Zack Polanski is furious. Not so much with the stabbing of two Jews in Golders Green yesterday. So far, he has managed one perfunctory tweet about that horrific attack, which curiously doesn’t feature the words Jews or anti-Semitism. Since then, he and his outriders have been angrily pushing back on any suggestion that, when it comes to the rise in Jew hatred, his Green party might just have something to do with it.
No one is suggesting that Polanski, who is himself Jewish, is some frothing-at-the-mouth anti-Semite. But the charge that his party has become a magnet for anti-Semites – and a key voice in minimising the threat now posed to Britain’s Jews – is hardly unfounded, however many spittle-flecked missives Zack and Co post online.
It was only last week that Polanski, when asked about the spate of arson attacks on synagogues and the torching of the four Hatzola ambulances – which formed the grim drumbeat building up to yesterday’s sickening scenes, came out with the already-infamous lines:
Now, there’s a conversation to be had about whether it’s a perception of unsafety or whether it’s actual unsafety, but neither are acceptable.
That final little reassurance does nothing to disguise what is going on here: the downplaying of the threat to Jewish life in Britain at a time when it has rarely been higher.
Those comments weren’t just despicable in light of what happened in Golders Green yesterday. Or in light of the string of attempted firebombings that preceded them. Last October, on Yom Kippur, Jihad al-Shamie stabbed worshippers at the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation in Manchester, leaving two dead. In February, also in Manchester, two ISIS fanboys were put away for their plot to murder as many Jews as they could with AK-47s. Had it been successful, it could have been one of the worst Islamist terrorist attacks Britain had ever suffered, fuelled by pure Jew hatred. Or is that all in Jews’ heads, too, Zack?
The papers have been splashed with stories of late about Green activists and local election candidates being exposed for their abhorrent statements about Israel, anti-Semitism and Jews. Zack said last week that these accusations were being ‘weaponised’ against his party. His supporters say this is all about demonising ‘criticism of Israel’.
All of that might hold water if they were saying things like ‘I don’t like Benjamin Netanyahu’ or ‘October 7 was horrific, but the response has been disproportionate’. What they have instead been saying is ‘it takes serious effort not to be a tiny bit anti-Semitic’ and Jewish people are ‘an abomination’. If anyone is conflating ‘criticism of Israel’ with plain-old Jew hatred here, it isn’t those gently pointing out that sharing posts including a ripped Israeli flag revealing a Nazi swastika beneath it clearly fall into the ‘plain-old Jew hatred’ category.
Whether Polanski is downplaying all of this out of political calculation or useful idiocy is a question for his conscience. But it is an insult to the public’s intelligence to pretend that this is all lies and smears. More importantly, it is an insult to British Jews who, in the face of hostility no other minority is expected to tolerate, get to see the self-appointed leaders of the ‘anti-racist’ left either staring at their shoelaces or telling them to calm down.
A few weeks back, Polanski led a mass demonstration through London, uniting his fellow ‘anti-racists’ against the ‘far right’. The prompt for that demo, according to the so-called Together Alliance’s own statement, was that ‘for the first time we face a far-right party topping the polls’. By which they mean Reform. So a right-wing party, pledging to crack down on mass and illegal migration (a policy half of ethnic minority voters support), gets the full ‘¡No pasarán!’ treatment. But after black-clad men set Jewish ambulances alight, or an Islamic State fanatic stabs Jews in Manchester, or a man who had been referred to Prevent stabs Jews in London, none of Polanski’s mob are even thinking about dusting off the megaphones.
We are entitled to ask why. Any thoughts, Zack?
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