This hatred of Israel, this attack on Jewish life, is not merely un-British – it is profoundly anti-British. The silent majority must now speak – it is the only way to defeat the extremists and preserve our values
October 24, 2025 13:02
The most striking feature of the mobbing of an Israeli professor at City University – libelled as a “terrorist,” shouted down mid-lecture, and even reportedly threatened with beheading – is not the thuggishness of this keffiyah-clad mob, or “brownshirts,” as Kemi Badenoch aptly called them in her interview with the JC. Sadly, we have learned to expect this over the past two years.
What is surprising, and encouraging, is that within days more than 1,600 academics signed a letter defending academic freedom and expressing solidarity with their Israeli colleague – and with every Jewish and Israeli student who might feel threatened. At last, an expression of moral clarity in institutions that for too long have tolerated, excused, or even indulged this poison.
What happened at City University is not just another campus scandal. It is part of a relentless escalation over the past two years, in which antisemitism has erupted in universities, politics, unions, and the arts. At each stage, the silence of the decent majority has only emboldened ever more aggressive and violent tactics. The question now is whether this letter can serve as a clarion call, the moment when civil society finally draws a line in the sand and reasserts the nation’s traditions of liberty and civility against an extremist minority.
For this hatred of Israel, this attack on Jewish life in Britain, is not merely un-British – it is profoundly anti-British. The goal of these fanatics is to corrode this country’s freedoms and institutions, and to replace its democratic traditions with mob rule.
Enforcing the law strictly and uniformly will of course remain essential in this struggle. But the defence of Britain’s freedoms cannot be subcontracted to the police alone; it depends in equal measure on the courage of the many refusing to be cowed by the few. It requires ordinary citizens – students, colleagues, neighbours – to speak up and push back.
Now that even academia has spoken – the very place where so much of this venom originated – where are the artists who prefer to posture about distant conflicts instead of standing up against anti-Jewish discrimination in their own industry and country? Where are the letters signed by doctors and nurses calling out colleagues who spread hatred, intimidating Jewish patients and medical staff? Where are the union members telling their leaders to stop obsessing about Israel and get on with improving pay and conditions?
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” Edmund Burke is said to have remarked. The line may be worn with overuse – but it remains nevertheless true. This is the challenge before us now. Let’s hope the academics’ letter is just the beginning – the spark that rouses Britain’s good men and women to resist intimidation and to stand against those who would bring this country down.
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