This week we celebrate Chanukah. The festival that remembers Jewish resistance against oppression is now almost mainstream.
Party leaders vie to record the best Chanukah message and newspapers publish recipes for the best latkes. This is rightly a source of comfort and pride. Jews and our customs are part of the fabric of British life.
But at the same time, there is another story to Jewish life in Britain. This same week — as last week, as the week before that, and doubtless as next week — there has been a steady stream of stories of blatant and unashamed antisemitism, from mock-ups of “dancing Jews” and references to a Final Solution for Israel, to libels about Jews setting Grenfell Tower alight and chanting of Jew-hate outside the US Embassy.
In isolation, none of these are especially earth-shattering, which doubtless explains why they have received negligible media coverage. But week in, week out, the flow of such examples of public and shameless antisemitism is incessant and few of them receive much attention beyond newspapers like the JC.
