Your question reminds me of an experience I had 15 or 16 years ago, when I was a young journalist covering the war in former Yugoslavia. Making my way to Bosnia once, I stopped en route at a conference organized by a coalition of European civil society groups in Bratislava, Slovakia.

When I arrived at the conference center, I needed help with some trifling matter (I’ve now forgotten what it was.) I asked this English fellow if there was anything like an information desk.

“That’s it, over there,” he said, pointing to two women sitting down at a desk. An elderly gentleman talking to them excitedly and it seemed that they couldn’t get a word in. “But you might have to wait for ages,” the English fellow continued. “That American Jewish guy is driving them crazy.”

The “American Jewish guy” turned out to be a fairly well-known German left-wing academic (and not Jewish, so far as I know.) So what made this young, clearly leftist guy describe him in innocuous tones as an “American Jew?” I ruminated over this. Was it that he was, relative to everyone else, smartly dressed? Was it his impatient, bad-tempered demeanour? I studied his nose, which was on the large side. Was it that?

It could have been any of those things or it could have been something else. But I retell this story because while we like to point to tangible reasons for why things are as they are, there are often hidden, intangible factors which explain a great deal as well.

Because those feelings in Europe are, in my opinion, dangerous for the Jewish people, the topic is highly relevant.