I’ve seen a thread here on Facebook savaging Ed Davey because he said the LibDems will not work on a national level with the antisemitic Greens. The most popular posts, as it most repeated, claim that he has been paid by Israel or that he does not know the difference between Zionists and Jews. I’m very familiar with these phrases which abounded on the Corbynist forums I used to observe. The proposition that any UK Party, not to mention all of them, is being run by Israel is unsophisticated, old style anti Jewish conspiracy speculation. The separation of Jews from Zionism is altogether more thought out and the number of comments insisting ‘Zionism is a political ideology and Judaism a religion’ shows how eagerly this mantra has been learned and repeated. By way of a QED, one participant in the discussion adds a brief video of Miriam Margolyes (who is making Neturei Karta redundant) slagging off Zionism.

The demographics of Israel are about 7 million Jews and 2 million Arabs, all of whom will be able to vote in the forthcoming election. Israel has a relatively thriving economy although not so prosperous, I believe, as to keep the entire UK Parliament on its books.

The separation of Jews from Israel is the most frequent apologia for any kind of antisemitism. Here is an example: Sir David Bell’s review on antisemism in schools has been published and, on social media, posts abound to say that what we call the bullying of children is nothing other than criticism of Israel – although ‘criticism of the genocide’ is now a more popular phrase and it saves them typing ‘Israel’ which they seem to fear works like saying ‘Voldemort’ out loud.

As the granddaughter of Jewish immigrants who left Russia and Poland before the Communist Revolution and being born in 1949, a year after the State of Israel, I can tell you that Israel was part of our culture, our festivals, our prayers, our way of life and our way of death for my entire life and the people who insist that it is an altogether separate matter seem to me not to know how it works. My family were socialists and in its first decades Israel also was socialistic, governed by the equivalent of Labour. It later moved to the right in the time of Menachem Begin and the following years and is further to the right now. I don’t like the far right but they don’t stop me being a Zionist any more than the UK far right stops me loving Britain. However, my love for Britain begins to look unrequited, which is not the case with Israel.