Another week, and not yet another arson attack, although no week at the moment is complete without an antisemitic incident of some sort, so this week’s was a racist shouting abuse and making violent threats against a building inspector wearing a kippah.
Not that the recent spate of anti-Jewish hate crimes has provoked much outrage. As Kemi Badenoch pointed out, if any other minority had been targeted this way, there would have been a sense of national crisis.
Instead, while there have been three arson attacks on buildings with strong Jewish connections – including two synagogues – we have grown used to the new normality of antisemitism in society on social media, on the hate marches and in politics. And everyone else seems to be getting on with their lives as if it doesn’t really matter that Jews are under assault.
There have, as always, been the usual words of condemnation. On Sunday, following the attack on Kenton synagogue, Sir Sadiq Khan posted the formulation he always uses: “There is no place for antisemitism in our city”. It’s the same set of words used by politicians of all parties whenever there is another antisemitic incident that the words are utter nonsense, because the new normality shows that there is a very large place for antisemitism in London and elsewhere.
Last week the Communities Secretary, Steve Reed, spoke about the Green Party’s embrace of antisemitic members and candidates (let alone its actual policies): “The Labour Party went through and cleared out the racists and the antisemites who had brought our party to its knees and ended up with the party being referred to the Equality and Human Rights Commission for racism. We kicked them out, and they’ve been able to walk into the Green Party with no one checking their backgrounds. A lot of those people are not only in the Green Party – they have been selected to stand as candidates in the local elections.”
I know Mr Reed is sincere in his belief that he fights against antisemitism. Years ago, when I was JC editor during the Corbyn era, we ran a story which painted him in a bad light, he believed unfairly. He was so distressed at the idea that the Jewish community would think badly of him that he rang me to stress his long track record of fighting antisemites. I have no doubt that he genuinely believes himself to be one of the good guys in this.
But when we come to look at the resurgence of antisemitism – not of what was once dismissively described to me by one Labour MP as “hurty words on social media” but of Jew hate being chanted on the streets and arson attacks on Jews – then I am afraid that neither Mr Reed nor any of the other members of the government who consider themselves to be friends of the Jewish community, let alone of Israel, can escape responsibility.
Because there is one factor in creating the atmosphere in which Jew hate flourishes which is rarely spelt out with the force and clarity that it merits. That factor is the current government.
I do not mean merely that under this government Jew hate has accelerated and that it has done nothing to tackle the hate marches and such like. For one thing, the “original sin” in that respect was under the last government, which did nothing to stop the relentless campaign of antisemitism and intimidation on our streets. Indeed, the former home secretary, Suella Braverman, was sacked in large part for calling them, accurately, hate marches.
Nor, even, am I referring only to the government’s astonishingly weak response to the threat to British citizens from a foreign power – to Jews and Iranian dissidents, from Iran. In 2023 the then security minister, Tom Tugendhat, told the JC how the Iranians hire criminal gangs to conduct some of their operations: “We know that the Iranians are using non-traditional sources to carry out these operations, including organised criminal gangs. They are paying criminal gangs to conduct surveillance...I take all threats against anyone in the UK very seriously and the reason I highlighted Israelis and the Jewish community is that we have been seeing threats and Iranian operational activity directed against them. I do not issue these warnings lightly.” My sources confirm what is widely reported, that the security services believe Iran is behind much of what is now happening.
How has our government responded? By getting a junior foreign office minister, Hamish Falconer (best known for hugging the so-called Palestinian Ambassador Husam Zomlot) to summon the Iranian ambassador to his office after the arrest of four suspected Iranian spies and then to tweet: “Let me be clear – we will take all measures necessary to protect the British people.” That’s it. That has been the sum total of our response.
You may ask why it is that we allow the Iranian ambassador to remain in the UK at a time when Iran is believed by our own intelligence and security services to be behind attacks on British citizens. And you may ask why we still allow the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to remain in the UK and operate here entirely legally, even after Labour pledged in opposition to ban it – a pledge which they now told the JC will at last be implemented in the next parliament.
Those are two pertinent questions. The answer is to be found in what is behind the rest of this government’s Middle East agenda. To put it bluntly, this government now treats Israel as an enemy state because it is engaged in a war against Islamist terrorists and the Iranian regime. And it does so not because it has any serious strategic or geopolitical reason for doing so – quite the opposite, in fact, as both Iran and its terror proxies pose a real and dangerous threat to British interests – but for entirely domestic political reasons. In other words, it is scared witless of the sectarian Muslim vote which shocked it in the 2024 election and which is now wreaking further and deeper havoc with Labour support, via both the so-called Independent Gaza candidates and the Green Party, which has dumped saving the planet in favour of the more electorally viable saving Islamists.
It has been clear what Labour has been doing from day one, from rewarding Hamas for the October 7 massacre by recognising a Palestinian state, to its embargo on some arms sales to Israel – an entirely performative gesture given the tiny level of such sales, which threatens only our own armed forces and intelligence, who utilise Israeli expertise and co-operation. Ministers have repeatedly and pointedly painted Israel as a rogue state, both through policies which target it for tackling Islamist terror and Iran, and through rhetoric which has created a climate in which Jew hate has come to be seen in some quarters as a legitimate response to a demonised Israel.
The reality, which is deeply uncomfortable to face, is that the government is not merely a bystander which is not doing enough to tackle antisemitism. The reality is that the government’s actions are one of the key factors behind the acceleration in antisemitic attacks.
When the likes of Steve Reed and other ministers seek to portray themselves as friends of the Jewish community, they may consider themselves to be just that. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and they are members of a government which is anything but.
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