The British Far-Left, A Culture Acquiescing to Anti-Semitism

Israel deserves criticism like any state, but its castigation on the Left (and elsewhere) goes way beyond that. Israel is now the world’s demonic Jew, subject to the calumnies and libels Jews have faced throughout history.

Anti-Semitism is the devil that always comes back. It never dies, it simply mutates, always adapting to the changing circumstances of the society of the day. In Europe, whether it was late antiquity, the early or high medieval period, the Renaissance, modern or post-modern, the one constant, the thread that bound these disparate times into one continuity, was the oldest animosity: anti-Semitism. The feelings of resentment, envy, and hatred for the Jews of Europe have never gone away. They have a long history, and, in Britain today, that history is repeating itself.

Hatred of Jews in Britain goes back a long way, to the 13th century, with the murder of Little Hugh in Lincoln pinned on the Jewish community there, ultimately leading to the expulsion of Britain’s Jews in 1290. There have been recent rises in anti-Semitic crimes over the last few years. 2017 was the worst year on record, with 1,382 anti-Semitic incidents recorded across the UK. This was the highest level recorded since 1984 when the Community Security Trust started keeping a record.

This level marked a 3% increase over the year 2016, which saw 1,346 incidents, itself a then-annual record. Alarmingly, there was no specific cause for these increases. But, as sad as it is to say, perhaps we should not be so surprised. The Center for Research on Extremism at the University of Oslo released a study in 2017 that showed that, on the whole, most of the anti-Semitism across Western Europe from 2005 to 2015 came from those of an Islamic background and — more importantly for us already here — the Left. In most countries, the political groups who one would assume would be protecting Jews are now more likely than the far right to be persecuting them.