There was a brief moment when it looked as if Labour’s long summer of pain over antisemitism might soon be over. It lasted perhaps a minute or two, as word emerged on Tuesday afternoon that the party had finally adopted the full text of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance: both its definition of antisemitism and all its illustrative examples. But the prospect of an end to this sorry saga receded almost as soon as it appeared.

Instead of triggering an outbreak of peace and harmony, it seemed that most of the antagonists in this battle remained unhappy. Senior figures at Novara Media – both committed Corbynites – called the move “shameful” and “incompetence and cowardice combined”, promising to re-open the issue after party conference, when newly elected members of the successful JC9 left slate take their places on Labour’s ruling national executive committee.

Meanwhile, Jewish communal organisations expressed their unhappiness with efforts to qualify the IHRA text, especially with the page-and-a-half document submitted by Jeremy Corbyn himself, which the NEC rejected. They worry that even the very brief caveat that was agreed risks undermining the IHRA safeguards.

So this row seems destined to go on. That’s bad for Labour, who have lost a summer that could have been spent opposing this disastrous government. And it’s bad for the Jewish community, for whom this constant focus on them and those who hate them has been anguished and agonising.

The IHRA controversy has also distorted and obscured what the tension over Labour and antisemitism is really about. Because of the focus on the four IHRA examples that Labour dropped back in July, it’s often looked as if the disagreement is entirely about Israel/Palestine – as if, when you get right down to it, the Jewish community cannot tolerate criticism of Israel and that its problem with Corbyn is that he is just too passionate a campaigner for Palestinian rights.

Of course that might be true for some. But for many Jews, especially within Labour, the picture is very different. Witness Sunday’s conference in London of the Jewish Labour Movement, many of whose members have been most vocal in criticising Labour over antisemitism. A curious thing happened when Gordon Brown addressed the conference. At one point, he called for the establishment of a Palestinian state, the sharing of Jerusalem and the withdrawal of settlements – going on to denounce Donald Trump for cutting off funding of Palestinian refugees. He was interrupted by loud applause.

Later Margaret Hodge, the same Margaret Hodge who called Corbyn an antisemitic racist to his face, condemned Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent nation state law as “despicable and abhorrent”. The room erupted in a thunderous ovation. To state the obvious: these are not the reactions of people who cannot stomach criticism of Israel.

Where, then, lies the grievance with Corbyn? At that meeting on Sunday, Jewish Labourites were not opposing the party leader for championing the Palestinians. They were opposing him for, to take one example, his 2013 attack on a group of “Zionists” he’d encountered, where he tackled them not on their arguments but on ethnic grounds, noting that despite “having lived in this country for a very long time, they don’t understand English irony”.

The implication of that remark is clear – and it has nothing to do with defending Palestinians. It’s that Corbyn sees Jews as fundamentally alien, foreigners who might live here a long time, might even be born here, but are still essentially other. People who will never be truly English.

There’s nothing leftwing about that. On the contrary, it was the observation of a blue-blazered bigot at the 19th hole, the country house antisemite. As Josh Glancy observed in the New York Times: “This was the antisemitism of Virginia Woolf and Agatha Christie … more redolent of the genteel Shropshire manor house where Mr Corbyn was raised than the anticapitalist resistance movements where he forged his reputation.” (To those who doggedly try to pretend that Corbyn was only talking about “Zionists”, not Jews, why the reference to how long they had lived in the country? That’s a comment that only makes sense if applied to Jewish Zionists. No one would ever say it of a non-Jewish Zionist such as Tony Blair, for example – just as no one ever remarks on how long, say, Chris Evans has lived here. Perhaps because they’re deemed to come from the right, English stock.)

For many, including some who’d long defended the Labour leader, that was a game changer. Similar was the mural of hooked-nose bankers, counting their money on the backs of the poor. The artist himself said he had depicted Jews, but when Corbyn heard it was to be removed his response was “Why?” He literally could not see anything wrong with it. Again, that’s nothing to do with opposing Israel. That’s just old school antisemitism. (It’s worth remembering that it was the mural row that triggered the unprecedented Jewish community demonstration in late March: the demand for IHRA came later.)

Or take his support of Paul Eisen, shunned by the wider Palestinian solidarity movement once he’d proudly declared himself to be a Holocaust denier: Corbyn continued to attend his events. Or the Rev Stephen Sizer, who was banned from social media by the Church of England for spreading anti-Jewish conspiracy theories about 9/11: Corbyn had earlier leapt to his defence in a letter addressed to the bishop of Guildford.

None of these episodes is about Corbyn being too devoted an advocate for the Palestinians. Most of those Labour party members who gathered on Sunday are themselves committed to Palestinian rights. What they object to is suggesting Jews are inherently alien, the ancient accusation of a Jewish conspiracy and Holocaust denial. And sadly Corbyn is tainted with all three.

It means that even if the IHRA row is eventually resolved, there will still be much more work to do. There will be enforcing the code, taking credible disciplinary action and the like. But it will also require an understanding of why Jewish concerns have arisen. Not because Jews can’t take criticism of Israel – they dish it out themselves, morning, noon and night – but because they are troubled when they hear the oldest claims about them resurfacing once more, and coming from the party they used to call home.

• Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist