Marking the horrific consequences of anti semitism

More than 100 people walked through Belfast yesterday to remember Jewish Holocaust Memorial Day.
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It is a timely commemoration, amid the controversy over anti-semitism in Britain, particularly on sections of the far left that are endlessly tolerant of Islamic fanatics, who almost invariably despise Jews.

The great bulk of the Labour Party and mainstream liberal-left in Britain deplore anti semitism and discrimination in all its forms. But a radical faction, with which Jeremy Corbyn has traditionally been associated, has often seemed soft on terror, including of the Islamic or Irish varieties. Mr Corbyn stood in silence for a fanatical IRA gang that was stopped in its murder bid on Loughgall RUC station in 1987 by the SAS.

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Israel, like any nation, is richly deserving of criticism at times. Some of its security responses are too ruthless (other responses are entirely appropriate).

It is nonsense to say that robust criticism of Israel is necessarily anti semitic. But the more determined Israel haters do display a zeal that comes close to anti semitism. They do not accept the country’s right to exist, even though they might pay lip service to that right.

They cannot accept that it is a liberal, flourishing, dynamic democracy, a civilisation founded on an outstanding culture and work ethic. It is surrounded by enemies of varying intensity, many of them failed and corrupt and deeply backward states. Its very existence is under perpetual threat.

Some radicals not only fail or refuse to see that, at times they stand shoulder to shoulder with medieval forms of Islam that want to annihilate the freedoms and democracy that are the cornerstone of the Judeo-Christian world.

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The holocaust of the 1940s was not long ago. Many people who lived through that horror are still alive. There has been nothing like it since, but with the rise of groups such as Isis, we need to be ever vigilant about lunatic ideologies.