The Uniqueness of the Shoah

I have been very moved this week watching the witness statements of the survivors of the Holocaust, on this 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. But a paradox struck me: again and again these living saints and martyrs described the horrific brutality that they suffered, and yet in spite of that, they survived. In the cruellest of ironies, it seems that it was when the perpetrators themselves were carried away by a sadistic urge to torture and kill that conditions became chaotic enough for a fortunate few – and so pitifully few! – to escape attention and thus survive.

How could the German people, creators of the most sublime literature, art and music in the world, have become the greatest perpetrators of genocide? It is notable that the Nazis themselves were horrified at the unbridled brutality of both their Lithuanian auxiliaries in the Kaunas massacres and their Croatian auxiliaries in the Jasenovac massacres. Himmler himself expressed concern about the impact mass killing would have on the mental health of his SS men.

The slaughterman wants his abbattoir to operate with calm efficiency. The last thing he wants is for his men to set about the waiting animals, trying to beat them to death and making them run all over the place in terror and agony. This was the inspiration for the Nazis to build their Europe-wide network of extermination camps, furnished with state-of-the-art gas chambers and crematoria. And it is this aspect that sets the Shoah – the Holocaust – apart from all other massacres and genocides before and after.

The evidence for this is most clear in one camp: Belzec. Built in November 1941 for the express purpose of exterminating the Jews of Galitzia – more than 50 of my extended family among them –  the Nazis calmly dismantled it in June 1943. Because there were no more Jews left to kill. In that 19 month period they murdered more than half a million human beings on that site alone. Belzec was never liberated: D-Day was a year in the future. Only two people escaped and survived: Rudolf Reder and Chaim Hirszman.

It is not the brutality of the Shoah that sets it apart: that has been the all-too-human feature of all genocides. What makes the Shoah unique is the application of scientific detachment and world-leading technology to treat millions of human beings as raw material to be turned into ash and smoke.

Antisemitism and Islamophobia

What is antisemitism? What is Islamophobia? Or, to turn it on its head: can opposition to Jews or Muslims ever be ethical?

To my mind the best place to start is Dr.Martin Luther King Jr’s most famous phrase: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Too often the second half of this is forgotten. We have rightly given up judging people by that which is no fault of their own, or even no fault at all – skin colour, parentage, looks, disability, sexual orientation – but, it seems, at the price of abandoning the essential human faculty of judgment altogether.

9/11, the Bali bombings, the Madrid train bombings, Beslan, the Tube & bus bombings, Sharm-el-Sheikh, the Mumbai bombings of 2005 and 2008, Westgate mall, Charlie Hebdo, Bataclan, Orlando, Nice, Tanta, Manchester Arena, Barcelona, Sri Lanka. In each case the mass-murderers have expressly claimed that they were killing in the name of Islam. Should this not be abhorred and opposed? If we pointed to such acts and said that they are essential to Islam and that all Muslims would like to commit similar given the opportunity, that would indeed be bigoted, wrong and worthy of the epithet Islamophobic. The way is open for peaceful Muslims to condemn them and assure us that is no part of their interpretation of Islam: and indeed the Ahmadiyyas, Sufis, Baha’is, Ismailis, Balochis, Azeris and Kurds do just that. But jihad bil saif – religious killing – is alas integral to Wahhabi, Salafi and Deobandi Islam. And those branches applaud this killing.

We should never forget the Muslims killed by Da’esh, Boko Haram, Al-Qaeda, the Taleban and many other Islamist groups throughout Asia and Africa. The numbers are hard to establish, but around 1,000,000 over the past 20 years is not an over-estimate. As my friend, the scholar David Hirsh wrote in 2017: “This is not a fight against Islam, it is a fight against a specific political movement which claims to be the sole authentic practice of Islam… Jihadi totalitarianism is a form of Islam, but it is only one form; there are other traditions, there are better ones; and they are much more widespread. Most Muslims hate and fear the Jihadis.”

There is a small but real jihadist threat to Western civilisation, and it is made worse by the likes of Corbyn, Melenchon and Ocasio-Cortez whose anti-Zionist, anti-capitalist, anti-American Marxism disables integration

It is not antisemitic to judge individual Jews by their words and deeds. In the same way it is not Islamophobic to condemn Muslims who incite jihad bil saif. A definition of Islamophobia that would catch people like Michael Gove, a man who wants nothing but peace & prosperity for his fellow-citizens, is unjust and cannot be supported.

