It is one of tens of thousands of Stolpersteine, or ‘stumbling stones’, which sit in the pavements outside houses and buildings across Germany where Jewish people once lived. Installed across the entire country, from great open avenues in the capital to suburban cul-de-sacs in sleepy rural towns, the Stolpersteine make it impossible to live a day in Germany without being reminded of the horrors of the Holocaust and the capacity for evil that dwells in every one of us.

The past few weeks have shown just how closely this evil lies below the surface of our societies, and how easily and quickly bigotry and hatred spew forth. I have watched in horror as crowds in Dagestan stormed the airport in search of Jewish people to attack, as Stars of David were daubed on buildings across Paris and as the world’s oldest Holocaust studies library in London was graffitied by protesters.

In London, the Met Police has recorded a 1,300 per cent increase in antisemitic attacks compared to the same period last year. I cannot begin to imagine the fear and terror that Jewish people across the world are feeling right now.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman this week during a visit to the north eastern Greek border with Turkey to view surveillance facilities. Her language over the pro-Palestinian marches in London was polarising and inept, writes Stewart McDonald. PA Photo: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire.

At the same time, Muslims are also coming under attack from people they have lived alongside for years. I was particularly struck by the almost unspeakable murder of a six-year-old child in Illinois, stabbed 26 times by his family’s landlord whom he had lived alongside for all his short life.

The local police department stated that they were treating the attack as an anti-Muslim hate crime and that they believed that attack on the boy and his mother was “due to them being Muslim and the ongoing Middle Eastern conflict involving Hamas and the Israelis”.

The war in Gaza is fuelling an explosion of antisemitism and Islamophobia around the world as hatreds that have lingered below the surface of our societies float to the surface.

These bigotries are not separate stories: they are different strains of the same poison and must be resisted wherever they appear.

Those who have taken to the streets to protest for the rights and lives of Palestinian citizens must call out the vile minority of antisemites within their midst, and those arguing in defence of Israel’s right to defend its borders and its citizens must give no quarter to the dehumanising and Islamophobic rhetoric emanating from extremists within their midst.

I want to say something here that seems so obvious that it almost gets overlooked.

The vast majority of people in this country do not sit in either of the camps I have described above. They sit in both. And yet, as the late Edward Said wrote in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, wars have the dangerous potential to compel people into taking sides as if it were a sports match and not a political conflict that can only ever find its peaceful resolution solution in dialogue, compromise and bridge-building.

There are those, however, who have planted their feet firmly on one side of this conflict who seem to delight in highlighting the extremists on the other side, using the words and actions of a minority to de-legitimise the majority.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman, for example, wrote earlier this week that the thousands of people who took to the streets of London last weekend to advocate for a ceasefire were taking part in a “hate march”.

Can she really expect us to believe that half a million antisemites have marched through the streets of London and that she has contented herself with having written an open letter in response? Her position would be untenable if that were so.

Instead, Braverman’s attempt to de-legitimise opposing views does nothing but stoke the flames of polarisation and push us further away from the kind of dialogue that will bring a lasting peace.

Why is it so hard for us to imagine that our political opponents are not malicious, stupid or evil but rather fellow citizens who, for reasons of having lived lives different to ours, simply see our shared world from a different but still legitimate standpoint?

Yet against the backdrop of a political debate over the war in Gaza, Jewish and Muslim communities are suffering.

Antisemitism and Islamophobia are on the rise across the world, with scenes of abhorrent violence filling our social media feeds.

As they do, it is incumbent upon all of us to call out these hatreds wherever we see them and to demand that our political allies and opponents alike do the same.

We must assert and reassert the simple truth that Jewish people are not responsible for the actions of the Israeli government, and Muslims are not responsible for the actions of Hamas. This is a simple truth but one that is too often overlooked and left unsaid. The horrors of the 20th century should serve as a reminder of the road that these bigotries would otherwise lead us down.

Stewart McDonald is SNP MP for Glasgow South

Stoking the flames of polarisation does nothing but push us further from peace - Stewart McDonald