Excerpt:
We are now a quarter of a century into the age of jihad in which events in distant lands have the power to radicalize Muslims at home into action. Afghanistan under Russian occupation was for passionate Islamists what the Spanish Civil War was for the anti-fascist left - a cause worth dying for in a foreign land.
Kashmir, Chechnya, Bosnia, Iraq and, of course, Palestine all add up in the eyes of some Muslims as an everlasting stream of persecution. And now Gaza.
Throughout Europe, in cities with large Muslim populations, officials concerned with community relations and police matters are watching the fallout of Israel's Gaza war on Muslim opinion. Nowhere is this more true than in London, home to so many Muslims from so many lands.
There has been a big spike in anti-Semitic incidents here in recent weeks, and by no means all of it by Muslims. A senior official involved with community relations told me that anti-Semitic events had increased five-fold since the Gaza war began. Jonathan Freedland, columnist for The Guardian, wrote last week that just as "progressive voices insisted that Muslims were not to be branded as guilty by association, just because the killers of 9/11 and 7/7 had been Muslims," so should it now be made clear that Jews in general should not be held responsible for Israel's behavior in Gaza. "There has been no chorus of liberal voices insisting that no matter how intense their fury, people must not take out that anger on Britain's Jewish community," Freedland wrote.