Hate bubbles under cosy England

How to understand the over-and-above hatred expressed for Israel during and after the fighting in Gaza — the hysteria of the condemnation, the unreasoning loathing, the poisons we can taste on our tongues? However we try we must remember the mantra: “It is not antisemitism. It is just ‘criticism’ of Israel.”

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Tories will be tough on antisemitism

Hate crime is abhorrent whatever the circumstances.

Whether it is the recent bout of antisemitism following the Gaza crisis or the attacks on Muslims after 9/11, crime based on prejudice must be dealt with robustly and clearly.

The incidence of antisemitic attacks in Britain in recent weeks has been disturbing and shocking.

The scale has been unacceptable.

It is worrying that the government has paid so little attention to the problem.

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Pope's isolation is thanks to years of education

For those of us who have devoted many years to improving relations between Catholics and Jews, the last few months have been particularly challenging. Controversies have arisen over the canonisation of the wartime Pope, Pius XII; the revised Tridentine Rite Good Friday prayer; and, most recently, the decision to readmit four excommunicated bishops from the Society of St Pius X, including Holocaust denier Bishop Richard Williamson.

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Hatred is turning me into a Jew

My name is Nick Cohen, and I think I’m turning into a Jew. Despite being called “Cohen”, I’ve never been Jewish before. It’s not simply that I am an atheist. My Jewish friends tell me that it is hard to find an educated London Jew who is not an atheist, but that I have no connection with Jewish culture.

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We could have dealt with campus hate long ago

Around three decades ago, I was deputy editor at a small, now defunct, UK publication called the Jewish Observer and Middle East Review. In common with the JC, it devoted a great number of column inches to the issue of Palestinian propaganda on UK campuses.

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Outraged by the world? My tips…

Some things are just wrong in the world.

Last night I was struck by this thought when watching the Oscar-nominated film, Milk. Whatever your opinions on homosexuality, it is simply wrong to have a law that bans homosexuals — and their friends — from teaching in schools. This was what Proposition 6 intended to do in Southern California in the 1970s. Harvey Milk, a mild mannered, apolitical, in-the-closet gay man decided to stand up and be counted against the establishment.

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Turn off the klezmer and turn up the Ramones

I hate Jewish music, but I love Jews who make music. Or to put it another way: I never listen to klezmer or any other types of so-called traditional “Jewish music”, but my record collection is full of albums by Jewish musicians.

Now, if I had been born several hundred years ago and was lucky enough to get a job on a Jewish, 16th-century version of the NME (the Jew Musical Express, perhaps), I would probably have been out every night, lapping up the latest sounds by the hottest klezmer ensembles in all the coolest Eastern European dive bars.

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What makes the left vilify Israel?

When I stood down as political editor of the New Statesman at the end of last month, I decided to write my final piece for the magazine about Israel’s military intervention in Gaza.

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Poison pens on our tax money

My wife and I were leaving shul the other night, when a boy cycled past us. “Dirty Jews”, he yelled, as he sped off. Nothing new there, of course. Such shouts are par for the course for Jews today, as they have always been.

As he departed into the distance, I wondered what had given rise to his hatred of Jews.

And then it dawned on me: perhaps he’d been reading the London Review of Books.

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Courtesan, abseiling gran. It’s all in a day’s work

It’s a grand life in the British theatre if your knees don’t weaken and your brain cells don’t reduce. I have the good fortune, in these days of disproportionate response  and crunchy credit, to be in A HIT MUSICAL at the Menier Chocolate Factory in Southwark Street. It’s not quite, Broadway, let alone the West End — I share my dressing room with seven pert-breasted 27-year olds and a mouse with attitude. But the show sizzles with success and, right now, you’d have to hold one of my children to ransom to get a ticket.

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