In France, which is experiencing another surge of anti-Jewish attacks, the lower house of parliament has approved a draft resolution that calls hatred of Israel a form of antisemitism.

In Britain, after the Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, made an unprecedented intervention into the general election campaign warning that “a new poison” of antisemitism “sanctioned from the top” had “taken root in the Labour Party,” support for Labour actually increased. In four out of five opinion polls taken over the following few days, the party’s rating rose by between two and five points.

Last week, two people were murdered and three others wounded in an Islamic terrorist attack in London. And over the past two weeks, there were four attacks on Jews in the streets of London.

These things are all linked.

The Chief Rabbi was right to say what he said because Jews have a duty to tell unpalatable truths and sound a cultural warning.

Yet it is a dismal fact that drawing attention to antisemitism these days tends to produce even more of it. Triggering the widespread resentment and guilt complex over the Jews’ perceived status as history’s supreme victims, it provokes yet more hostility.