Beyond the insults, threats and vandalism spawned by last summer’s Hamas conflict in Gaza, classic anti-Semitism reared its ugly head when Dave Whelan, owner of the Wigan soccer team, told reporters, ‘I think Jewish people do chase money more than everybody else.”
His comments came as part of Whelan’s attempts to defend the appointment of Malky Mackay as Wigan’s manager, even though Mackay was being investigated for racism and anti-Semitism by the UK’s football association.
Danny Cohen, director of BBC Television, summed up the feeling of many British Jews, “I’ve never felt so uncomfortable being a Jew in the UK as I’ve felt in the last 12 months. And it’s made me think about, you know, is it our long-term home, actually. Because you feel it. I’ve felt it in a way I’ve never felt before actually.”