The plague of anti-Jewish hatred

After the Manchester synagogue attack, no one can deny that this ancient prejudice has surged back into public life.

‘I was looking out of the window in the door at the man trying to get in. And I saw evil. And I saw hate.’ These were the words of Rabbi Daniel Walker, one of those who barricaded the doors of the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation, the Manchester synagogue that was attacked on Thursday leaving two dead and three injured.

The choice of the date was not coincidental; this was Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. The police are treating this as a terrorist incident, but have yet to officially confirm the motive. That the murderer was from Syria, was replicating the tactics of Islamist terrorists, wore what looked like an explosive vest, and was called ‘Jihad’, may give us some clue.

The growing tolerance for anti-Jewish hatred in western countries has been one of the most shocking developments in recent years. While citizens have been arrested and even imprisoned for memes or offensive social media posts, the police have turned a blind eye to overt calls for violence against the Jewish community. Leaving aside the endless demands for ‘intifada’ and chants of ‘from the river to the sea’, the men who drove through a Jewish area in London waving Palestinian flags and screaming ‘fuck the Jews, rape their daughters’ had their charges dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service. Had these cries been about Muslims, does anyone seriously believe the outcome would have been the same?

That this surge in antisemitism has been galvanised by the pogrom of 7 October 2023 in Israel is incontestable. In the year following this frenzied act of barbarity, there were over 5,500 antisemitic incidents recorded in the UK, three times more than the previous year. It’s as though every atrocity seems to embolden this evil. On the very day of the Manchester synagogue attack, protesters assembled in train stations across major UK cities to chant their slogans against ‘Zionism’. The timing of these protests makes their intentions clear. To gather in public and gloat about antisemitic murder is a degree of moral bankruptcy that few of us can comprehend.

Nobody is suggesting that peaceful protest against the military strategies of Israel are not legitimate; these kinds of protests have often occurred within Israel itself. But to ignore the prominent streak of anti-Jewish hatred that so often dominates these events is no longer tenable. Hostility towards Jews is now as much a compulsory feature of the ‘omni-cause’ as kneeling for BLM or waving the Progress Pride flag.

In this climate, the fear of being seen as identifiably Jewish is growing. In April 2024, a police officer was filmed at a pro-Palestine demonstration, raising concerns to a man who he said looked ‘openly Jewish’. If a kippah skull cap puts one in danger on the streets of London, the problem surely does not lie with the man who is wearing it. It is incredible that this even needs to be stated.

In a piece for his Substack, Andrew Gold has explained the reality for Jewish people living in the UK today:

‘A year ago, my wife’s family in Argentina bought us a Mezuzah as a wedding gift. These are little scrolls that sit beside the front doors of Jews. It was a lovely idea (even though I’m an atheist), but it filled me with sadness having to explain to them that this was simply not possible anymore in the UK. Almost every Jew I know has removed theirs.’

How have we reached the point where Jews need to hide themselves away for fear of violent reprisals? This shameful situation is one that has become increasingly common throughout Europe. Last November, Berlin’s chief of police Barbara Slowik issued a warning that gay and Jewish people should be circumspect in how they present themselves in districts with large Arab populations. ‘There are areas of the city,’ she said, ‘we need to be perfectly honest here, where I would advise people who wear a kippah or are openly gay to be more careful’. One doesn’t need to be a trained historian to know that Berlin has experienced such problems before.

There is no longer any doubt that there exists a clear correlation between mass immigration and the rise of anti-Jewish hostility. Anyone with the slightest familiarity with Muslim-majority countries is aware that antisemitism is the norm, not the aberration. The combination of reckless levels of immigration, and a complete failure to insist on cultural assimilation as a condition of citizenship, has meant that Jews are yet again bearing the brunt of broader political failures.

Exacerbating the problem, we have the witless bien-pensants of the self-declared ‘progressive’ movement, whose historical and geopolitical illiteracy is exceeded only by their colossal self-assurance. How else can we account for the cognitive dissonance of those who claim to be ‘anti-fascist’ but who have cheered on the murder of Jews? Even before the bodies were cold at the Nova music festival, the ghouls were out in force, celebrating the atrocity on the streets of London. In Sydney, Hamas supporters were filmed crying out ‘Fuck the Jews’, and in New York City others held a banner declaring ‘Long live 7 October’. Jewish cemeteries and monuments have been daubed with swastikas and antisemitic slurs. This is not political activism; it’s racial hatred.

I do not wish to live in a country in which Jewish people are frightened to walk in public, or where synagogues and Jewish schools need to be protected with armed security. The continual failure to address the problem of Islamist neo-fascism, and the tacit support it receives from those who claim to be ‘on the right side of history’, has created the conditions within which antisemitism can flourish. We’ve allowed this cancer to grow. Now it’s time to burn it out.

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