Something in the tea?

Editorial

Some legendary British names: Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot, Neville Chamberlain. Erudite, literate men all – with one other thing in common: a deep-rooted antipathy – or at the very least, apathy – towards Jews.

So it should come as no surprise that the United Kingdom has one of the world's fastest-growing rates of Jew-hatred. Last year alone, there were 136 violent incidents of anti-Semitism, including one last August on a London bus when a woman was brutally beaten by a gang of Muslims who refused to believe she wasn't Jewish. According to news reports, they beat her unconscious, then continued to stomp on her chest and head, breaking the orbital bone in her eye. Not one of the bus passengers or the driver came to her defence.

Caroline Glick, writing last month in the World Jewish Review, asserted that "Anti-Semitism has increasingly become the defining characteristic of British society." It's a trend that can be seen in the opinions of the British public at large – more than half the population believe Israel is the greatest threat to global security.

It's a trend that can be seen in the reluctance of the country's teachers to stand up for historical veracity: schools quietly opting out of Holocaust education, for fear of offending students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.

And most importantly, it's a trend that is reflected in the continuous barrage of British trade unions who take it upon themselves to boycott their Israeli counterparts. Last year, it was university teachers shunning Israeli academics – a move that was only overturned after a union merger made the motion void.

Last month, it was the U.K. National Union of Journalists (NUJ) who voted to boycott Israeli goods – conveniently forgetting that much of the equipment and software on which they work originates in Israel – and that a key journalistic credo is not to tip one's hand when it comes to revealing personal bias.

The NUJ decided to make this call as threats were ramped up by the kidnappers of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston, who was taken from his base in Gaza. Ironically, in response to Johnston's disappearance and their own lack of press freedom, the Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate called for a boycott not of Israel, but of the Palestinian Authority.

Now, we have the British doctors. Last week, a group of them called for their Israeli counterparts to be expelled from the World Medical Association because Israel had "systematically flouted the fourth Geneva Convention guaranteeing a civilian population unfettered access to medical services and immunity for medical staff."

In English, the accusation is that Israel refused to allow unrestricted crossings of Palestinian ambulances. This, despite the fact that ambulances and other medical facilities are frequently used as a cover for terrorists and that, at any rate, arrangements have been made between Magen David Adom and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society to allow ambulances to pass unhindered through checkpoints using registered drivers.

Whether this latest boycott sticks remains to be seen, but the facts are clear: Britain is not a friend to Israel, or to Jews. Perhaps this is why British Jews, like their French brethren, are now in such a rush to purchase bolt-hole property in the Holy Land.

When it comes to those we can trust, the British, sadly, are near the bottom of the list.

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