Passing down cancer of hate
ANTI-SEMITISM in all its vile, virulent forms is on the rise.
In Europe the hatred of Jews, often presented as anti-Israeli or anti-Zionist sentiment, is terrorising a new generation.
France is among a number of countries that has seen a rise in attacks against Jewish businesses and individuals in the past decade.
One such attack in recent days saw an elderly Holocaust survivor slaughtered in her own home.
Mireille Knoll escaped the Vel d’Hiv roundup of French Jews in 1942 that saw 13,000 of her countrymen, including thousands of children, sent to their deaths at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
But the wheelchair-bound 85-yearold could not escape an anti-Semitic neighbour who repeatedly stabbed her and then burnt her body in late March.
Authorities have charged two men, a neighbour and his friend, with murder with an anti-Semitic motive.
Knoll’s sadistic murder occurred on the same day that France suffered an Islamist attack at the hands of known extremist, Radouane Lakdim.
In that Islamic State-inspired attack, a 25-year-old Moroccan-born French citizen killed four people and injured another 16 before being shot by police in a supermarket in Trèbes.
One of those killed was Lt-Col Arnaud Beltrame, who heroically swapped places with a female hostage during the Islamist’s reign of terror.
The murder of Knoll occurred in the same area where another grisly anti-Semitic murder took place last April.
In that instance, it was clear that the torture and murder of 65-year-old Orthodox Jew Sarah Halimi was religiously motivated and yet French authorities steadfastly refused to acknowledge that fact for months.
The man accused of the retired doctor and schoolteacher’s murder screamed “Allahu Akbar” and recited Koranic verses before throwing her battered body off a balcony.
Only after a global outcry, persist- ent pressure from Jewish groups and the intervention of French President Emmanuel Macron did the brutal murder eventually become classified as anti-Semitic by a French judge on February 28.
This time around there has been no obfuscation, with Macron labelling Knoll’s killing as the assassination of “an innocent and vulnerable woman because she was Jewish and in doing so profaned our sacred values and our history”.
Violent attacks against Jews are all too common in France.
One in 10 French Jews has suffered a physical assault, according to a 2016 Ipsos survey. Three in four Jews surveyed in a 2013 EU poll said that they no longer displayed signs of their religion such as a kippah or Star of David because they feared an attack.
It’s no surprise that the rise in antiSemitism has coincided with an increase in France’s Muslim population.
In the UK, the Labour party is mired in its own anti-Semitic crisis with multiple self-inflicted controversies.
For more than 18 months the party has been investigating dozens of its members for alleged anti-Semitism.
On the weekend, Christine Shawcroft quit Labour’s national executive committee amid allegations that she defended a council candidate accused of Holocaust denial. Last week, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn apologised to the Jewish community for the party’s anti-Semitic malaise.
It’s a little rich for Corbyn to play the role of the unifier when he is personally connected with a host of malicious anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers. He has had long-term associations with individuals and groups who are virulently anti-Jewish and anti-Israel.
Corbyn has in the past invited members of terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah to speak in the British parliament and referred to these most determined and deadly Jew haters as “friends”.
Under his leadership, a worrying number of Labour councillors have disgraced themselves by making blatantly hateful comments about Jews.
Activist group Labour Against antiSemitism claimed last month that anti-Semitism was becoming “institutionalised” in Labour and “immediate and decisive” action was needed to overcome the issue.
It is clear that Corbyn is not the man to rid Labour of the malignant cancer of anti-Semitism.