The Jewish political instinct since emancipation has been a defensive one. The issue here, however, is that this instinct no longer serves Jews.

Last month, yet another report was published detailing record levels of antisemitic incidents across the Western world. There were the familiar condemnations from public officials under whose watch this hatred had been allowed to fester and burn, and there were the familiar assurances that more education, more awareness campaigns, more Holocaust remembrance initiatives would stem the tide. (The number of British schools marking Holocaust Remembrance Day has dropped by nearly 60 percent since 7 October.)

This sort of education has been the defining message of global Jewish communal strategy for decades: surely, if antisemitism is born of ignorance, then knowledge will cure it? Surely, if we teach the Holocaust, fund interfaith dialogue and showcase Jewish contributions to science, to literature, to medicine, build museums and compile commission reports, eventually the world will understand? But hatred is an illogical thing, and the illogical hardly ever needs to listen to what is reasonable.

But we have educated and commemorated and dialogued: tens of millions have been spent across Europe and North America on tolerance programming and remembrance initiatives; Holocaust education is mandatory in much of the Western world, and Jewish history is more accessible than at any point in modern times. Still, though, the hatred returns, albeit rebranded somewhat.

The issue here is that institutions nowadays are treating antisemitism as if it were merely a gross misunderstanding that would evaporate upon contact with fact. Those on the ground know that it is not.

I spoke previously about the ‘rebranding’ of antisemitism: across the centuries, the accusation mutates, but the hostility remains ugly: in medieval Europe, Jews were condemned as ‘Christ-killers’; In the early modern kingdoms, they........

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