You know it's bad when...
...the Met Commissioner is pleading with the public to protest against antisemitism
The Met Commissioner is a bit like your mum. Sure, he wants you to be happy, but wouldn’t it be nice to stay in and watch a film once in a while? Outside is where bad things happen. The young get in fights, the old fall over and the Jews get stabbed in the streets.
So, in the aftermath of yesterday’s antisemitic terror attack, it was striking to hear Sir Mark Rowley ask:
Why don’t we see more condemnation of the attacks we’ve seen in recent weeks? Where are all the voices against hate? And where is the solidarity with fellow Londoners who are being targeted simply for who they are?
The Met Commissioner has frequently alluded to the strain — both financial and logistical — that policing weekly pro-Palestinian protests has had on the force. Policing any large crowds — particularly those where racism is a common occurrence — is inherently expensive and time-consuming.
So, why is it that, in the wake of the latest outburst of anti-Jewish hatred in northwest London, Sir Mark has effectively called out — and called on — Londoners to raise their voices and come out against this? Something that even most politicians will not say. Why was he demanding more work for his officers — like the kid in class who raises his hand and proclaims: “Miss! You forgot to give us homework!”
The answer isn’t great, I’m afraid. It is that the absence of any mobilisation by the organised, self-avowed, anti-racist movement is contributing not only to making Jewish life in Britain intolerable1, but making police work more difficult and dangerous. Because it is Sir Mark’s officers who are the ones running up to knife-wielding maniacs to tackle them down2.
A conspiracy of silence
We know that a 45-year-old man, a British national born in Somalia, has been arrested by police on suspicion of attempted murder. But this being an antisemitic attack, we don’t yet know why he hated Jews. There are simply a lot of people with a lot of reasons — Islamists, the far-right, far-left, the Iranian regime and those with no clear ideology. Jews are blessed to engender such a diversity of disdain.
What we do know — and all too well — is the awkward silences, the sitting on hands, the near total absence of empathy and compassion that would be shown to any other vulnerable minority subject to a relentless campaign of violence and intimidation. And while that silence is not directly deadly — we are scarcely one Jewish allyship bagel march away from ending three thousand years of antisemitism — the silence inculcates the problem.
The inversion of “solidarity” — that word so adored by so many — is more than just hurtful to Jewish feelings. It significantly lowers the barrier to antisemitic entry, making it more likely that British Jews will be stabbed in the street for being Jewish. Meanwhile, far from giving antisemitic tropes a wide berth to avoid accusations of racism, many in the anti-racist Left gleefully elide Jewishness with accusations of genocide. How that isn’t an incitement to violence, I do not know.
And what we often end up with is industrial gaslighting.
Person one: “Jews have horns and eat babies.”
Person two: “That’s antisemitic.”
Person one: “It’s not antisemitic to criticise Israel.”
The obvious question is: why? Helpfully, Dave Rich, director of policy at the Community Security Trust, has answered that for us. First, he observes, it is important to notice the phenomenon, easily missed because it is so familiar:
If Israel stood accused of paying local criminals to fire-bomb British mosques in the name of an extreme Zionist group, there would be emergency protests in our city centres demanding action. But when it’s an Iranian-linked group claiming responsibility for petrol-bombing synagogues? Instead of solidarity we get ‘false flag’ conspiracy theories that it’s really Mossad doing the attacks. We shouldn’t be surprised by this: when far right mobs attacked asylum hotels two summers ago, the anti-fascist response was peppered with people claiming that “Zionists” were the puppet masters behind the scenes, pulling the rioters’ strings. This is how politically deformed parts of the left have become, a grotesque parody of the true anti-racist solidarity that previous generations showed Jewish communities.
It emerged last month that one in five students said they don’t want to share a house with a Jew. If one in five students said they didn’t want to share their house with a black student, you can bet that every Stand Up To Racism branch in the country would be campaigning against it. But when it’s Jews? Forget it.
Next, Rich comes to the “why”.
There are several reasons for this silence. Understandings of racism have changed to focus exclusively on people of colour, so antisemitism, even where it is regretted or condemned, is not seen as ‘real’ racism, and Jews are seen as white, wealthy, powerful and integrated - so not needing or deserving anti-racist solidarity. When much of the anti-racist left looks around society and puts people into different boxes, the Jewish community doesn’t make it into the box marked ‘our people’. Some people mean well but just don’t get it, and need to re-learn what antisemitism is all about.
But beyond that, there is a deeper, more troubling reason: there are large parts of the so-called anti-racist left that accommodate and encourage exactly the hateful, violent extremism that is fuelling this rising tide of antisemitism. Call for death in this movement and you become a celebrity. Claim that the UK is under “Zionist control” and nobody bats an eyelid. Solidarity statements flood in for people who rant about
“Jewish supremacy”, rather than for the Jews they are inciting hatred against. And all driven by an obsessive, violent hatred for Israel, and a purifying desire to denounce and destroy anyone and anything touched by the sin of “Zionism”.
Of course this generates antisemitism. How could it not? And of course, the people pushing this hatred, marching alongside it, or saying nothing when the people on the same platform as them express these views, cannot mount a campaign against antisemitism even when synagogues are being fire-bombed. How could they?
They can’t even begin to acknowledge why this antisemitism is happening, because to do so would be to incriminate their own political world. So instead, they do nothing.
It is why, for instance, when not actively selecting countless conspiratorial antisemites as local council candidates, Green Party officials post this sort of thing. The verbal gymnastics are worthy of literary criticism:
I’m not a comms guy, but a shekel of free advice: if you're a public figure and you're not prepared to utter the word "Jews" or "antisemitism" in response to this latest attack, you might be better off not posting your "absolute horror".
Where to?
I still vividly recall how, following the Bondi Beach massacre, I saw numerous social media posts briefly condemning the shooting before moving on to business: making sure the event wasn’t “weaponised” against Muslims or migrants. Not-so-encrypted code for: gee, let’s not have something actually bad happen as a result of this antisemitic shooting spree.
I sometimes wonder how different life would be if there were several million British Jews, rather than a few hundred thousand. Enough to swing more than a few council wards, so that politicians would feel compelled to court our votes and even parrot our prejudices. Enough so that our would-be attackers would think twice about the repercussions before beating us up. But it is a waste of a daydream.
The reality is, you can afford to disrespect British Jews — small in number and non-violent. We’re not going to smash up your shops or stab your grandpas. The worst we can do is… leave. Some of us already have.
Further reading (though not necessarily recommended as who can bear it at this point):
Rachel Cunliffe, New Statesman
I guess it’s fine that Jewish schools, cultural spaces and synagogues resemble fortresses. That the location of Jewish events is kept secret until 24 hours before, so no one gets a head start. All very normal.
Reports suggest that members of the public initially helped to trap and disarm the suspect