Most Jews are serenely unbothered by Richard Dawkins: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” We have the moral maturity to realise that the bloodthirsty elements of the Tanakh were appropriate to their time, and 3,000 or more years later we have not just the right but the duty to lock them in their historical setting and be guided purely by the moral elements that chime, to use Steven Pinker’s phrase, with the better angels of our nature.  To fail to hold Islam – or indeed any other religion – to the same standard is the racism of low expectations. It is unworthy.

….not necessarily to our advantage…

Having a bit of a lean time of it at the moment. I was at work last Monday morning, and about 09:30 my mobile rang. Saw who it was and said, “Hello, Mummy”. A man’s voice answered: “It’s Chris, your neighbour. Your Mum’s had a fall”.

When I got home some 20 minutes later I found Mummy lying on her bedroom floor with the cleaning lady (who fortunately comes on Mondays) and Chris. Mummy was in too much pain to move. Chris had called the ambulance who deduced it wasn’t fatal and gave a 90-minute ETA. They came in about 70 minutes, concluded there was something badly wrong with her hip and prepared her to be stretchered to St.Richard’s Hospital. I asked if I should prepare an overnight bag. “An excellent idea”.

At St.Richard’s the doctors found that she’d broken her hip. The seriousness of this (Mummy is 91) can be gauged by the fact that they operated on her on Tuesday morning.
When I came in to see her after the operation they told me they’d decided to give her a Hip Hemi-Arthroplasty.

That was six days ago. Mummy is making as good progress as one can expect given her age. Today she zimmered up and down the ward five times and even negotiated the Physiotherapy Step Boss. She got lucky with the ward: there are only seven other patients, all solidly middle-class octogenarian females speaking with Received Pronunciation, so she’s among her own kind. After a shaky culinary start she’s managed to get a couple of piping hot meals. And I’ve been to see her for three hours every day, and my brother & sister have come in many times as well, which gives her as much of an emotional and psychological boost as possible.

I asked the Senior Physiotherapist who was in attendance today what Mummy’s prognosis was, and how soon she might be able to come back home. She said she might well be discharged fit at the weekend.

I always said that for me, the worst-case scenario for Mummy’s twilight years would be for her to be physically incapable of doing what she wanted, but fully aware of it and with a strong enough will to demand that I and the rest of the family do everything that she wants, necessary or not, to her exactingly high standards. Well, here we are.

It’s Been a Funny Few Days

Well, it’s been a funny few days.

On Sunday, after spending a terrific day at the annual JGSGB Conference, I lost all electrical power in my car. First the radio cut out, then the power steering and brakes, and finally the lights and the engine itself. I was stranded without lights in the third lane of Shepherds Bush Green – one of the busiest roads in London! Fortunately two lads helped me push the car into a side road. I called the AA and they diagnosed a worn-out alternator. I had to be towed 50 miles home – got my money’s worth out of the AA this year!

So on Monday I had to take the day off to get a new alternator fitted. That’s a few hundred quid I hadn’t bargained on pishing away this month. Fortunately they were able to get it done on the same day.
No sooner had I got that fixed than I noticed the dreaded tell-tale sign – the bog filled up to the brim when I flushed it!

So today (which fortunately I had booked off also) once again I was up to my elbows in shit. Over 200 feet of drain serviced by seven manholes. As usual, welly-deep in turds, slugs and bog-paper, rodded out several ferret-sized root masses and washed it all down with 14 buckets of disinfectant. I’m getting too old for this shit – literally. Any jobs going as an executioner?

Instead of Excessive Apology

To all those, especially my fellow-Jews, who say that we Jews should be held to, and indeed hold ourselves to, higher moral standards than anybody else: please take the time to read these three passages that flash with tongues of fire.

Before the State of Israel, before the Holocaust, there was one modern prophet who saw with clear eyes what was facing the Jewish people, and what we would have to do to survive:

Instead of Excessive Apology

Ze’ev Jabotinsky (1911)

We constantly and very loudly apologize… Instead of turning our backs to the accusers, as there is nothing to apologize for, and nobody to apologize to, we swear again and again that it is not our fault… Isn’t it long overdue to respond to all these and all future accusations, reproaches, suspicions, slanders and denunciations by simply folding our arms and loudly, clearly, coldly and calmly answer with the only argument that is understandable and accessible to this public: ‘Go to Hell!’?

