It’s now been two days since the Golders Green terror attack, so if the response to previous such incidents is anything to go by, it’s time for the political class to forget about it and move on to something else.
In recent weeks we’ve had – as well as the low level ‘ambient anti-Semitism’ of shouts of ‘dirty Jew’ and such like – arson attacks on synagogues, ambulances firebombed, a video of a Jewish building inspector being harangued and threatened with assault and, last October, two deaths at Heaton Park synagogue over Yom Kippur. The response is always the same: cliches about solidarity and standing together, and sometimes – as after the Golders Green attack and before that the Yom Kippur deaths – the promise of more money for security.
Extra money spent on security is all well and good, but it’s not even enough to tackle the security issue, let alone providing a serious response to escalating Jew hate. A greater police presence – an armed presence – on the streets of northwest London, where much of the Jewish community is concentrated, would certainly help, but even if we are looking only at short term security issues, we should learn from France where the levels of anti-Semitism are even worse. The French authorities deploy the army in response to serious incidents. Given limited police manpower, we should do the same. Other communities might take fright at the presence of the army in its midst; believe me when I say that for Jews, who have long had to have permanent security guards outside synagogues, schools and other buildings, the presence of the army at this time of heightened fear would be balm.
But increased security deals only with the symptoms of what is now happening. I heard a rabbi put it this way yesterday. Imagine people kept falling off a bridge, and the response was to build a hospital at both ends to treat the wounded. The idea would be dismissed as ridiculous; the need is to find out why people fall off and then stop it happening. In the context of escalating anti-Semitism, that means – this much is obvious – more work and resources devoted to counter-terror, but especially focused on social media, prison radicalisation and what goes on inside mosques.
That brings us to why people are falling off the metaphorical bridge, and the great unstated fact of rising Jew hate. It is overwhelmingly a product of radicalised Muslims and the far left. The former element is always downplayed as if it is somehow bigoted to say it. But if we cannot look at the facts we have no chance of ever understanding what is happening, let alone tackling it. On Wednesday night, for example, the local MP Sarah Sackman, who is also the solicitor general and is Jewish, visited the scene of the attacks and started talking about the far right. She might as well have blamed the attacks on the rising price of haddock.
Look online and you can, for example, find any number of videos of sermons of imams spouting truly foul anti-Semitism, with talk of Jews as vermin and the need for them to be swept away, all unashamedly posted by mosques. I recommend one Twitter account, @habibi_uk, which relentlessly exposes such anti-Semitism, as well as from myriad other sources such as Green party activists and candidates. Little is ever done – by the mosques themselves, by the wider Muslim community, or by the authorities. Proselytising Jew hate is allowed to flourish within the Muslim world. It is no wonder that a poll for the Channel 4 documentary, ‘What British Muslims Really Think’, found that 26 per cent of British Muslims believe Jews are responsible for most of the world’s conflicts, and 27 per cent believe people hate Jews because of their behaviour. And it is even less wonder that some Muslims then act on those views.
Especially, now, because of the hate marches that have become a regular occurrence. When tens – sometimes hundreds – of thousands march in support of ‘globalising the intifada’ (which means globalising the murder of Jews, as in the intifadas in Israel) then it is no surprise that some people decide to take this as inspiration, and even an instruction. These marches, along with the static protests which have become so prevalent and which are also marked by banners informing us how Zionists control the world, are the puppet masters running politics, are paedophiles and so on, are the leading catalyst for worsening anti-Semitism. The government’s independent adviser on terror legislation, Jonathan Hall KC, is right to say that we need a moratorium. The free speech argument is a red herring; there has never been freedom to incite violence. If this needs emergency legislation, it should be introduced.
We need to act against the biggest sources of radicalisation: the Iranian embassy, the IRGC and their proxies
But there is another factor which needs addressing which is rarely mentioned. I and others have criticised the police for their hands off policing of the marches. But the bigger issue that the Crown Prosecution Service rarely takes action even when presented with a watertight, cast-iron case. In 2021, for example, a car convoy drove through streets in Jewish areas of northwest London blaring out ‘f*** the Jews’, ‘kill the Jews’ and ‘rape their daughters’. The police identified the culprits. The CPS then dropped all charges.
This still happens – and it is left to organisations such as the Campaign Against Antisemitism to take out private prosecutions. It is not just the police’s reluctance to make arrests on the marches that sends out the message that Jew hate is acceptable; it is also the CPS’s refusal to prosecute. This needs to be addressed urgently and street level harassment of Jews, which happens so often now with such impunity that it is rarely even reported to the police because everyone knows nothing will happen, needs to be met with zero tolerance.
Finally, we need to act against the biggest sources of radicalisation: the Iranian embassy, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its proxies. On Monday, the Iranian embassy told Iranians here that they should be prepared to sacrifice their lives for the regime. What was our response? We summoned the ambassador to see Hamish Falconer, a junior Foreign Office minister, who told the Iranian ambassador how naughty he was. It is pathetic. We allow the Iranians to operate here and spread their poison as they wish. The embassy must closed, the ambassador and his staff expelled, and the IRGC proscribed.
None of these suggestions will be enough. The genie of anti-Semitism is now out of the bottle and it is almost impossible to put back. But they are all vital, and are each prerequisites to minimising the acceleration in Jew hate.
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