At the anti-Semitism “summit” in Downing Street, Sir Keir Starmer achieved a personal first. He used the word “Islamists.” But in order to utter a word he had previously avoided in relation to the subject, Sir Keir had to approach it crabwise. Instead of identifying Islamists as the main ideological and physical threat to British Jews, he said: “We’re clear-eyed about the fact that anti-Semitism does not have one source alone: Islamists, far-left, far-right extremism, all target Jewish communities.” Islamists were thus inserted into the conversation but also downplayed. It is obsolete not to recognize that the far right in Britain – for the moment at least – more or less leaves Jews alone. The far left is indeed a breeding ground for anti-Semitism, but not a factor unrelated to the Islamists. Indeed, the two have forged the modern equivalent of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The Prime Minister cannot say this, because he is not brave and because that pact is now so strong that he feared further punishment in the local elections if he suggested its existence. If you watched Kemi Badenoch dealing firmly, two days earlier, with a verbal attack by a pro-Palestinian activist, you could see a leader who speaks freely because she knows what she thinks. Has poor Sir Keir ever known?

David and Danielle Frum, both well-known writers in North America, are old friends of ours. He is the leading anti-Trump Republican journalist. Her witty social commentary, under her maiden name........

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