The appalling events in the north of England on Wednesday night when Israeli Deputy Ambassador to the UK Talya Lador-Fresher was mobbed (photo here) by a frenzied group of extremists outside Manchester University are sadly indicative of the shape of things to come.

Ms. Lador-Fresher’s car was attacked by a group of anti-Israeli protestors who slapped and jumped at her car much in the manner that the police vans carrying child killers are rocked and spat on outside court houses in high profile crime cases.

The attack took place after her talk at the International Politics Society at Manchester University and Ms. Lador-Fresher was only saved from personal injury by a heavy police presence.

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With the British general elections less than 10 days away, a fascinating piece in today’s Guardian emphasises the growing importance of Muslim voters in shifting the terms of debate in Britain further against the State of Israel. The writer, Anas Altikriti — a prominent British Muslim academic — proudly talks of the “pivotal importance” of foreign policy for Muslim voters with Palestine (and Afghanistan) taking pride of place.

“On the basis of these concerns,” says Altikriti, “lists of recommended candidates include names from most parties, major and small (Lib Dems, Labour, Tory and Green candidates).”

One list drawn up by the British Muslim Initiative recommends and endorses candidates in 52 constituencies. Most are well known for their virulent hostility to Israel. Almost all are Labour or Liberal Democrat though there is a smattering of Conservatives as well as members of the Respect Party which is headed by the Israel-hating far-Left politician/activist George Galloway.

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Israeli ambassador to the UK, Ron Prosor, today has a piece in the Guardian setting out a simple but unassailable truth about the conflict in the Middle East: The key to peace is a recognition on the part of Israel’s enemies that Israel is the rightful homeland of the Jewish people.

“Jews have been indigenous to Israel for 3,000 years,” he writes. “Before 1948 the only independent sovereign state there had been the ancient Jewish kingdoms. Centuries of foreign imperial occupation followed, by Romans, the Muslim conquest, Crusaders, the Ottoman empire and the British mandate. It is fitting that as the colonial era drew to a close, Israel’s original inhabitants restored their independence.”

And so it is. Indeed, it is such a powerful message that I am surprised Israeli diplomats are not required to repeat this sort of thing as a mantra in front of the local press, morning, noon and night. For of all the most damaging pieces of ignorance surrounding Israel in Britain and Europe the notion that the Jews are imposters in the Middle East is surely the most dangerous and damaging.

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The latest BBC poll of global attitudes conducted by GlobeScan/PIPA among more than 29,000 people in 28 countries, shows a continuation of deeply negative attitudes to the State of Israel across much of the Western world and beyond while positive views of the Jewish state have even dropped somewhat in the United States.

The poll, whose Israel component I have broken down for the purposes of this entry, asked respondents to rate their opinions of various countries around the world in terms of whether their influence was “mainly negative” or “mainly positive”.

On the positive side, the United States remained by far the most supportive Western country with 40 percent of respondents giving Israel a “mainly positive” rating. However, that marked a seven percentage point decline from the 47 percent rating Americans gave Israel in the 2009 poll. It is worth noting that field work for the survey was carried out between the end of November 2009 and the middle of February 2010, in other words before the recent downturn on relations between Jerusalem and Washington.

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If I have said it once, I have said it a hundred times. The one great hope for those of us calling for sanity over the state of Israel in particular and the western world in general is that the group hysteria that inspires our opponents will ultimately render them so ridiculous that they will lose all credibility outside the lunatic fringe.

Well, vindication may be just around the corner. Now it emerges that the universal jurisdiction laws that have been used to effectively exclude prominent Israelis from Great Britain for fear of war crimes indictments may be used to launch a prosecution against, wait for it, the Pope.

This is not a theoretical idea. Two prominent atheist writers, Richard Dawkins (author of The God Delusion) and Christopher Hitchens, announced over the weekend that they are consulting lawyers with a view to prosecuting His Holiness when he comes to Britain in September. Charges, being considered by high profile human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC, would relate to Pope Benedict’s alleged cover up of abuses by paedophilic priests. The alleged cover up is said to amount to a crime against humanity. If, on that basis, a prosecution is launched the universal jurisdiction procedures would provide the route to do it.

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