Jews feel abandoned by the British left

Like 9/11, the massacre in southern Israel changed everything. From the great movements of Middle Eastern geopolitics and international alliances to the sweep of modern Israeli and Arab history, life has been split into the before and the after. 

In Britain, nowhere has this been felt more keenly than the Jewish community. There have been a great many bitter lessons, but one overshadows all the others. Before the massacre, we thought we had many more friends here. 

I’m talking about the political left. In recent decades, the Jewish electorate has been drifting rightwards. Perhaps, to borrow a phrase from the 20^th century German diarist Victor Klemperer, Jews are a ‘seismic people’. Did they sense it coming? When Corbyn came, in 2015, Jewish voters abandoned the left in droves, and the question of whether it was safe to return has preoccupied many a Shabbat table since.