Today is a remarkably cool and wet day for mid-spring. But the weather is not on my mind, for I would like to reflect on what appears to be a resurgence of antisemitism in the Western democracies. I thought that this matter had been put to bed with the Holocaust, that a giant line had been ruled under this most appalling of genocides.

Apparently, I have been wrong, for there truly does seem to be an uptick in this ancient prejudice. For the first ten years of my life, I lived in the Sydney's Eastern Suburbs, which has a significant population of Jews. All of my friends (yes, every one of them) was Jewish. At the various birthday parties, I became an honorary Jew ( a great privilege), donning the yarmulka, included without question. It was a blessed time.

When I moved with my family to the northern suburbs I began to notice subtle changes. Jewish stereotypes were casually invoked to describe stinginess or greed, epithets I had never encountered before. Later I has a girlfriend who told me about the Rothschild family and how they controlled world banking. A simple google search unearthed yet another antisemitic and entirely ludicrous conspiracy theory. There are, of course, many others doing the rounds of the usual places and they will not be graced with a presence here.

If you drink from a poisoned well then soon enough the toxin will infect much of what you think and what you say. As with the 'moon hoax' nonsense, there is very little you can do to talk people out of entrenched beliefs. I don't think I'd even try any more, since any evidence you produce is immediately labelled fake. That is a zero sum argument.