Who are we, to make excuses to them; who are they to interrogate us? What is the purpose of this mock trial over the entire people where the sentence is known in advance? Our habit of constantly and zealously answering to any rabble has already done us a lot of harm and will do much more. … The situation that has been created as a result, tragically confirms a well known saying: “Qui s’excuse s’accuse.” We ourselves have acquainted our neighbours with the thought that for every embezzling Jew it is possible to drag the entire ancient people to answer, a people that was already legislating at the time when the neighbours had not even invented a bast shoe. Every accusation causes among us such a commotion that people unwittingly think, ‘why are they so afraid of everything?’ Apparently their conscience is not clear.’ Exactly because we are ready at every minute to stand at attention, there develops among the people an inescapable view about us, as of some specific thievish tribe. We think that our constant readiness to undergo a search without hesitation and to turn out our pockets, will eventually convince mankind of our nobility; look what gentlemen we are–we do not have anything to hide! This is a terrible mistake. The real gentlemen are the people that will not allow anyone for any reason to search their apartment, their pockets or their soul. Only a person under surveillance is ready for a search at every moment…. This is the only one inevitable conclusion from our maniac reaction to every reproach–to accept responsibility as a people for every action of a Jew, and to make excuses in front of everybody including hell knows who. I consider this system to be false to its very root. We are hated not because we are blamed for everything, but we are blamed for everything because we are not loved… We may apologize only in rare, unique and extremely important moments when we are completely confident that the Areopagus in front of us really has just intentions and proper competence. We do not have to apologize for anything. We are a people as all other peoples; we do not have any intentions to be better than the rest. As one of the first conditions for equality we demand the right to have our own villains, exactly as other people have them. Yes, we do have provocateurs and draft dodgers, and it is even strange that we have so few of them under current conditions. Other people have also these kind of “good,” and, in addition, they have embezzlers, and pogrom-makers, and torturers–so what– the neighbours live and are not ashamed…. Do our neighbours blush for the Christians in Kishinev who hammered nails into Jewish babies’ eyes?” Not in the least,– they walk with head raised high and look everybody in the face; they are absolutely right, and this is how it must be, as the persona of a people is royal, and not responsible and is not obliged to apologize…

We do not have to account to anybody, we are not to sit for anybody’s examination and nobody is old enough to call on us to answer. We came before them and will leave after them. We are what we are, we are good for ourselves, we will not change and we do not want to.

Then there was the heir to Jabotinsky, the unconquerable warrior who made peace with Israel’s greatest enemy:

The Lessons of the Holocaust

Menachem Begin (1981)

First, if an enemy of our people says he seeks to destroy us, believe him. Don’t doubt him for a moment. Don’t make light of it. Do all in your power to deny him the means of carrying out his satanic intent.

Second, when a Jew anywhere is threatened, or under attack, do all in your power to come to his aid. Never pause to wonder what the world will think or say. The world will never pity slaughtered Jews. The world may not necessarily like the fighting Jew, but the world will have to take account of him.

Third, a Jew must learn to defend himself. He must forever be prepared for whenever threat looms.

Fourth, Jewish dignity and honor must be protected in all circumstances. The seeds of Jewish destruction lie in passively enabling the enemy to humiliate us. Only when the enemy succeeds in turning the spirit of the Jew into dust and ashes in life, can he turn the Jew into dust and ashes in death. During the Holocaust it was after the enemy had humiliated the Jews, trampled them underfoot, divided them, deceived them, afflicted them, drove brother against brother, only then could he lead them, almost without resistance, to the gates of Auschwitz. Therefore, at all times and whatever the cost, safeguard the dignity and honor of the Jewish people.

Fifth, stand united in face of the enemy. We Jews love life, for life is holy. But there are things in life more precious than life itself. There are times when one must risk life for the sake of rescuing the lives of others. And when the few risk their own lives for the sake of the many, then they, too, stand the chance of saving themselves.

Sixth, there is a pattern to Jewish history. In our long annals as a nation, we rise, we fall, we return, we are exiled, we are enslaved, we rebel, we liberate ourselves, we are oppressed once more, we rebuild, and again we suffer destruction, climaxing in our own lifetime in the calamity of calamities, the Holocaust, followed by the rebirth of the Jewish State.

