Is London’s mayor Ken Livingstone suffering from a form of Jewish Tourette’s Syndrome? Despite the fact that he is in the middle of appealing against his suspension by the Standards Board for an offensive remark made to a Jewish reporter, he couldn’t restrain himself from doing it again today in another extraordinary outburst. At a press conference on the Stratford city redevelopment project in London’s East End, which has been having a few problems, he said of a pair of Jewish property developers involved in the project, David and Simon Reuben:

If they’re not happy here perhaps they could go back to Iran and try it under the Ayatollahs

a remark which he repeated – with slight variations in the wording between the two comments -- when asked to explain himself. As it happens, the Reuben brothers were born in Bombay to Iraqi parents of Jewish descent and have lived in the UK for almost four decades. Had they actually been Iranian, the remark would have been the equivalent to saying to a pair of black property developers: ‘Go back where you came from’ – the defining verbal tic of a racist. Since they are not Iranian, the remark is the equivalent of saying to a pair of Jamaican property developers: ‘Go back to Africa’ – a possibly even more offensive variant on this tic. In any event, suggesting that two Jews should either shut up or push off to a regime which regards them as targets for genocide is simply an expression of a quite visceral prejudice.

There are two possible reasons for this behaviour. The first is that, when presented with Jews doing something that irritates him, Livingstone cannot stop himself from an instinctively and obsessively prejudiced reaction. The second is that he is cynically milking for political advantage the dismaying public support he received over the Standards Board’s ruling. That support derived in part from the view that Livingstone’s remarks to the reporter – comparing him to a ‘war criminal’ and then, upon learning that he was a Jew, to a ‘concentration camp guard’, were no more than Ken being a bit tired and emotional and, well, Ken just being Ken and that altogether far too big a deal was being made of the whole thing, particularly since an unelected quango had had the temerity to suspend the London voters' hero. Livingstone manipulated all this brilliantly, managing to imply that accusations of anti-Jewish prejudice were a Zionist conspiracy (even though the issue of Israel had had absolutely nothing to do with it) and posing as a martyr for democracy. Any prejudice was all coming from the other direction.

With today’s non-alcoholic outburst, however, that defence falls away. One anti-Jewish remark may (to some people) be an accident, but two suggests a pathology. The reaction to this incident will be interesting to observe. Let’s see who stands up for decency here. The London Assembly’s Conservative group is commendably jumping up and down. In a press release, Assembly member Brian Coleman said:

This is the latest antisemitic remark by Livingstone. He clearly has a major problem with the Jewish business community. To suggest that these men should go to Iran is shocking, outrageous and grossly offensive to the entire Jewish community.

That community itself, however, may now be cautious in its response. In Britain, Jewish leaders are neurotically averse to putting their heads above the parapet for fear of making the prejudice against Jews even worse – a stance which they feel was all too horribly vindicated by the backlash against the complaint made by the Board of Deputies of British Jews (and the Commission for Racial Equality and many others, by the way) over the concentration camp guard episode. It would not be surprising, therefore, if the Board were reacting to today’s developments with unalloyed horror – not just at Livingstone’s remarks, but at the prospect of having to raise once again the issue that now dare not speak its name in multicultural Britain.

For there is no doubt that anti-Jewish hatred is now the forbidden prejudice – forbidden, that is, to be complained about. There are many reasons for this, including – ironically – a revolt by the public in general against the tendentious or false accusations of offensiveness which are now routinely deployed by minority groups as weapons against majority values (through intimidating people with accusations of Islamophobia, homophobia, xenophobia) as in the recent uproar over the Danish cartoons. This has led to an impatience with any minority group complaining about prejudice, even where the complaint is well-founded. People have had it up to here with the delicate sensibilities of minorities, period. So the Jews, who really are victims of true, unprovoked, irrational prejudice based on a visceral and ancient hatred, are being similarly dismissed in the same backlash.

But there’s more, much more to this. Jewish victimhood is simply being systematically expunged from the British narrative. Why? Many reasons; but one of the deepest is that it’s payback time for the guilt that Christian Europe has been made to feel for the way Jews have been treated at its hands – and Israel is their get-out-of-jail-free card. Which is why we can expect Livingstone to claim that the protests against today’s remarks are all a Zionist/Mossad plot. Press the Israel button and silence the British Jews. Which is why the timid, servile, supine boobies who pass for the leaders of the Jewish community should grit their teeth and name this thing for what it is. If they are muted or silenced, the intimidation will have worked and the peddlers of prejudice will have won.

We can never eradicate the oldest hatred. The only question is whether the Jews of Britain choose to deal with it on their knees, or by standing upright and fighting it like a free people. It’s a no-brainer.