British establishment eyes are still wide shut

The charge of “Islamophobia” facilitates Jew-hatred by gaslighting and intimidation

In London over the past few days, I was told the following story.

It concerned Menai Bridge, a small town in north Wales which is listed here as having a population of 3046 souls of whom precisely four are Jews. A few weeks ago, one of these four Jews decided to visit a shop in the town. She was shocked, however, to see a sign in its window declaring “No Zionists allowed”. She put her head round the door and told the owner that she had been intending to visit the shop, but in view of the sign in the window she wouldn’t now do so. At which he yelled at her: “Get out of my shop, you f*****g Jew!” 

The owner was white-skinned. As the woman retreated into the street, an Asian man who was passing heard what was being screamed at her from inside the shop and proceeded to hurl at her the same antisemitic obscenity.

Jew-hatred in Britain is out of control.

The Community Security  Trust (CST) reports a huge increase in attacks on British Jews last year. Most shockingly, there was a 589 per cent increase triggered by the immediate reaction to the Hamas atrocities on October 7, when around 1200 Israelis were murdered and more than 250 taken hostage — a surge in attacks on British Jews before Israeli forces even went into Gaza.

Attacks on Jews vastly outstrip attacks on any other minority. Faced with this fact, the Muslim community has tried to undermine the attention and concern being focused on Jews as victims.

While all cases of prejudice or attacks against Muslims or anyone else are deplorable and should be condemned, attacks on British Jews are of a different order of magnitude and constitute an overwhelming national problem and disgrace. Yet it’s become difficult to make that case properly heard because the Muslim community is attempting to cast itself as the principal target of current hate.

The way it’s doing that is through weaponising the charge of “Islamophobia” and claiming a moral equivalence between this and antisemitism. But there is no such equivalence.