The Oldest Hatred Still Unlearned

The emergency summit convened this week by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer should never have been necessary. Yet it was.

After the stabbing of two Jewish men in London’s Golders Green neighborhood, after arson attacks against Jewish targets, after counterterrorism investigations into possible foreign involvement, after police warnings that British Jews now face the greatest threat in modern British history, Britain has finally begun speaking about antisemitism not as an unfortunate social problem, but as a national crisis.

That distinction matters.

For decades, antisemitism has been treated differently from every other form of hatred. It is acknowledged ceremonially, condemned rhetorically, memorialized historically — and then politically minimized whenever it reappears in contemporary form.

The result is that Jews are repeatedly told two contradictory things at once:

“You are safe here.”
And:
“Do not wear your kippah openly.”
“Do not walk alone.”
“Do not send your children visibly Jewish to school.”
“Do not assume police protection will arrive in time.”

This contradiction is not unique to Britain. It has become a defining feature of Jewish life across much of the Western world.

Antisemitism is often called “the oldest hatred,” but that phrase risks becoming cliché unless we understand why it persists across centuries, civilizations, ideologies, and political systems.

Most hatreds are historically bounded. They emerge within specific territorial, ethnic, colonial, or economic conflicts. Antisemitism is different. It mutates. It survives regime change. It adapts itself to whatever dominant ideology exists at the time.

In medieval Europe, Jews were accused of poisoning wells and spreading plague.
In the nationalist era, Jews were portrayed as alien cosmopolitans undermining the nation.
Under Soviet ideology, they became “rootless cosmopolitans.”
Under fascism, they were racial contaminants.
Today, they are simultaneously accused of being capitalist oppressors, colonialists, communist subversives, financial manipulators, and agents of global conspiracy.

No hatred has shown this level of ideological flexibility.

That is precisely why antisemitism is so dangerous: it is not merely prejudice. It is a conspiracy framework through which societies explain disorder, anxiety, humiliation, and decline.

When economies collapse, Jews are blamed.
When revolutions erupt, Jews are blamed.
When globalization advances, Jews are blamed.
When globalization fails, Jews are blamed.

The Jew becomes not an individual human being, but a symbolic vessel into which societies pour fear and resentment.

This is why antisemitism survives even in highly educated societies. Intelligence alone does not inoculate against mythological thinking. In fact, sophisticated societies often construct more sophisticated forms of antisemitism.

And yet political leaders repeatedly fail to grasp this.

Many politicians treat antisemitism as simply another entry on a broader list of social prejudices. But antisemitism historically behaves differently from other forms of hatred because it escalates differently. It is often an early warning sign of wider democratic decay.

Historian Robert Wistrich called antisemitism “the longest hatred” because it repeatedly emerges during periods of political fracture and civilizational uncertainty. Jews become targets not because they are powerful, but because they are symbolically useful.

This is why societies frequently recognize the seriousness of antisemitism too late.

For years, many Western political institutions hesitated to confront antisemitism decisively because doing so risked political discomfort. Some feared alienating activist coalitions. Others feared being accused of suppressing speech. Still others viewed antisemitism primarily through outdated far-right frameworks while failing to recognize its contemporary mutations across ideological movements.

Meanwhile, Jewish communities watched threats intensify around them.

Synagogues required armed guards.
Jewish schools installed blast barriers.
University students concealed Stars of David.
Public demonstrations normalized slogans that would be intolerable if directed against virtually any other minority.

Still, political responses remained cautious, procedural, and delayed.

Only after bloodshed do governments suddenly discover urgency.

The statements from Starmer this week are significant precisely because they finally acknowledge reality: antisemitism is not coming from one ideological source alone. It emerges from Islamist extremism, far-left radicalism, far-right conspiracy culture, and increasingly from online ecosystems where hatred spreads faster than institutions can respond.

But rhetoric alone will not restore confidence.

British Jews — like Jewish communities across Europe — are asking a far more profound question:
Can liberal democracies still guarantee Jewish security?

History makes Jews understandably skeptical of promises.

European Jews were assured they belonged fully to their nations before being expelled, dispossessed, or murdered.
German Jews considered themselves deeply patriotic Germans before 1933.
French Jews believed republican universalism would protect them during the Dreyfus era.
Soviet Jews were told antisemitism had been eradicated under socialism.

The lesson Jews absorbed from history is brutal but rational: civilized societies can deteriorate faster than elites imagine.

This is why many Jews interpret rising antisemitism not merely as a communal threat but as a warning about the health of the broader society itself.

Because antisemitism rarely stops with Jews.

A society that normalizes conspiracy, intimidation, ideological mobbing, and selective moral outrage eventually corrodes its own democratic foundations. Hatred unleashed rarely remains contained.

The tragedy is that Jews have historically recognized this pattern earlier than political institutions do, because they have lived through it before.

The real test now is whether Western governments finally understand that protecting Jewish communities is not a niche communal issue. It is a measure of whether liberal democracy itself still possesses the confidence, moral clarity, and institutional courage necessary to defend its own principles.

If democracies cannot protect one of the oldest minority communities in Europe from the oldest hatred in history, then the crisis is far larger than antisemitism alone.

It is a crisis of Western civilization itself.