British political life is currently beset by a slew of crises, from education and health-care to welfare and pensions. The domestic agenda is full. But nothing is calculated to raise the national blood pressure quite as much as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

While mainstream British politics remains a relatively passionless, understated business even when vital public services are in crumbling decay the frequent cry in parliament and at public demonstrations, on television and radio current affairs programs, is "Palestine."

It was an elemental force in driving the antiwar movement and it has become a subject that is debated with the frequency and intensity of a neurotic obsession.

No harm in supporting the Palestinians, of course; many honorable people throughout the world, including George W. Bush and not a few Israelis, advocate Palestinian statehood. But in the British experience, there is a sinister flip-side.

Pro-Palestinian advocacy is played as a zero-sum game: Support for Palestine is matched only by hostility to Israel.

For many, perhaps most, hatred of Israel transcends the policies of a particular Israeli government. The vilification of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is intense, but so too was the vilification of Yitzhak Rabin ("too little, too late," was the Left's complaint when the Oslo Accords were unveiled).

The obsession with Israel is a horror at the very existence of the Jewish state, evident by the rush to expunge all things Israeli from British life. Calls for boycotts academic, commercial, musical are now almost routine at trade union conferences.

Few Jews in Britain believe that the anti-Israel, anti-Zionist tide is anything but a cover for anti-Semitism; and this week the cover was blown by prominent Labor legislator Tam Dalyell, a ferocious opponent of the Iraq war and a passionate proponent of the Palestinian cause, who accused Tony Blair of being unduly influenced by "a cabal of Jewish advisers."

In doing so, he has given such private thoughts public respectability. He has translated politically correct anti-Zionism to acceptable anti-Semitism. He has broken the spell, removing the last taboo from a hatred that dared not speak its name.

Whether Dalyell is a practicing anti-Semite or not (as he claims) is beside the point. The image of a secret coven of malevolent, influential Jews conspiring to manipulate and distort the global agenda for its own narrow interests is almost as old as anti-Semitism itself.

What is new is that an established, well-bred British politician did not bother resorting to the customary codes and nuances, winks and nods. Even in Britain, where anti-Semitism is embedded in the political and social culture, such statements have been rare occurrences outside the world inhabited by the far-Right. Now they have become the everyday language of the mainstream Left.

THE REAPPEARANCE of the old hatred has been fuelled by a substantial section of the Muslim immigrant community, whose second generation is mostly undereducated, underemployed, underpaid and considers itself underprivileged. Many young British Muslims have sought solace in religion, and the brand of Islam they imbibe does not derive from their ancestral homes in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, but from the Saudi-funded mosques and Wahhabi-trained imams of the Middle East, who preach a message of unremitting hostility to America, Israel and Jews.

Drip-fed on the politics of victimhood and immersed in the religion of grievance, young British Muslims have been indulged by a permissive multiculturalism that eagerly embraces the yoke of post-colonial guilt and excuses excess when it emanates from the ethnic communities.

The result is that a significant number have become radicalized, anxious for the kind of bloody "martyrdom" and vengeance that visited Mike's Place in Tel Aviv last week.

Most alarming is the combustible alliance, based on common hatreds, that has emerged between the Muslim radicals and those who see themselves as progressive, left-leaning liberals. The old right-wing extremists retain their potential for anti-Semitic menace, but the real threat to British Jews, in word and deed, is increasingly coming from the Muslim-left alliance.

The dramatic rise in the incidence of anti-Semitic attacks, verbal and physical, recorded in the first quarter of this year by the Community Security Trust indicates where the hatred is leading. The effectiveness of the trust, which monitors anti-Semitism and advises communal organizations on security measures, is likely to be marginal at best when faced with a determined terrorist attack.

The weakness lies in the ineffectual, self-selected leaders of Britain's Jewish community, who sometimes seem more concerned about where their next state honor is coming from rather than upsetting the political classes with concerns about anti-Semitism.

In a curious paradox, Jews are seen as "the other" when they scale the heights of business, professional or political power, but they are "one of us" when the establishment examines the ingredients of the rich ethnic soup that they have brewed over the past half-century.

British Jews are regarded as too successful, too educated, too rich and too comfortable to be in need of multicultural preference. And Jewish leaders are often only too happy to play this game; only too happy to have the opportunity to reassert their Britishness.

Lord Michael Levy, who has parlayed his fund-raising skills for the Labor Party to high office in the Blair administration, has proved an effective gate-keeper for the government, controlling access and modulating the Jewish message, serving as a barrier rather than a conduit to the corridors of power.

The result is that the Jewish community has been left dangerously exposed and vulnerable. What is urgently needed, and what is sorely lacking, is an effective, serious communal voice capable of penetrating the Levy membrane and persuading the authorities that manifestations of anti-Semitism should be treated with the same zero-tolerance as other expressions of racism.

Anti-Semitism, like the diplomatic calumnies regularly heaped on Israel, is a cost-free exercise. The consequence of further inaction will lead inexorably to an escalation of vitriol and violence.

British Jewry will pay a high price for the negligence of its leaders.

The writer is the London correspondent of The Jerusalem Post.