Anti-Semitism is a threat to the West

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  a ‘hate crime’ and ‘an anti-Semitic 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 current war in the Middle East has led 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.