So, yes, we have come full circle, and with God’s help, with the rebirth of sovereign Israel we have finally broken the historic cycle: no more destruction and no more defeats, and no more oppression – only Jewish liberty, with dignity and honor. These, I believe, are the underlying lessons to be learned from the unspeakable tragedy of the Holocaust.

 

And finally there was the uncompromising feminist, who was never afraid to voice the most painful truths:

Take No Prisoners (Interview in ‘The Guardian’)

Andrea Dworkin (2000)

“Pacifism was dead, killed by the Nazis along with the six million. There would be no more feminised, gentle, Jewish males, no more ‘Yid’.”

The Horseshoe Theory

There has been a lot of talk recently about the Horseshoe theory of politics: how Alt-Right and Antifa have more in common with each other than with Centrists. According to Wikipedia, “The earliest use of the term appears to be from Jean-Pierre Faye‘s 2002 book Le Siècle des idéologies.” But the theory itself is far older. Read ‘West Coast Story by Jack Davis & Frank Jacobs from ‘MAD’ magazine, April 1971 and judge for yourself: and consider how many echoes there are of Nixon in today’s incumbent.

A Different Yom Kippur

On October 6th 1973, while the country was occupied with the prayers of Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, the combined armies of nine Arab countries caught Israel napping with a devastating attack on all sides. The Arabs had learnt from their humiliation in the Six-Day War, and this time they were successful. The Israeli armed forces were overwhelmed by an army three times their size, and the country was quickly overrun. Estimates of the death toll in the chaos that followed cannot be verified, but by the end of the year the only Jews left in the country now partitioned between Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon had been forcibly converted to Islam.
About a million Israeli Jews had managed to flee, mainly by air and sea as any caught crossing the land borders were slaughtered out of hand. But where could they go? As in 1939 the face of the world was turned against them. Canada repeated Frederick Blair’s infamous decree: “None is too many”, and the whole of Europe and the Americas followed suit.
As in 1941, only one country opened its doors to the defenceless Jews. The Soviet Union, having emboldened the Arabs to destroy Israel, now invited the remnant of the Jewish people back to the country whose pogroms their grandparents had fled two generations before. But of course there was a catch. They had to prove themselves dedicated to International Communism: and for those whose dedication was found to be lacking the gulags of Siberia awaited.
Now the Jews of Israel were safely murdered, rendered dumb by conversion to Islam or imprisoned thousands of miles away in Siberia, needless to say the progressive social justice warriors of the West rose up as one to protest against their treatment, led by such principled luminaries as Tony Benn, Ken Livingstone, Desmond Tutu, Tariq Ali, Edward Said, Noam Chomsky, Roger Waters, and Jeremy Corbyn.
How they loved those wailing masses of tortured, helpless, impotent Jews. How right and proper their position seemed to be. And how furious they would have been if, against all the odds, those Jews of Israel had managed to turn the tables and, impossibly, had won that war in 1973?

Lessons of the Holocaust

Does it make sense to say that we should learn lessons from the Holocaust? I believe it does – and they are clear.
For Jews, Menachem Begin, speaking in 1981, said it best:
“First, if an enemy of our people says he seeks to destroy us, believe him. Don’t doubt him for a moment. Don’t make light of it. Do all in your power to deny him the means of carrying out his satanic intent.

Murder of Jews in Ivangorod 1942

 

Second, when a Jew anywhere is threatened, or under attack, do all in your power to come to his aid. Never pause to wonder what the world will think or say. The world will never pity slaughtered Jews. The world may not necessarily like the fighting Jew, but the world will have to take account of him.”

The last Jew in Vinnitsa shot at edge of pit 1941

 

In the 1930s the Jews of Germany, and much of Europe, thought that they belonged to the most advanced and progressive civilisation the world had ever seen. They could not believe that the people who had thrilled with them to Beethoven and Goethe, and together with them had probed the secrets of the universe and the heart of the atom, would unleash on them a merciless barbarism as murderous as that of Genghis Khan. But they did.

