In an essay written in 1945, George Orwell drew two conclusions about antisemitism in Britain. First, that “above a certain intellectual level people are ashamed of being antisemitic”. Second, that “antisemitism is an irrational thing”.

Much of what Orwell captured in that essay remains pertinent to modern Britain. Antisemitism is, like all prejudice, still irrational and still much discussed but little understood. Not only must young Jews wrestle with the complexities of these prejudices, they must also resist the fatalism that antisemitism will be a permanent feature of the British left.

Orwell’s postwar world is not our own. Britain was then home to around 400,000 Jews, compared to just 260,000 today. Jews make up about 0.4% of Britain’s population.

Most importantly, there was no Israel. After six months working as a policy adviser for Jeremy Corbyn, it was clear to me that the way Corbyn and those around him think about Jewish people is shaped by a frenetic anti-imperialism, focused on Israel and America. Without a hint of irony, one senior aide asked that I remove the greeting “Chag Kasher VeSameach” from Corbyn’s Passover message, for fear that Corbyn’s supporters might think the use of Hebrew “Zionist”.

In modern Britain, it is no longer true that intellectuals are ashamed of antisemitism. In the eyes of the leaders of the British far left, Israel’s occupation – for some, even Israel’s existence – offers a firm moral basis for antipathy towards Jews in Israel or, more ambitiously, towards Jews everywhere.

Antisemitism among the British left continues to be about capitalism too. The familiar image endures of the Jew as the master of usury, the sedentary banker and financier, the archetypal neoliberal even. This persistent trope of Jews as the ultimate capitalists reinforces the view of those on the left who resent capitalism per se – rather than, say, unrestrained markets – and feel that Jews cannot be victims because they have money and they have Israel.

Orwell argued that antisemitism was driven by a fear that Jews were subverting the establishment. Today, antisemitism on the British left is driven by the sense that Jews are part of the establishment, not against it. That Jews are part of an elite of extractive capitalists. And, above all, that Jews are part of an imperialist elite that defends the projection of American and Israeli power.

That is why, despite what he said, senior members of Corbyn’s office did not wish to suspend Ken Livingstone. After all, he was taking on the establishment view, so why yield when the establishment gets upset?

There is one important difference between these two manifestations of antisemitism. Few on the British left, including Corbyn, will openly admit to believing in an association between Jews and money. By contrast, many will openly admit to feeling differently about Jewish people because they have a special association with Israel, no matter how critical they may be of Israel’s policies. That was exactly my experience. As a Jew, I had a special obligation to criticise Israel’s settlement policy, but when I did, it was never quite believed. By contrast, when I pointed out that to criticise Israel’s very existence was, as Tony Judt put it, the politics of the ostrich, it was written off as the inevitable view of a Jew.

We should be cautious about appeals to antisemitism. Antisemitism is not rife in the British Labour party, quite the opposite in fact. It is only thought to be so because Labour is currently led by a team whose political identity is driven first and foremost by a visceral contempt for America and for Israel. Equally, while it is true that Israel’s current policies exacerbate antisemitism, it is not at all true that antisemitism exists because of the Jewish state or that antisemitism would have been extinguished if only the Jewish state had never existed.

This presents young Jews in Britain with a dilemma. On the one hand, many of us feel estranged by a state whose policies so blatantly eschew the long and proud tradition of Jewish cosmopolitanism and social criticism, in Karl Marx or Hannah Arendt. On the other, we are left cold by a Labour leader who, some believe, seemed willing to trade a peerage for a favourable report into antisemitism.

Navigating such conflicts may be part of what it means to be Jewish. Young Jewish people in Britain should not give up their criticisms of Israel’s policies. They should not give up grappling with its knotty history. But just as Jews across the world must continue to believe that progressive causes do not conflict with their own identity, young Jews in Britain should not give up on the Labour party.

Joshua Simons is a former policy adviser to Jeremy Corbyn