British Jews have become accustomed to being told not to worry, that they are exaggerating or even fabricating threats against them. Every time a synagogue installs additional security measures, every time a Jewish school raises its perimeter fences, every time Jewish families quietly discuss whether it is wise to wear visible symbols of their identity in public, they are questioned about whether concerns are exaggerated. But recent attacks on the Jewish community have shown otherwise; daily there is news of varying degrees of hostility, from ambulances being blown up to children being abused on buses.

A recent controversy surrounding the National Association of Muslim Police has raised questions about how institutions engage with identity-based advocacy. An organization that should be concerned with protecting the rights of its members spent a significant portion of its policy document on challenging anti-Muslim hatred revising history, reinterpreting words such as antisemitism and Zionism, and trying to disassociate Islamists’ use of Islamic doctrine as the motivation for their terrorism. Falsification will not meet the challenge of the justifiable concerns of those at risk of being victims of anti-Muslim hatred.

It can even be seen in judicial decisions. An Employment Tribunal decision that antizionism is a ‘protected belief’ in relation to the Equality Act 2010 is currently being appealed. That decision gave antizionism the same protections as ethical veganism, pacifism and environmentalism.

The Green Party provides another focus for Jewish concerns. Campaigns continue to try to revive the slogan “Zionism is racism” as party policy, despite the fact that most Jews regard Zionism not as an abstract political ideology but as the belief that the Jewish people possess the same right to national self-determination as any other people. When Zack Polanski, Green Leader, was criticized for wearing a T-shirt in support of Marwan Barghouti, a man convicted of killing five people and the mastermind behind numerous terrorist attacks against Israelis, Polanski doubled down on his support for the divisive figure, making astounding comparisons to Nelson Mandela with a false quote from the now deceased statesman. All the while, Polanski has given public support to identifying and investigating British citizens who have served in the Israel Defense Forces upon their return to the United Kingdom. Defending this as an accountability initiative, Jews cannot help but notice that similar campaigns are rarely directed towards Britons who have served in other foreign militaries or participated in other overseas conflicts.

The question naturally arises: why this particular group? The answer may lie in what has become the defining feature of contemporary attitudes towards Jews in Britain: the emergence of what might be called the Jewish exception, a strange inversion of the allegation of Jewish supremacy so prevalent in antizionist circles.

Liberal democracies are founded upon the principle that individuals should be judged as........

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