism before setting terms of reference seems to me to be a potentially irreparable flaw, enabling hours of circular argument and permitting definitions of what should be a well-understood term to be central, as opposed to the behaviour of people who are racists.

20. Reading between the lines, Ms Shah believes Corbyn is a nice enough bloke and that his team are rubbish. I agree with the second. The part of the audience that was genuinely Labour was clear that Corbyn was too friendly with Hamas and Hezbollah to be friendly with us. Ms Shah did say that this was no longer the case, but I put this down to loyalty rather than belief. Certainly, were we to hear her own considered criticisms of Hamas from her leader, a lot of us would feel a lot better. 

21. Perhaps it was expecting too much from an inexperienced, suspended, repentant, rookie MP to tell us how Labour were going to regain the confidence of our community. The trouble was that Ms Shah was an example of how it might be done. The fact that no one else is doing it is perhaps even more depressing than her original offence.