It is estimated Jews number

less than sixteen million world wide. It is also estimated that there are almost two billion Muslims. 

At the last Census there 99,156 Jews in this country. Those claiming to be Muslim numbered 813,392. They outnumber Jews by more than eight to one.

I had to look those figures up but they were about what I expected. Many people here have never knowingly met a Jew. They have never been to a synagogue. They have no idea what a Bar Mitzvah is or what the significance of the occasion is. 

It is also likely that many people here have never entered a church except for a marriage ceremony - if that. They would have no idea about "Confirmation" into the Christian faith. It would not enter their heads to enter a mosque or a Buddhist or Hindu temple.

Despite that ask many young students here and they will say they "support the Palestinians" without even being able to find Gaza on a map and not being too sure where Israel is either. They won't be too sure about Egypt but they will point to somewhere "at the top of Africa". Ask them about Turkey, Iran or Iraq and they will have no idea. Ask them in which country Mecca is and they may even tell you it is a country. Their lack of knowledge is frightening.

These are the students who are "camping out in support of the Palestinians", who are now demanding that the ports are closed to all ships that have anything to do with Israel. They are the students who have caused some of their fellow students to avoid going to lectures because they are harassing them as they try to get past. And no, you don't even need to be Jewish for that to be a problem. It is simply enough to say you do not want to be part of their protest movement. 

Try talking to them and questioning their reasons for being there and it soon becomes obvious that many of them know very little. The only thing some of them seem to "know" is that they are "right" and the rest of us are "wrong". Some of them will quote a few figures gleaned from dubious sources and then adulterated by the news media here. They have very little idea of what is actually happening in Gaza or indeed anywhere else but they are convinced they are right and the rest of us need to be educated. 

I of course need to be educated more than most people. I am seen as old and female and probably intellectually retarded because I am disabled. They see nothing strange in believing all this even while telling me that all Jews are wrong and hate Muslims.

I know people who are Jewish. I know people who are Muslim. I know people who are Hindu and Muslim and other faiths. I regard some of them are friends. All of them are welcome in my home. I will go on making them welcome because I don't believe the students I met on the way home yesterday are right.