The publication Jewish News sums up the anger of many, and not just Jews, about the latest antisemitic attacks, this time in Golders Green.
To quote the headline in full: “Bull$#@# bingo. Jews bleed. Cue the clichés…”: “We stand with the Jewish community”; “An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us”; “Hate has no place in British society”; “Thoughts and prayers” and so on.
The frustration is tangible, and it is true that politicians and the press sometimes react with a wearily familiar lexicon. And yet that doesn’t mean that such expressions of sympathy and solidarity are worthless or insincere. People should stand with the Jewish community and call out antisemitism, and that is worth underscoring.
When the prime minister and the home secretary express their sympathy and solidarity, they should not be belittled or heckled, as the PM was when he visited the scene of the terror attack on Thursday, even if that is understandable. Sir Keir Starmer does “get it”, and is setting about practical measures that should already be in place. He said in a statement: “If you stand alongside people who [call for] ‘globalising the intifada’, you are calling for terrorism against Jews, and people who use that phrase should be prosecuted. It is racism, extreme racism, and it has left a minority community in this country, scared, intimidated, wondering if they belong.” Words and sentiments do matter – but actions matter even more.
Where the Jewish News does have a powerful point is regarding the sense of complacency about antisemitism in Britain, which persists even in the face of blatant and obvious episodes of extreme violence-driven hatred of Jewish people. Such complacency can mutate into a feeling of helplessness, a sense that little can be done and that such attacks are somehow inevitable because of the times we live in. As in Northern Ireland at the beginning of the Troubles, if the authorities give the impression that there is a sort of “acceptable level of violence”, then that drains the will to do something about it.
What should that something be? The answer is that it should be everything, driven from the top through all arms of government and civic society. It is what Sir Keir has called, in the context of the cost of living crisis, an “all levers approach” – all ministries, agencies and arms of the state. It will certainly need more than the extra £25m on “security for Jewish institutions” just announced. That is simply not enough. Building ever-higher fences and installing more security cameras will not help neutralise the origins of contemporary expressions of hate.
There are signs that ministers are growing more conscious of the scale and nature of the threat. Ms Mahmood has called it an emergency, and the prime minister has convened meetings to deal with the criminal justice response – expediting arrests and court proceedings.
It is past time for this to have been done. In the latest terrorist attack, two Jewish men have been admitted to hospital, which is grievous enough, but it could easily have been far worse if the knifeman hadn’t been apprehended so swiftly. Much the same goes for the arson attacks on the Hatzola ambulances, and, of course, the assault on the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue near Manchester during Yom Kippur, in which three people lost their lives. Unless more is done, the chances are that some future attack will be far more deadly.
It is indeed about pulling all the levers. If Iranians, Islamist or even Russian-inspired groups are fomenting discontent and recruiting agents of terror to perpetuate their own agendas and destabilise the country, then the secret intelligence services need to get at them.
Radicalisation is the precursor to murder, and whatever the particular circumstances of the present suspect, it is an opportune time to examine the performance of the Prevent programme, and with an open mind. It has faced criticism from a number of sources – not least since, in this case, yet another suspect in an antisemitic attack has been revealed to have been referred to it.
More broadly, we know that radicalisation can take place in communities and online, and antisemitism arises from Islamist extremists as well as neo-Nazis. In a nation which has had robust laws against incitement to racial and religious hatred, it is strange that such crimes are not more commonly brought to justice.
In particular, British society has to ask itself whether it wishes to tolerate popular social media platforms that host the most vile antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories, some dating back centuries. Have we done enough to restrain hate preachers?
Nor can we ignore the way that legitimate protest against the Israeli government’s actions in Israel has shaded into holding British Jews personally responsible for what is still happening in Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank. Many loathe Benjamin Netanyahu’s politics.
Yet shamefully, this phenomenon became far too common in the Labour Party a few years ago, an evil that Sir Keir did much to extirpate; but it shows how even people who think themselves exemplary anti-racists can fall, or jump into, antisemitism. There is no good reason why pro-Palestine demonstrations should gravitate towards synagogues, for example, or why the term “Zionist” should be used as loosely as it is or as a synonym for “Jew”.
The organisers of these events need to take much more care about the slogans and posters that are thrown around, demonising the Star of David, for example, or advocating the destruction of the Israeli state, and apparently its Jewish inhabitants, even where that is not intended. The result is needless mayhem in the streets of London.
If antisemitism is to be properly understood for what it is, then that involves rejecting it as racism, ensuring that associated subjects, such as the Holocaust, are taught in schools, whether they are state, private or faith-based. The unique features of antisemitism have to be appreciated, as set out in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition. So there is much – too much – that still needs to be done to protect Britain’s Jewish citizens, who have as much of a right to get on with their lives as anyone else. That must be the aim, and it is not too much for them to expect.
