The redefinition of Jews as serial oppressors harbouring genocidal ambitions has its roots in the educational and cultural industries that constitute the heart of progressive power. The anti-Jewish shift is all the more heartbreaking given that Universities like Berkeley, which I attended a half century ago and where some of my family have lived for 70 years, produced numerous Jewish Nobel prize winners.

Today in the University of California system pro-Hamas professors and students run riot on campuses, with the school seemingly unable or unwilling to stand up to them. Jay Sures, a member of the UC Board of Regents, characterised a   statement released by the UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council to the board, as being full “falsehoods, inaccuracies, and anti-Semitic innuendos” that “seeks to legitimise and defend the horrific savagery of the Hamas massacre of October 7”.

More worrisome still are efforts in grade schools to push a deeply divisive political agenda. Steeped in progressive ideology, California schools have rejiggered their math curricula to emphasise “social justice”. The state’s adopted ethnic studies program, shaped by ‘Critical Race Theory’, is openly anti-Zionist, all but erasing a millennia of Jewish history and experience.