Are Jews safe in Britain? To even have to ask the question is extraordinary. But a recent survey has found that half of British Jews feel they do not have a long-term future in the UK and 61 per cent have considered leaving. Those figures are shocking, but not surprising.
Since 7 October 2023, anti-Semitism in Britain has reached record levels. Violence against British Jews is more common than at any time since their readmission in the 1650s. The survey was conducted between the Heaton Park synagogue terrorist attack in October and the sentencing of Walid Saadaoui and Amar Hussein in December for plotting to open fire on a march against anti-Semitism.
The disgrace of Craig Guildford, the chief constable of West Midlands Police, after he banned Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from attending a match is a source of standing shame. His force had originally blamed ‘significant levels of hooliganism’ among the Israeli fans. Others suspected that the force had capitulated to violent Islamists and Palestine activists. Guildford admitted that the decision to ban fans was based on false intelligence which had been generated by AI.
Extraordinarily, this is not the first time West Midlands Police has misled the public. The force claimed that the Jewish community supported the decision but, following a backlash, later admitted this was untrue. It has subsequently transpired that a local mosque was involved in Guildford’s appointment to chief constable – a mosque in which a preacher recently told his congregation that it is acceptable to beat their wives. It all points to a British police force so incompetent and fearful that it instead chooses to put restrictions on the lives of Jews.
Why do our civic institutions always seem to take the side of those motivated by hatred?
Meanwhile, it has emerged that Damien Egan, a Jewish Labour MP and vice-chair of Labour Friends of Israel, was barred from visiting a school in his constituency in September. The school had cited ‘safeguarding concerns’ after a campaign by pro-Palestine activists and teachers. The activists declared it ‘a win for… trade unionists, parents and campaigners’ that shows that MPs who support Israel are ‘not welcome in our schools’. Steve Reed, the Communities Secretary, called it ‘an absolute outrage’.
Reed has now promised that those responsible will be ‘called in’ and ‘held to account’. But why has it taken five months? Who exactly will be held accountable? And how do we tackle a belief, creeping into our public institutions, that Jews are a sufficiently dangerous presence to need excluding?
Jews are held culpable for Israel’s every act – an imposition of collective guilt as grotesque as any blood libel. Why do our civic institutions always seem to take the side of those motivated by hatred? Policing the people who intimidate Jews is judged too difficult; surrendering to protestors is far simpler. The phrase ‘community policing’ has come to mean crumbling before whichever ‘community’ is thought hardest to control. The result is victim blaming, as seen with the Metropolitan Police officer who warned a man in a kippah near a pro-Palestine march that he should move on because he was ‘quite openly Jewish’.
We must be clear about this hatred’s source: a toxic alliance between the nihilistic ‘decolonial’ campus left that views Israel as the embodiment of everything that it despises, and Islamist influence in Muslim communities where anti-Semitic tropes too often go unchallenged. Britain cannot be a successful multifaith democracy if Islamist ideology is not exposed and challenged. Islamic organisations found to be peddling extremism must be shut down. Immigrants who espouse Islamist views must be deported.
Those in civic life, too, must be exposed and challenged when they fail to protect minorities. Bodies such as the National Education Union must be forced to confront open anti-Semitism within their ranks – a culture that normalises bigotry must be rejected with the full force of the law. The NHS is not so short of staff that it must keep employing those guilty of anti-Semitic behaviour. Many doctors found guilty of espousing violent hatred of Jews find themselves suspended, but far fewer are struck off, despite the obvious risk to Jewish patients.
The problem goes right to the top. Keir Starmer pledged to do ‘whatever it takes’ to tackle anti-Semitism following the Heaton Park synagogue attack. Yet he celebrated the release of an Egyptian activist who it later emerged had once said that ‘we need to kill more’ Zionists. Starmer had been un-aware of the comments; for British Jews, it all suggests their security is an afterthought.
Resisting anti-Semitism at home means fighting it abroad. Britain should be doing everything it can to assist Iran’s protestors. The Islamic Republic is the world’s leading sponsor of attacks on Jews – from its support for the so-called ‘Axis of Resistance’ of Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis, to its funding of ‘anti-Zionist’ NGOs and television channels. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is believed to operate in Britain, surveilling dissidents, intimidating campaigners and even planning kidnappings. Yet No. 10 confirmed this week that it would not proscribe the organisation, which would make it illegal to support the IRGC.
What begins with Jews does not end with them. Countries that become unsafe for Jews – the Spain of the Inquisition, Germany in the 1930s, Russia in the past decade – are those where freedom eventually dies. Never Again is not a platitude, but a promise we must keep for all our sakes.
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