Time to stand up for decency and show solidarity with our Jewish friends - Bill Carmichael

A Jewish chaplain at the University of Leeds has been forced into hiding with his wife and young children after being deluged with death and rape threats.

At the same university buildings associated with the Jewish student community have suffered racist graffiti attacks.

In the West End of London Jewish guests at a comedy event were threatened and hounded out of the theatre by a baying mob because they declined to stand and applaud a Palestinian flag.

These are all in recent days, but I could have chosen any period over the last four months and found similar headlines.

Do you see any pattern emerging here? Of course you do. You would have to be blind not to connect the dots. What is happening here is as clear as a bell.

Thanks to an unholy alliance of the far Left and Islamist extremists, the UK is undergoing a wave of anti-semitic hatred and bigotry on a scale unrivalled in my lifetime.

And it is not just in the UK. Throughout Western Europe and North America we are witnessing an orgy of Jew baiting that is horribly reminiscent of the actions of the Nazi Brownshirts in Germany 90 years ago.

In Davos in Switzerland for example, a ski school put out notices that said Jews were banned from hiring skis and sledges. Adolf Hitler would be proud.

I have some personal experience of these events. Twice in recent months I have been unknowingly caught up in anti-semitic hate marches that have besmirched our cities on a regular basis since last October.

I have witnessed at first hand the genocidal chants, the racist slogans on placards, and the aggressive bullying of the Hamas fanboys, spoiling for violence and wrapped up and disguised in their trendy keffiyehs.

Not once at these events have I heard any demands for the release of hostages taken by Hamas, including babies and elderly people, or any sympathy for the children slaughtered and the young girls gang raped, mutilated and murdered. Never once did I witness a single ounce of sympathy or compassion for the Jewish victims of racist violence.

On those occasions I have feared for my safety - and I am not even Jewish. I can only imagine how my Jewish friends and neighbours must feel. Absolutely terrified I should think.

The situation is especially bad on university campuses where hatred of Jews has not only become acceptable, but positively fashionable among so-called “progressives” - often middle class, white, students of immense privilege.

The modern left has ditched traditional class-based politics in favour of modish identity politics, which divides people into a hierarchy of victimhood, with ethnic groups being alloted the role of oppressed or oppressor.

Such rigid divisions rarely fit in with reality. For example, we are told the 1,400 young girls abused and trafficked in Rotherham could not be oppressed, simply because they were white.

Similarly, Jews, despite being a small minority of the global population and suffering appalling discrimination and violence, cannot, according to this divisive theory, be oppressed because they are “white”.

Anyone who has ever visited Israel, as I have, will see that this is appallingly ignorant.

I weep for my Jewish friends. Just imagine being a Jewish student, or the parent of the Jewish student, at the University of Leeds or many other campuses across the UK, fearful and desperately worried about bullying, discrimination and violence.

I know for fact that many Jewish students feel they cannot display any sign of their faith, for example wearing a Star of David or a kippah, for fear of assault.

University students and staff who indulge in this hatred need to be expelled and sacked. Racist demonstrators who are not British subjects need to have their visas revoked and deported. Unemployed protestors who demonstrate Jew hatred need to have their benefits suspended indefinitely.

It is time to stand up for decency and solidarity with our Jewish friends, and against this wave of intolerance and hatred.