The oldest hatred returns

The shame of witnessing Jew-hatred on the streets of London.

I am not entirely sure this is actually true. On Saturday as many as 100,000 people marched through London demonstrating their support for the Palestinian cause. Doubtless many were motivated by little more than their wholly reasonable concern for the plight of civilian Palestinians in Gaza. But others, as was also evident at other protests in other British cities and companion demonstrations around the world, took a rather more robust view. “From the river to the sea” - the war-chant favoured by Islamist terrorists and LARPing revolutionaries alike - is a genocidal imprecation. There is no room for doubt here just as there should be no doubt that the increasingly fashionable demand for a “one state” solution is also a demand for Israel’s destruction.

It is possible to be an “anti-Zionist” without also being an anti-semite but let us at least acknowledge that the border between these two sensations is a markedly permeable one. So much so, indeed, that it frequently seems to disappear.…