The phrase “two wrongs don’t make a right” has rarely been more apt than in relation to the brouhaha over last month’s so-called “Kaddish for Palestinians”. The organisers and participants behaved shamefully, staging a publicity stunt with the primary purpose of shocking the rest of the community. The moment it became clear that the vast majority of the dead Palestinians were Hamas terrorists — whose objective, as their leader himself said, was to “rip out the hearts” of Israelis — the idea became a grotesque warping of a sacred burial rite. But however offensive the Kaddish may have been, that is no excuse for the direct, personal and foul abuse of those involved that has followed it. There are now petitions in circulation demanding that participants lose any communal role they may occupy. One demands that they lose all contact with young Jewish children, with connotations this newspaper hardly needs to point out. Some employers have received emails angrily demanding that they sack individuals who took part. And lists are being published on social media purporting to name and shame participants.

Newton’s third law of physics, that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, clearly also applies to Jewish intra-community relations.  Both sides of the divide are so convinced of their own rectitude that they cannot see what is obvious to everyone else — that their behaviour is equally bad. Yes, the Kaddish was appalling. But so, too, is the subsequent abuse. Instead of dealing with each other’s views in a civilised fashion, behaving and speaking rationally and — certainly —  strongly  criticising each other, but in the tradition of Jewish debate and argument, some in our community choose to behave as if theirs is the only acceptable view. They choose, in other words, to behave as if there are Good Jews and Bad Jews. And which of those we are, only they are fit to decide. This is — let us put it no stronger — the height of chutzpah. And if we carry on in this fashion, the consequences for our community are deeply troubling.