Last year, British Jews experienced the highest number of anti-Semitic incidents since 1984. In France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, and throughout the European continent, Islamist attacks against Jews and Jewish institutions have risen precipitously. Within living memory of the Shoah, Europe’s Jews are again worried for their safety and well-being in nations where they have lived for over one thousand years.
Why is this happening? What do the conditions of European Jewry reveal about the character of European nations, the ideals of European politics, and the trade-offs that European leaders are making? And with millions of new Muslim immigrants coming from societies imbued with anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic sentiment joining forces with a resurgent, leftist ideology opposed to Israel and Jewish particularism, do European leaders have a strategy to combat the anti-Semitism in their midst, or is it really time for the Jews of Europe to leave for good?
Standpoint editor Daniel Johnson and bestselling author, cultural analyst, and Times columnist Melanie Phillips will survey the European horizon to think hard about the dilemmas confronting the Jewish communities of Britain and Europe, and the fateful choices now confronting European Jews and European leaders.
Daniel Johnson
Daniel Johnson is an author, journalist, and founding editor of Standpoint, a monthly British cultural and political magazine. He has been an editorial writer for both The Times (UK) and the Telegraph, as well as literary editor and associate editor for The Times. He was also a contributing editor to The New York Sun and a contributor to The Times Literary Supplement, The Literary Review, Prospect, Commentary, The New Criterion, The American Spectator and The Weekly Standard.
Melanie Phillips
Melanie Phillips, journalist, broadcaster and author, is Britain’s best known and most controversial champion of traditional values in the culture war. Her weekly column, which currently appears in The Times of London, has been published over the years in the Guardian, Observer, Sunday Times and Daily Mail. She also writes for the Jerusalem Post and Jewish Chronicle, is a regular panellist on BBC Radio's The Moral Maze and speaks on public platforms throughout the English-speaking world.Her best-selling book Londonistan, about the British establishment's capitulation to Islamist aggression, was published in 2006. She followed this in 2010 with The World Turned Upside Down: the Global Battle over God, Truth and Power. Her first novel, The Legacy, which deals with conflicted Jewish identity, antisemitism and the power of history, was published in April by Post Hill Press. Her personal and political memoir, Guardian Angel, was published by Post Hill Press in January. You can follow Melanie’s work at her website, www.melaniephillips.com.