With Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement beginning today, social media will no doubt soon be humming with supportive messages from politicians eager to demonstrate their solidarity with Britain’s Jewish community.
This Yom Kippur, the last thing British Jewry needs is another round of bleeding-heart posts offering solidarity when the very opposite is true
Such sentiments are deeply appreciated and can be a source of great comfort when offered by those whose support for the Jewish community isn’t conditional, tactical or selective. Unfortunately, that doesn’t apply to Prime Minister Andy Burnham.
Given how the PM worships algorithms, he will no doubt post his thoughts and prayers for Britain’s Jews. To which there can only be one response: don’t bother. Not least if they are anything like his gestures over last week’s Jewish new year.
Not only did Burnham’s Rosh Hashana message fulfil every nauseating, tick-box cliché, it was also, given current government policy towards Israel, laughably phoney and grossly hypocritical. This Yom Kippur, why should we have to read any more of this guff?
Anti-Semitism has been spiralling in the UK since the horrors of the October 7th massacre in Israel almost three years ago. But thanks to the recent decision by Ed Miliband to boycott goods from the West Bank, the dial has been switched up to almost unprecedented levels. This is no surprise, given such sanctions embolden Jew haters, providing them with permission and legitimacy to pursue their heinous agenda. That Hamas have since offered praise for Miliband’s decision tells you all you need to know.
Yet despite this our tin-eared, brass-necked Prime Minister and his dolt Foreign Secretary have turned a blind eye to the domestic consequences of their performative foreign policy, and persist in sending seasonal messages to Britain’s Jewish community.
Take, for example, how Burnham pledged, during one of his Jewish New Year greetings, ‘to ensure that Jewish people are safe, valued and able to live their lives free from fear.’ Such breathtaking duplicity is almost comical. After all, this is a man who kicked off his premiership by apologising for Labour’s initial response to Israel’s military action in Gaza. He then appointed Andy Slaughter as Solicitor General, despite the fact he had held meetings with individuals connected to Hamas. Now, with this irrelevant boycott, one which will make little difference to Israel, British Jews face the prospect of picking up the slack.
What the Prime Minister doesn’t seem to get when he instructs his Whitehall minions to sharpen their adjectives and schmooze up the Jewish community with faux messages of support is that we see the bloodless political calculus that motivates him. We see how an Israel-bashing agenda appeases the hard left and sectarian Muslim backbenchers Labour needs for its political survival, and its fear of haemorrhaging support to the Greens, both at the Holborn by-election and beyond. That the Prime Minister thinks that Jews wouldn’t spot such blatant duality plays to the vanity of the man. Or perhaps he simply doesn’t care. The Jewish community makes up 0.5 per cent of the UK population, so why should he?
A similar crocodile-teared sentiment was echoed by Angela Rayner, who wrote in her own New Year message to the Jewish community last week of her government’s ongoing commitment to our safety, security and freedom. Though it is worth noting that when she recently attended the memorial event marking last year’s attack at Heaton Park, Rayner couldn’t even be bothered to stay until the end of the service, claiming that government business required her to return to London. (It is hard to see how another half-hour on the M6 would have made much difference.) Again, the optics were unsparing: nod to the Jews, but head for the door before having to do anything significant.
That’s why this Yom Kippur, the last thing British Jewry needs is another round of bleeding-heart posts offering solidarity when the very opposite is true.
We haven’t forgotten that two innocent Jewish men, Melvin Kravitz and Adrian Daulby, lost their lives in the Manchester attack, simply for attending synagogue – the first time such a thing had happened on British soil. As such, we deserve better than to be pacified, patronised and served the same seasonal guff by politicians who say the right words while pursuing policies that tell a very different story.
If Burnham, Miliband and others genuinely want Jewish people to feel safe, then they need to junk the platitudes and stop pursuing foreign-policy positions that undermine Jewish security because of domestic political pressures.
That’s the only message Britain’s Jews want or deserve to hear.
Comments