WATCHING television over the weekend, two programmes brought home the sea change that’s occurred over my lifetime in public opinion towards Israel. Firstly, the news showed unarmed Palestinian protestors gunned down by Israeli troops.

Whatever defence was given by military or diplomatic spokespeople couldn’t hide that innocents were slaughtered in killings reminiscent of shootings in Soweto over 40 years ago when young black schoolchildren were mowed down by apartheid forces.

Secondly, a travel show had the narrator visit the Holy Land, which required passing through the security wall between Israel and Palestine. It’s a place I’ve always wished to visit but the humiliation imposed on the Palestinian people and the brutality of the Israeli regime have shorn me of that desire.

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Like many, I grew up in a household that could have been described as pro-Israeli. It was a position supported by many and probably the majority not just of those who shared my political opinions but within the country. The British Foreign Office may have historically been pro-Arab but wider sentiment was far from that. There were some exceptions and I had an uncle who had done national service in Palestine and was deeply hostile to Begin and the Irgun, though still adhered to wider sympathy for Israel.

It wasn’t simply the lingering war guilt over the holocaust but a narrative of poor little Israel against the big bad Arab world. Both the 6 Day and Yom Kippur Wars played into that sentiment as the fledgling state seemed on the brink of being overrun.

Likewise, politically, it was portrayed as an island of democracy within an ocean of Arab despotism, as well as being a progressive, if not socialist country, as opposed to the oligarchic tyrannies they faced. Even culturally everything from Exodus to Kibbutz and through sport to television had Israel viewed as a mainstream European nation, as opposed to a backward Arab world. Terrorism, whether perpetrated on Israeli athletes or in plane hijackings, simply seemed to confirm the moral correctness of that position.

Since then, though, the narrative has been rewritten with a greater understanding, for myself and others, about the founding of the Israeli State and the land grab that took place. Its political leadership has moved from left leaning to extremely right wing and from being portrayed as defending liberal democracy to being exposed as imposing apartheid on its Arab citizens.

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Terrorism still occurs but it’s been supplanted by images of innocents slaughtered in refuge camps with Israeli collusion and of the Intifada with children rising up in anger against a state that’s left them without an alternative. So, like many, if not most now, my sympathy is with the Palestinian people and I’m appalled at Israeli actions.

It’s complicated though by anti-Semitism which is truly repugnant and yet tragically seems to have worsened. But, condemning Israeli actions isn’t anti-Semitism but a defence of those values the state was once thought to embody. Israel has lost its moral compass and its repression of the Palestinians is evocative of what it was once perceived as facing.

The two issues are separate though interlinked and tackling anti-Semitism is a necessary precursor to challenging the actions of the State of Israel. It’s not simply that the Holocaust was truly horrific and must never be forgotten but the pogroms Jewish communities endured throughout centuries and, sadly, hostility evidenced since have compounded it.

For another tragedy has been the collapse of the great European Jewish communities since the war. The Pew Research Centre did a paper indicating that in 1939 9.5 million Jews lived in Europe, accounting for 57 per cent of the world Jewish community. With the slaughter of the holocaust it had shrunk to 3.8 million and 35 per cent after the war and has since reduced further to number just 1.4 million or 10 per cent by 2010.

Some of that’s explained by the allies finding it easier to remove liberated Jews to Israel or America after the war, rather than remove those who had taken their homes or sometimes even sadly colluded in their slaughter. Intermarriage and secularism have played a part but the vibrant Jewish communities that existed in Eastern European but also in Britain and France are likewise declining.

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Scotland and Glasgow in particular was blessed by the contribution made. Some have left because of the anti-Semitism they’ve experienced and it’s why it's Israel, not Europe, where the majority of Jews now live.

Israel needs reigned in, but Europe’s Jewish communities need protected and made to feel welcome in their native lands. If Jewish people believe that they can only be safe in Israel, that sustains the justification of Palestinian repression made by recent Israeli Governments. Tackling it therefore requires condemning reprehensible actions by, as well as supporting democratic voices in Israel, but it also necessitates addressing anti-Semitism in Europe.