Anti-Semitism redux

I came across this today in Jay Nordlinger's always poignant Impromptus (here). Rather than paraphrase, I'll just let him and the article he cited do the talking (purple).

It’s hard to know when to panic. In other words, what is the right time to panic? A tricky question. Panic too soon, and you’re just foolish. Panic too late, and—well, it’s too late.

For several years now, we’ve been hearing rumbles about Europe, and they are getting louder. I was forcefully impressed by a piece by Douglas Davis in the current Spectator (subscription required, I’m afraid). It begins,

At my dinner table on Friday night, a holocaust survivor admits that she is trying to persuade her son to take his family out of Europe to America, Canada, Australia, Israel . . . ‘They say they can’t leave me, but I tell them: “Go, get out. My parents left my grandparents behind in Berlin and brought me to safety in England. Now I want you to leave so that my grandchildren will be safe.”’ There is an unbearable desperation in her plea. But she has a point.

As tens of thousands of demonstrators march through the streets of Europe, the chants are modified but the message remains substantially intact: ‘Hamas, Hamas, Hamas—Jews to the Gas’. Or, more simply: ‘Death to the Jews’. Many European Jews, even well-established, affluent Jews, have been checking the suitcase they keep packed under the bed. They have been here before and many are (albeit reluctantly) reading the writing on the wall.

Then Davis continues in a personal vein:

To some extent I thought I was inured. I grew up in postwar apartheid South Africa where a subtle undercurrent of anti-Semitism was a fact of everyday life. So while I was disturbed by manifestations of mob anti-Semitism, I was also less vulnerable to shock. That’s just how people are. Living in genteel, leafy Hampstead Garden Suburb provides an additional layer of protection from such crass outbursts.

But my sanguine state ends abruptly when I am out walking on Saturday. A hundred yards from my front door, I encounter the slogan, freshly painted in yellow, across the pavement: ‘Kill the Filthy Jews’. I am shocked. And shocked that I am shocked. The message is too close for comfort. The leafy gentility is, after all, an illusion.

Those who study these matters tell me that the current convulsion of anti-Semitism is the worst in a generation.

And so on. When is it too soon, if not to panic, to sound the alarm? Is now too soon?

At least Geert Wilders is under indictment. How long before the infection spreads overseas?