Melanie Phillips, via Instapundit:

One of the most conspicuous features of British anti-Semitism is that the British deny its existence. The Parliamentary inquiry received only a muted response. Both Mann and Richard Littlejohn, a journalist whose TV program on the subject aired in July 2007, encountered people who, when discovering their concern about anti-Semitism, said: “Oh, I didn’t know you were Jewish.” But Mann and Littlejohn aren’t Jewish. As Littlejohn noted, the implication was that no non-Jew would ever identify anti-Semitism, and therefore that anti-Semitism was generally a figment of the Jewish imagination. When I proposed to write a book about it, I was turned down by every mainstream publishing house. “No British publisher will touch this,” one editorial director told me. “Claiming there is anti-Semitism in Britain is simply unsayable.” . . .

Britons also tend to suspect that Jews use the charge of anti-Semitism to divert attention from Israel’s crimes. This is why, for so many in Britain, the suggestion that anti-Semitism is enjoying a renaissance seems not only false but sinister. Outraged to be accused of peddling bigotry, they begin to hate those who level that charge—who, they conclude, are part of a conspiracy against truth.

This is a long-time beat for Melanie Phillips, but in fact there is nothing at all controversial in what she is saying (i.e., the facts she cites) except as to her conclusion. Anyone observing what has happened in Western Europe for the last five to ten years knows it, and in the Jewish community it is well known that England and France are simply not hospitable to Jews, at least not conspicuous Jews, any more.

Phillips also notes the coded use of the term “neoconservatives” to refer to the “Jewish conspiracy,” a transparent phenomenon that nonetheless is consistently ignored even by Jews who, like the self-satisfied Britons and Frenchmen who are above bigotry, would rather not admit what is happening.  (UPDATE:  Maybe ignored a little less.)

It’s somewhat scary. Vigilance helps; but only God controls the world, and there are no obvious answers on the natural axis, anyway. It is not an extermination scenario, à la Nazi Germany; that comparison is facile, too. Anyway, it is facile to tell people living in England or France to pick up and move, despite having families, homes, communities and businesses there. And where to? Immigrating to the US is very difficult these days, unless you do it illegally — not an option for intact families with jobs, credentials and bona fides. Israel is not an option for most people; it is very difficult for people from Western civilization to adapt to, and is itself a highly polarized and stressed-out society.

The good news is that Britain and France are democracies with imperfect, but still well established, constitutional traditions. There is no telling what sort of impact a national leader willing to admit to the existence of this phenomenon in these countries, and to face it head on, could accomplish. No such leadership has been forthcoming, despite what one can only posit are the Jewish puppet-masters’ best efforts. But what other hope, in this world, is there?