Simon Sebag-Monntefiore has written a piece in the New Statesman entitled "A dangerous time to be a Jew", which appeared in last night's Evening Standard in some kind of abbreviated format. No amount of webfu on my part can link to them, unless you want to cross someone's palm with e-silver, which I'm guessing neither of us do.
Here's the gist: after two arson attacks in as many days on London synagogues (United Synagogue in Tottenham, and Aish in Hendon), it's made him consider his indentity as an Anglo Jew (still in favour), it's made him tell us a ridiculous story about how he "toiled" (worked?) on a Kibbutz (which we could have lived without), he's compared the current trend for linking anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, and says it's a bad thing. But he still likes this "tolerant quirky and flexible land".
Me too.
I've had a book by my bed for six months that I ocassionally dip into: The Devil and the Jews by Joshua Trachtenberg, which I last read when I was at college. The reason I didn't write up the arson attacks when they happened is that I feel a little numb. I don't want to be hand-wringing and thin-end-wedging in either public or private. I don't deny that we all live in troubled times, whatever minority we come from. Or, frankly, whoever we are, at all. I mean, a 15 year old kid got killed for a mobile phone. What kind of world is that?
So this post is just a marker for my thoughts. I've felt for some time that either it's like Germany in the thirties (they're all out to get us) or it's not. Only history will tell, and we may or may not be around for that. I don't want to wail and bemoan our losses. And I care. It's like the property market: could go up or down, we don't have a crystal ball. Your mileage may vary.
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