For the past 50 years, I have had the pleasure of living in a period when anti-Semitism was not a political issue in the west. But that appears to be changing.

Last week thousands of people marched in Paris to demonstrate against anti-Semitism after the murder of Mireille Knoll, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor who, according to President Emmanuel Macron, was “murdered because she was Jewish”. That same week a smaller demonstration took place in London, to protest against anti-Semitism in the Labour party. This Sunday is likely to see the re-election of Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, who uses barely coded anti-Semitic rhetoric. Even the US is not immune. Last August saw the far-right marching in Charlottesville, amid chants of “Jews will not replace us”.

So are we reliving the 1930s? Not really. Contemporary anti-Semitism contains some loud echoes of the past — for example, the resurgence of the idea of Jews as a shadowy international network. But the new element is the way that anti-Semitism is now mixed in with bigger fights about Islam and Israel.