Naïve as it now may seem, I’d once thought I belonged to the generation that had witnessed the end of anti-Semitism, the world’s oldest hatred. It seemed that we’d reached a stage in human history when there was a sufficiency of civilised nations run by sufficient numbers of civilised human beings to guarantee the long-term safety of this ancient people. And not only this: but to dismantle the defamations and falsehoods on which hatred of Jews flourished.

And then came the Hamas atrocities on October 7, 2023 in which 1,200 mainly Jewish people were tortured, raped and butchered by a 6,000-strong army of Hamas operatives and their supporters. This was followed by the ordeal of 251 hostages taken into captivity whom Hamas proceeded to brutalise in the course of the next two years.

Horrific though these attacks were, they’d been signposted in the years prior to 2023 by various senior Hamas officials who’d spoken of their intent to destroy the state of Israel by any means necessary. Central to this desire, quite literally, was the implacable belief that the existence of Jews could not be tolerated.

What followed the savagery of October 7, though, told us that anti-Semitism in the rest of the world had merely staged a strategic retreat to emerge when conditions seemed fair. I’d first encountered this just days after October 7 at a lecture given by a prominent Catholic academic who, in relating how we’d got here, had cited the “three million Jews” who’d died in the Holocaust. I was compelled to contact another academic in attendance to confirm that the speaker had actually said this.

Then came the steady eradication of the October 7 atrocities from any form of public discourse........

© Herald Scotland