It’s OK to mention anti-Semitic attacks – but not who commits them

I was attacked by a swan the other day, as I walked along the bank of the River Stour in Kent. The creature climbed out of the water and lunged towards me, wings puffed up, making this guttural and hate-filled coughing noise. I kicked out at its stupid neck and told it to fuck off and the bird backed away towards the river, still making that demented hissing, like a badly maintained boiler.

At first I was mystified as to how I had gained its enmity. I wasn’t near its mate and still further distant from its sallow and bedraggled idiot children. Nor had I advanced towards it, or even given it a threatening glare. And then the horrible realisation dawned on me. The swan had attacked me because it believed — mistakenly — that I was Jewish. There was no other possible explanation. And as I stood, a little shaken, on that riverbank, it occurred too that all of these mysterious anti-Semitic attacks which we’ve been hearing about recently, the attacks in which the perpetrators remain a complete and utter mystery, are almost certainly the work of swans.