Anti-Semitism in Britain: My swastika | The Economist

On antisemitism in London:

Within Britain, the data on anti-Semitic attacks also turn out to be quietly encouraging, albeit with the proviso that much hate crime goes unreported. The Community Security Trust CST, which monitors anti-Semitic incidents in Britain, counted fewer of them in 2013 than in any year since 2005. The CST notes that spikes in aggressive anti-Semitism here tend to be triggered by external events such as war in the Middle East. Compared with the Jews of France and Belgium, who have suffered fatal shootings in the recent past—and compared with other minorities in Britain itself—British Jews seem to have little reason to fear.

So the evidence suggests that modern Britain is indeed an almost uniquely benign place for Jews lapsed or otherwise to live. My swastika was upsetting, but it was also unusual. All the same, there is something residually demoralising about it, and in these relative judgments. They imply that some degree of anti-Semitism is inevitable—as, apparently, it is. Even in this enlightened age, and the most cosmopolitan city in the world, this primitive, irrational, amazingly tenacious prejudice is still with us, written into our culture and occasionally on our walls.

Anti-Semitism in Britain: My swastika | The Economist.