I am a secular Jew, the son of Polish parents and grandparents who were perspicacious and lucky enough to escape eastern Europe before World War II.

My French-born wife is a Holocaust survivor. We know that anti-Semitism is a 2000-year-old monster that lives just below the surface, waiting for the opportunity to rise and devour us.

As we are now seeing, the monster’s progenies also live in generally fair-minded countries such as Australia, and even in some of our venerated seats of learning that cannot differentiate between freedom of expression and incitement to hatred.

There are various degrees of anti-Semitism, and I and my family have been lucky to have been spared the worst.