Anti-Jewish racism is the mother of all conspiracy theories

Why the enemies of democracy hate Jews

Down the road from where I live in Islington, the Jewish community put up a menorah in a park on the main shopping street. Islington Green seemed an appropriate spot to mark Hanukkah. It’s the home to the London borough’s memorial to the dead of the Second World War, who gave their lives to prevent the genocide of European Jewry reaching its conclusion.

The menorah was itself destroyed a few days ago in what the local council called  a “hate crime” and “an antisemitic attack”. 

Does its destruction matter? It is easy to diminish the vandalism, just as it is easy to diminish so much of the aggression Jews have experienced since Hamas massacred Israelis on  7 October. 

Dave Rich of the Community Security Trust, which protects the UK’s Jews reports that war in the Middle East has led to date to graffiti on synagogues, Jewish schools, a Jewish cemetery and a Holocaust research library, alongside an unprecedented wave of verbal abuse and threats directed at Jewish people in the street.  There have not been the arson attacks on Jewish buildings seen in Germany,  Armenia and  Canada, or Islamist suicide bombings, not yet at any rate. Instead there has been incessant harassment, with the police recording 533 antisemitic hate crimes in London alone in October 2023, compared to just 39 in October 2022. 

No other foreign conflict triggers hate crimes against a minority. The police did not have to protect Russian orthodox churches in the UK  after Putin ordered his armies into Ukraine.  With Jews it’s different.

Many who ought to know better ask why they should  worry about anti-Jewish racism.

I find otherwise sensible people who believe that it is a consequence of the war in Gaza. They think themselves sweetly reasonable when they say that we should blame the Israelis for the hate rather than, for instance, the British perpetrators who do the actual hating.