This new normal is stomach-churning. We’ve had attempted arson, botched drone attacks, failed knife massacres and vandalism at a rate of several incidents a week. What has happened to Britain?
The latest such outrage, I think, holds the clue. A video released by Shomrim, the Jewish neighbourhood watch group, shows a man of indeterminate origin stopping his bicycle to target an Orthodox man who was going about his business.
After a string of threats, which seemed to circle around the fantasy of breaking a Jew’s jaw, and following a weak but significant intervention by a member of the public, the aggressor left without carrying out his threat. As for his victim, I’d imagine he’s still recovering; given the cultural memory of such incidents in our DNA, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was life-changing for him.
But about the clue. It was the way in which the thug’s wild ranting was pegged to a single accusation: that of the baby-killer. “You killing little babies in Palestine?” he shouted. “Yeah? You killing kids in Palestine?”
There we had it. The smear that was invented in Norwich in 1144, when the murder of a little boy was blamed upon the local Jews and their thirst for blood in their rituals, was still animating antisemites today.
Of all the lies, that is the one that cuts through. A great many antisemitic attacks, from the Manchester synagogue murders – the perpetrator shouted “this is what they get for killing our children” – to the abuse of six-year-old Jewish children as “baby killers”, hinge on this ancient libel, which rouses the passions better than anything else.
Which brings me to the point. Ever since October 7, and even before, those who should know better in the media, politics and international institutions, have been bolstering this poisonous myth for all they’re worth.
During the Gaza war, you couldn’t switch on the BBC without being subjected to reports of the suffering of children. Since the conflict flared up in Lebanon, the usual suspects have relentlessly pushed the same narrative, with the United Nations, for example, decrying the “devastating and inhumane toll on children”.
Needless to say, the suffering of the innocent rightly evokes the strongest moral repugnance. Tragically, however, children suffer in all wars. It is only when Israel is fighting that the spotlight falls so blindingly upon them.
So little has changed since 1144! Which brings me to Zack Polanski. It is well worth looking up the response on X by Louis Moseley, who leads Palentir Technology’s operations in Britain and Europe, after the Green leader made a video casting his company – which has fairly tenuous ties to Israel – as the villain.
One by one, Moseley highlights errors in Polanski’s narrative, from the identity of Palentir’s CEO (Alex Karp, not Peter Thiel) to describing it as building “spyware technology” rather than software that helps organisations make sense of data they already hold.
But I digress. The point is not just Polanski’s swivel-eyed hatred of Israel in general but the way in which he has endorsed the “baby killer” motif, wantonly posting claims like “Israel kills a child every 45 minutes”.
Polanski, of course, is Jewish, and this highlights better than anything else how little has changed. Back in 1144, the first ever allegation that Jews were baby-killers was made by a Jewish turncoat, Theobald of Cambridge, who had converted to Christianity. “I was, at that time at Cambridge, a Jew among Jews, and the commission of the crime was no secret to me,” he claimed after his conversion. I suppose he was trying to fit in.
Shame on Zack Polanski. Shame on the media, the international institutions and the hoards of activists, whether on social media or in the real world, who have so obsessively given new life to this age-old expression of hatred. Is it any surprise that it has conjured such monsters as that thug captured on video by Shomrim?
Truly, we live in dark times. But the question that now bothers me is this: given the potency of antisemitism that has awakened since Israel started to defend itself against Hamas and its allies in 2023, have we been living a lie the whole time?
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