The horror in halle reminds us that anti-semitism still the spectre that haunts europe | thearticle

_Berlin_ Germany has reacted with dismay and righteous anger to the terrorist atrocity in Halle, where a lone gunman failed to blast his way into the synagogue, then shot two people dead and

seriously wounded two more. Up to 80 Jews were gathered inside for Yom Kippur, or Day of Atonement. The carnage that would have ensued if the doors had not withstood the terrorist’s bomb

does not bear thinking about. The fact that this attack happened on German soil and was perpetrated by a German dressed in neo-Nazi combat gear, on the most solemn of the Jewish high

holidays, naturally gives it an even more sinister resonance here. It went without saying that Chancellor Merkel joined the Berlin Jewish community at the New Synagogue to signal her

solidarity with the intended victims. Predictably, the assassin live-streamed himself as he went about his butchery, including a tirade in which he denied the Holocaust and blamed the Jews

for the world’s problems. This is a reminder, as if it were needed, that the anti-Semitic genie is well and truly out of the bottle in Europe. Jews here are wondering why the police took ten

minutes to arrive when on this of all days they should have been on guard against the threat from resurgent Right-wing extremism.  More facts about the attack will emerge in the coming

days, but it may be no coincidence that the police have recently carried out a number of raids on neo-Nazi cells, such as Combat 18, that usually target refugees and other migrants. Unlike

France, where most anti-Semitic attacks come from Islamists, in Germany the threat comes mainly from neo-Nazis who are hostile to both Jews and Muslims.  Though anti-Semitism is certainly

back with a vengeance, the sense of revulsion against it from the mainstream in Germany is still strong. Jewish communities here are small and many are from Russia or elsewhere in Eastern

Europe. There is a need for more education about the Holocaust, especially in the former East Germany, but that is clearly insufficient. Europe, including Germany and Britain, has a

particular problem in reconciling its genuine repudiation of past persecutions of the Jews with its incessant criticism of the Jewish state. Elements of the far-Right and the far-Left, as

well as radical Islamists, have battened onto this contradiction and exploited it to spread anti-Semitic hatred. That hatred has mutated into new forms, which cloak themselves in

respectability by focusing on “Zionism” and accusing Israel of behaving like the Nazis towards Palestinians. Jews are depicted as victims, while Israelis are seen as perpetrators. Yet on the

same day as the synagogue attack in Halle, a similar plot was foiled in Tel Aviv, where Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine planned to send a suicide bomber into a

synagogue there, knowing it would be packed on Yom Kippur. These organisations have been described as “friends” by Left-wing politicians in Europe, most notoriously Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour

leader was quick to condemn the shootings in Halle, but he is less eager to denounce Palestinian attacks on Jews in Israel. It was reassuring that an anti-German poster published by

Leave.EU this week was speedily withdrawn after it was treated on all sides with the contempt that it deserved. The British have indeed long since moved on from post-war clichés about

“Krauts”. Germany has set the standard in confronting the crimes of its past and deserves respect for doing something that other formerly totalitarian states, notably Russia and China, have

conspicuously failed to do.  But the hideous hatred that has just manifested itself again in Halle must never be forgotten, downplayed or relativised. Anti-Semitism is the spectre that is

now haunting Europe. It is, or ought to be, the deepest source of shame, not only for Germans, but for Europeans and, indeed, the whole of humanity.