Partisan Brigade of Abba Kovner & Benjamin Levin at Vilna Liberation 1944

 

For Gentiles, it is even simpler. Because of our long history of being persecuted, Jews have the most acute antennae for it. So if a Jew calls out antisemitism, don’t question them. Believe them. If you can’t bring yourself to support them, at least don’t try to silence them.
If, however, you dismiss Jewish accusations of antisemitism as being in bad faith, and support anti-Jewish remarks as ‘fair comment’; if you tell Jews that after 75 years it’s high time they ‘got over’ the Holocaust; if you condemn the government and armed forces of Israel for preventing the murder of its citizens by any means necessary; and, most wickedly of all, if you try to demoralise young Jews by lying to them that “Israel is doing to the Palestinian Arabs what the Nazis did to the Jews”; then, deny it though you may, I am afraid you are committing acts of antisemitism.

Woman Soldiers of the Israeli Defence Force

A Trip to Romantischer Rheinland in May 1952

 

In May 1952 my mother Anne Berns, then aged 25, persuaded my grandparents to take her on a touring holiday of Germany, centered on the ‘Romantischer Rheinland’. Many of her friends thought she had no business going for a holiday in a country which had so recently come within an ace of destroying our own, and which had committed such unspeakable crimes, above all the Holocaust: but as she said, she wanted to go there “to see if the Germans were human”.

          

Frank & Fanny Berns                        Town Centre

 

They hired a car & driver and toured a great swathe of West Germany (as it was then): the capital Bonn, Cologne, Heidelberg, Neuschwanstein, Oberammergau, Wiesbaden, Dinkelsbühl, Rothenburg ob der Tauber. They ended up in the Alpine resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen which their driver particularly recommended to them as an outstandingly beautiful spot.

So how were the Germans? As Churchill said in his speech to the US Congress in 1943: “The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet”. With the exception of a one-legged veteran in the ruins of Cologne who spat at them – Cologne had been flattened utterly, except for the cathedral which had been spared, but the city was a neat & tidy ruin –  everybody in the shops, resorts and hotels fawned obsequiously over my mother and grandparents and couldn’t do enough for them.

Britain had been starving for years under rationing, and even my grandparents who were in the fortunate position of being shopkeepers had their work cut out to organise enough food for themselves & their daughter. What they saw in West Germany made their eyes pop out of their heads. In Garmisch-Partenkirchen there were the biggest cream cakes they’d ever seen. Every shop was stuffed full with first-rate produce. My mother particularly remarked upon the beautiful leather handbags. As for the locals, they were plump, smug and beautifully – and expensively – dressed. The war had only been over five years, and Britain was still on its knees recovering. But in West Germany the appearance of the people and the towns was as if there had never been a war. Or if it had, they looked like victors.

In Garmisch-Partenkirchen

 

The manner of the Germans – those who were not fawning in service – was uniformly self-satisfied. It did not appear that they gave a thought to what they and their families had done during the war. It seemed they did not consider themselves responsible for any wrongdoing, and the concept of repentance was utterly alien to them.

Yes, the Germans were human. But they were quite devoid of what we would call humanity.

Is Kevin Myers Antisemitic?

The furore over Kevin Myers’ article in the Irish edition of the ‘Sunday Times’ on 30 July 2017 (Sorry ladies, equal pay has to be earned) has split the UK Jewish community in half.

Because so many people found it objectionable the Sunday Times has withdrawn it from their website. It achieved the twin goals of being insulting to both women and Jews: but from a Jewish perspective this was the salient passage:

“I note that two of the best paid women presenters in the BBC – Claudia Winkleman and Vanessa Feltz, with whose, no doubt, sterling work I am tragically unacquainted – are Jewish. Good for them. Jews are not generally noted for their insistence on selling their talent for the lowest possible price, which is the most useful measure there is of inveterate, lost-with-all-hands stupidity.”

Lest there be any doubt that Myers likes to sail as close to the wind as possible in his remarks about Jews, he wrote a deliberately provocative clever-silly piece about the Holocaust for the ‘Belfast Telegraph’ on 6 March 2009. This too has been pulled, but fortunately captured by another website:

http://archive.is/2017.07.30-135449/http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/there-was-no-holocaust-kevin-myers-28473646.html

The salient extracts:

“There was no holocaust…six million Jews were not murdered by the Third Reich…For efficient though the Nazis were, they were not so clinically precise as to kill six million Jews — not a Jew more, or not a Jew less…Moreover, there certainly was no holocaust. For if the word is to have any literal validity at all, it must be related to its actual meaning, which comes from the Greek words holos, ‘whole’, and caust, ‘fire’…Any one of us should be able to declare any old counter-factual and even offensive nonsense, without being sent to jail, provided we preach hatred for no one…[but] imams regularly preach hatred for Jews, and where the holocaust is routinely denied. Which member-state of the EU will pursue such conveyors of hate, or seek the extradition of an imam who says that the holocaust was a Zionist hoax? None of them…If Bishop [Richard] Williamson has an agenda, it is so bonkers as to rank alongside that of The Lunar Cheese Society.”

