This is a story from a time before the Internet: 1987. A young man is sitting in the waiting room of a train station in a small village outside of Milan. He has taken the wrong train (remember, no internet or smartphones) and now is waiting to return. He’s reading an Israeli novel. He wears a necklace with a Magen David.

A man of the same age enters the room and seats close to him. Darker skin: must be North African. He looks at the book that the other is reading. Then he looks at the necklace. Then, again, at the book’s cover. …

For those who don’t know: last week someone sprayed a slogan on a wall in Holland Road, 500 meters from our shul. The same slogan appeared on the seafront, probably work of the same hand:

“Jewish lies matter”.

It is antisemitic. “Jewish lies” are an evergreen. None other than Martin Luther devoted a book about the “Jewish lies”. Chillingly, Luther concluded his polemic book with a plan of actions, that four centuries later was implemented (and quoted) by the Nazis. Burndown synagogues, burn Jewish book, force the Jewish population to physical labour… and so on.

In contemporary times, the motif of lies spread by “Jewish controlled press” or “Zionist-owned media” is obsessively referred to by politicians, when they perceive a decline of their popularity. We have seen it happening recently among the supporters of the previous leader of the Labour Party. And Corbyn’s devotees are the authors of last week’s hate crime. The police are treating it, as a hate crime. Because it is precisely that. …

[This sermon originated as a comment to a piece whose author has blocked me long ago]

Two years ago the Council of our city voted in favour of the adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism. Despite what you may read here and there, such a definition does not equate to hate crime the criticism of Israel, and of Israeli policies. Rather it establishes that it is antisemitic to deny to us Jewish people that right to self-determination which for all the other people in the world is taken for granted.

I regard that day a highlight of my Rabbinic career. I still remember when I sat in the public’s gallery together with all the other Rabbis of our city (except the Liberals’) and other religious leaders, Christians and especially Muslims. They all wanted to show support for our community in that critical moment. …

If only things were simple. This is my reaction when I think to the horrendous carnage in Nice, less than ten days ago. If only things were that simple. This is, too, my reaction to the other episode of Islamic motivated violence, on a train in Germany, last week. If only things were that simple.

We are told that radicalisation happens in isolation. We read that these two murderers were alienated, frustrated and that they did not regularly attend any mosque. We are informed that they were not pious Muslim: actually, the Franco-Tunisian mass murderer seems to have led a very promiscuous life. Then, so it seems, he decided that making war was better than making love. …

We must honour the memory of Elie Wiesel, the man who suddenly became an adult at 15 years, when he was put on the cattle train, to Auschwitz. His mother and younger sister were taken to the gas chambers. He was sent to be a slave labourer. He witnessed hangings, endured hunger, beatings and torture. And later he wrote “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed….Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. …

Ask anyone what the Holocaust was, and everyone will reply: it’s the massacre of six million Jews during the Second World War, by the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators. Ask any Jew what the Shoah was, and every Jew will give more or less the same answer. We know what the Holocaust was; we know what the Shoah was. But ask anyone, Jew or not Jew, what the Farhud had been. Most likely you will not get an answer. Very few people, Jews or Gentiles, are familiar with that tragic page of Jewish history.

On 1st June 1941, after the failure of a plot against the pro-British monarchy, Iraqi fascists, (many of them soldiers, or members of the police), decided to exterminate the Jewish population of Iraq. They were easy to find because it was Shavuot and all the synagogues were packed. Fascists, criminals, (and the various overlapping of the two categories), killed adults and children, raped girls, decapitated babies, burned houses, looted synagogues for two days until finally, the regular forces acted to restore order. That was the Farhud: the beginning of the end of the Iraqi Jewish history, much like the Kristallnacht has been the beginning of the end of the most glorious page of German Jewish history. And as much as the German Jewish history had been glorious, so had the Iraqi Jewish history been great: the Talmud, for example, was written in Iraq. …

I must have missed something.

Watching the news from the Middle East I see that a tragedy is happening right now, at Yarmouk camp, in Damascus. According to a recent census, Yarmouk was home to more than 110.000 Palestinians until a few years ago. But with all probability, they are less, now, because Yarmouk has been taken over by the troops of the ISIS, the Muslim fundamentalists.

Palestinians are being killed and Palestinian girls sold into slavery. Men are tested on their knowledge of the Quran and if they fail, they are murdered. Palestinian leaders have been beheaded in front of their own people. Such a bloodbath is happening right now. …

For those who enjoyed a similar exercise carried on the Tory leadership, (I personally did). I hope you will like this.

Think of the current leadership of the Labour Party as a family. Jeremy Corbyn is Your Ideal GrandPa. White-bearded, soft-spoken, he tries always to avoid controversies and disagreements, he spends much of his time in his allotment. Diane Abbott is The Mother. She keeps the house in order, she sacrifices herself for the family’s good name spending hours with unpleasant company (such as Andrew Neil), she suffers abuses but you know she is resilient. John McDonnell is The Rebellious Teen-Ager. Rebellion is his world. He befriends with Irish guerrilleros, archetypical fighters with no time for married life. Bobby Sands died as a virgin, remember? And remember also that scene of Bloody Sunday, James Nesbit as Ivan Cooper who complains that political fight leaves him no time for his fiancé. In such a family Seamus Milne is The Patriarch. He decides who can marry (ally with) whom. …