Simms and Laderman in New Statesman:
Jews around the world have recently celebrated Passover, a festival commemorating the exodus of the Israelites from slavery in ancient Egypt. To mark the occasion, the BBC screened a documentary about a modern exodus, the flight of Jews from France. With an estimated 475,000 Jews, France remains home to Europe’s largest Jewish population. But in recent years, rising anti-Semitism and a series of terror attacks have forced out a growing number. As many as 8,000 left in 2014, up from 1,900 five years earlier, a fourfold increase. Most of them are moving to Israel but many are seeking refuge in Britain. French Jewish children now make up half the intake at Jewish schools in London. Anyone who has travelled recently to Paris will have seen signs of the tense atmosphere that French Jewish refugees are leaving behind. Every Jewish building is guarded by soldiers in full combat gear.
Sadly, anti-Semitism in France is only the starkest manifestation of a growing contemporary Jew-hatred in Europe and across the world. The cancerous belief that the world is run by an international Jewish conspiracy shapes the world-view of much of Iran’s governing elite, operatives of Islamic State (IS), nationalist leaders in Slovakia and Hungary, and a major Palestinian political organisation. It even pervades parts of a mainstream British political party, and our university campuses, too. Where did this poison come from, and is there an antidote to it?
More here.
