We’re not in the 1930s… yet |
This Editor’s Note was sent out earlier Wednesday in ToI’s weekly update email to members of the Times of Israel Community. To receive these Editor’s Notes as they’re released, join the ToI Community here.
Jews stabbed in the street, ambulances torched, a memorial to murdered Israelis and Iranians desecrated… and a political party, led by a Jew, gaining immense resonance and no little popularity due to its open hostility to Israel and infestation with antisemitism.
Last week’s stabbing in Golders Green took place a short walk from where many of my closest relatives lived for decades after the family fled Nazi Germany in 1937. So, too, the torching nearby of four community ambulances. And the arson attack on the memorial wall.
There was always an undertone of antisemitism in the London where I grew up, emblemized by name-calling and scuffling with nearby schools. But it really was minor stuff. Jewish northwest London, with Golders Green at its heart, was broadly serene — not a remarkable haven for a large Jewish community, but an unremarkable neighborhood where residents, many of whom were Jewish, lived without fear. Indeed, they lived broadly without even considering whether there was something they might need to be fearful about.
That’s changed now. Just as Diaspora life the world over has changed — most especially since Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, and a vast, well-prepared campaign swung into action to demonize the Jewish state and deny it the right to defend itself against aggressors openly determined to destroy it. It swept up Jew-haters from left and right. And, by the violent actions of its own adherents, targeting not only those members of the Jewish people who live in Israel, but Jews everywhere, it has shown itself to be a rising tide not “merely” of Israel-hatred but of Jew-hatred.
Many governments in the free world are increasingly hostile to Israel, inclining to policies and positions that would render it more vulnerable to its overt enemies led by Iran. And their domestic policies are often feckless in the face of rising violent antisemitism. Note Britain’s failure to face up to the danger even after a deadly attack on a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur, or the........