WarSclerotic

Worse, the idea that the best way to deal with a mob of angry anti-Israel protesters is to give them even more than what they want, by removing all Jewish produce in the hope that they will then go away, is not merely spineless. It is, in its broadest terms, exactly the response that terrorists seek. Some hapless Sainsbury’s spokesperson issued a statement saying that the company was “an absolutely non-political organisation”, and went on: “It was an isolated decision made in a very challenging situation.”

Challenging. What a wonderful word that is, designed as a catch-all to excuse all sorts of inexcusable acts. So – given how challenging things are in Iraq at the moment – presumably Sainsbury’s will be removing all halal goods from its shelves because Islamic State is slaughtering Yazidis. No? You mean Sainsbury’s does not believe all British Muslims should be punished for the actions of a foreign body with which they have no connection?

Mistakes happen. But the way they are dealt with is usually more indicative of the way an organisation is run. And Sainsbury’s is refusing even to investigate the incident. Not that it is the only supermarket to have been targeted by protesters. Over the past few weeks they have been attempting to shut all sorts of shops. Until Saturday, the main significance of the protests had been to show how resolute the retailers have been. In a Tesco in the Midlands, for example, also on Saturday, a group waving Palestinian flags burst in and threw produce from the shelves to the floor. The police were called. That is the only sensible response to intimidation.

But for Sainsbury’s, it seems, the correct response to threats is to give in to them.

The mobs, of course, do not come from nowhere. The previous Saturday, a front-bench Labour MP, Shabana Mahmood, praised a protest against a Sainsbury’s branch in Birmingham that had been forced to close while the police restored order. She told marchers in Hyde Park that such direct action against any firm that did business with Israel was the way forward: “Just as powerful as our passion is the practical action we can all take to make our Government sit up and take notice.” She proclaimed: “We lay down in Sainsbury’s in Birmingham and closed down a store for five-and-a-half hours at peak time on a Saturday.”

It is no surprise to see such direct action – mob rule, to be more precise – when the Government itself includes a party that refuses to take action against an MP who writes: “If I lived in Gaza would I fire a rocket? – Probably yes”, and which has a Business Secretary who has said he will impose an arms embargo on Israel should Hamas attack it.

A pattern is emerging in which a form of anti-Semitism is becoming normalised – as if it were now acceptable to speak or even act against Jews as Jews, under the cover of acting against Israel.

Two week ago, the Tricycle Theatre in north London decided that it would not be able to host the UK Jewish Film Festival, which had graced its screens for the past eight years. Not an Israeli festival, mind – a Jewish festival. The reason? The festival has received a £1,400 donation from the Israeli government. The Tricycle has happily shown films from Russia, China and other nations with deplorable human rights records and made no demands over the funding of the films. But unless the British Jews who put on the film festival were prepared to divorce themselves from Israel, they would no longer be welcome, they were told. At the weekend the Tricycle caved in and reversed its stance, although the film festival will not return there until next year at the earliest.

I doubt that the management of the theatre is anti-Semitic in the sense of believing Hitler was right. But their actions – singling out Israel, alone of all the nations on the planet, for opprobrium and boycott – were clearly anti-Semitic.

For the bien pensants who inhabit this world, theirs is a supposedly more subtle stance. Some of their best friends are Jews, oh yes. But they’re the Good Jews, who condemn Israel and to whom it’s acceptable to give house room, rather than the uncouth Bad Jews who, let’s be honest, shouldn’t really be here. They should fly off to Israel if they like it so much.

Not that Hitler wasn’t right, according to some of the banners at London marches over the past few weekends. “Hitler Was Right”; “Israel = Nazi”; “Jews Babykillers” – they’ve all been given an outing.

Over the course of July, the Community Security Trust, which monitors anti-Semitism in cooperation with the police, recorded over 240 incidents – and they have been on a similar scale in August. The situation in Britain is not comparable to that in France, where there have been anti-Semitic mobs torching synagogues, but for many British Jews something poisonous has now entered the ether and anti-Semitism, the oldest hatred, is being normalised.

Last week my own newspaper, the Jewish Chronicle, conducted a straw poll of 150 Jews stopped randomly in the street. The results were not scientific. But fully 63 per cent said they and their friends had, over the past month, discussed whether Jews have a future in Britain.

That’s not, of course, the same as saying they would leave. But in 2014, how shaming that even one Jew feels that the discussion needs to be had.