Vanessa Feltz has said on BBC Radio London that the Sunday Times article was “so obviously racist it’s surprisingly hurtful”. The Sunday Times responded by sacking Kevin Myers, who made a fashionably half-arsed apology: “I am issuing an apology for no other reason than contrition of the hurt I have caused them.” Jaw-droppingly, he continued: “I didn’t know Jews were living human beings. I thought they belonged to the Bible.”

One might have thought that this would be the end of it. But surprisingly, a number of Jews – three of whom, including a dear family member, I know to be among the bravest and staunchest supporters of Israel in Britain today, constantly putting themselves in real physical danger to counter antisemitic lies – have spoken out in defence of Myers. Here is what a past President of the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland had to say:

“It is an awful pity that you all had to jump in without first consulting the Irish-Jewish community. The Jewish Representative of Council of Ireland are well able to look after our own local affairs without the interference of the so-called “do-gooders” from the UK and elsewhere….I know Kevin Myers, and I, among others, have personally offered him support. He is suffering from what he wrote. He has never been anything other than supportive to Judaism and Israel…” Another senior figure: “Try being a leader of a small community in a hostile environment.” “In the Irish media there were only about six writers sympathetic to Jews and Israel. Now there are only five.”

We have been here before. The ten thousand or so Jews of Iran have one seat in the Majlis reserved for their representative. Siamak Morsadegh has held that seat since 2008, and last year said in an interview with ‘The Independent’:  “The fact is, Iran is a place where Jews feel secure and we are happy to be here…no one forces the Jews to stay here…the actions of Netanyahu and his government, the way they behave towards the Palestinians, cause problems for Jews everywhere.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/irans-jews-on-life-inside-israels-enemy-state-we-feel-secure-and-happy-a6934931.html

Are you really saying that Ireland is as anti-Zionist – even as antisemitic – as Iran? If so, isn’t it about time you got the hell out and made aliya while you still can?

So how are we to judge Kevin Myers – for judge him we must? As so often, to my mind the most useful parallel is with the Black community. People make the mistake of thinking that being Jewish is mainly a matter of religion. It is not. It is most particularly nothing like being Muslim. Are there atheist Muslims? There are not. Atheist ex-Muslims, many under sentence of death – yes indeed. But rid our synagogues of the atheist Jews and you’d never get a minyan. Being Jewish is something you’re stuck with, no matter what you believe in. Like your skin colour.

When I was a child one of the most popular TV programmes was ‘The Black and White Minstrel Show’. Fifty years ago, it was quite normal – though already a bit dated – for white people to black up. Fifty years before that, they were unashamedly called ‘Nigger Minstrels’ and at the heart of popular culture. Now if you asked any of the people who blacked up whether they were bigots, they would have been horrified. They would have said that they liked black people, they loved their culture, and they admired their musical and athletic talents. Are you getting echoes of anything here, Kevin Myers?

Before WWII, before the establishment of the State of Israel, there was a sound argument to be made for Jews not to make a fuss about gentiles who pointed out the supposed Jewish qualities of being good with money, musical and endowed with a native shrewdness. At least, so the argument went, they weren’t accusing us of murdering Jesus and baking matzohs with Christian children’s blood, and anyway those comments were a small price to pay for them not siding with Hitler. In Romain Gary’s ‘The Oldest Story Ever Told’  (1965) a Jew helps and conceals the Nazi who tortured him in the camps, because “He’s promised to treat me better the next time!”

It is long past time for Jews to stop being careful and precious about charges of antisemitism. That should have ended in 1945. We are no longer trembling Israelites. On the contrary, it is the Kevin Myers of this world who should be nervous about singling out Jews for special attention. The gentile world – and Europe in particular – has over two millennia of arrears of apologies due to the Jewish people. We Jews, of all people, have a right – even, I would argue, a duty to our children – to stand tall and proud and apologise to no-one. Arrogant? Try saying that to a brigade of the IDF.