The arson attack on ambulances run by the Jewish charity Hatzola Northwest, outside a synagogue in Golders Green, is the latest nauseating marker in the acceleration of anti-Semitism in Britain.
For Jews, it is yet another step towards the emergence of a red line – an event that signals that the time has come for us to leave the UK. We are not there – yet. But increasingly, one conversation is dominating the Jewish community: is it still safe for us here?
I spent Sunday at my nephew’s wedding. It was, like all weddings, a joyous occasion. Yet much of the talk was about the world outside our party cocoon.
October saw the fatal attack on a synagogue in Manchester. In December, terrorists killed 15 at Bondi Beach in Australia.
Thank God, no one was injured in Golders Green. But the level of Jew-hate brazenly displayed in our country means that we Jews now expect to be attacked.
When demonstrators chant the phrase ‘globalise the intifada’, as they do on what are rightly called hate marches, they are calling for the targeting of Jews to be globalised.
That is what the word means, in the context of the intifadas in Israel, when Palestinian terrorists targeted Israeli Jews to be murdered.
For more than two years, we have seen the police effectively stand and watch while anti-Semitic chants and banners are paraded through our streets. On the rare occasions when they do step in, the Crown Prosecution Service then refuses to act.
Member of the Jewish community take to the streets after the arson attack on ambulances run by the Jewish charity Hatzola Northwest
The aftermath of the arson attack outside a synagogue in Golders Green, the latest nauseating marker in the acceleration of anti-Semitism in Britain
Last week’s Al Quds Day demonstration was a case in point. The Home Secretary banned the annual march by supporters of the Iranian regime, which has previously seen the open embrace of terrorist groups and anti-Semitic slogans. But all that changed was that the Tehran stooges had to stand still rather than walk. They were still free to spread their poison.
The Iranian-backed organisation Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiyya has claimed responsibility for the Golders Green attack, as it has for similar attacks in Liege, Rotterdam and Amsterdam.
Both the Mayor of London and the Prime Minister came out yesterday with the usual platitudes that follow every serious anti-Semitic incident – that there is no place for anti-Semitism in Britain and that it will not be tolerated. What rot. We see it on our streets all the time.
The day before the ambulance attack, for example, an art exhibition in Margate, Kent, was reported to the police. The foul drawings include one of two auctioneers at Sotheby’s (owned by a French-Israeli businessman) eating babies, with blood dripping from their dagger teeth.
I am at a loss to understand how anyone can deny this is the classic anti-Semitic trope of Jews as baby-eating demons. The ‘artist’ Matthew Collings insults our intelligence by saying ‘nothing in the drawing says ‘Jews’ or claims Jews eat babies’.
More concerningly, the police take the same myopic stance, saying the pictures are ‘criticism of the Israeli state… because some Israelis happen to be Jews it doesn’t mean it’s anti-Semitic’.
Jew-hate is now the norm. Last week, a survey revealed that one in five students would not want to share a house with a Jew. Meanwhile, calls for ‘Zionist-free’ towns and universities are so widespread that they are barely even reported.
Don’t think that the use of the word ‘Zionist’ rather than ‘Jew’ alters the meaning. Given that the overwhelming majority of Jews are Zionists (which means simply believing in the right of Israel to exist) a call for anything to be Zionist-free is a call for it to be effectively Jew-free.
Later this month, the Green Party will debate just such a motion (which is expected to pass), meaning anyone who accepts Israel’s right to exist will be barred from membership.
After the arson attack yesterday, social media showed how it fuels the spread of Jew hate. One former British ambassador, Craig Murray, posted this obscene calumny: ‘Could they make the ‘false flag’ any more obvious?’, as if Israel – in a twisted attempt to engender sympathy – had actually been responsible.
More widespread were posts attacking the Hatzola ambulance service as being an exclusive service for Jews, which is a particularly wounding claim. In reality, Hatzola – like St John Ambulance – works for everyone. It is a wonderful charity, staffed and funded by the Jewish community but used by all. It is a senseless attack on the whole community, not just one part of it.
But for British Jews, there is a chilling significance. Each fresh anti-Semitic attack is described as a wake-up call – and all that happens is… nothing.
That’s why, today, Jews right around the country are asking: what next?
