Antisemitism has been weaponised. It has been packaged up and deployed in the service of people who seek to undermine our democratic society. It is being used to convince people that they’re the victims of a Zionist conspiracy that is controlling our government. Age-old antisemitic tropes are being repurposed to motivate individuals to act against our country and our democracy.
At a demonstration in Trafalgar Square on Saturday, hundreds of people were reportedly arrested for showing support for the direct action group Palestine Action. One activist explained that she was there to “bear witness to the decline further into fascism at the behest of the Zionist parasites that have infiltrated our government and control our puppet politicians.”
Since the start of the American–Israeli bombing campaign against Iran, there has been a wave of attacks targeting Jewish locations in the US and Europe. In Golders Green, four ambulances belonging to the volunteer medical charity Hatzola were set on fire in an arson attack for which four people have now been charged. Some argue that these incidents take place in a vacuum, disconnected from the rhetoric circulating in wider society. But when people are repeatedly told that Zionists are collectively responsible for global events, it becomes easier for a minority to justify targeting them – and targeting Zionists in theory has meant targeting Jews in reality.
That connection was made explicit when Jihad Al-Shamie attacked a synagogue in Heaton Park on Yom Kippur, reportedly shouting “this is what they get for killing our children” at a group of mostly elderly Jews desperately trying to keep him from getting to them. This is what happens when conspiracy is fused with grievance and directed at a visible target.
The war in Gaza is over 2,000 miles from Manchester. The conflict involving Iran is thousands of miles from the Bristol factory targeted by Palestine Action. Yet these conflicts are not only being fought overseas; their narratives are being imported and amplified here. For some, influenced by online activists, grifters and propagandists who in some cases are paid by the propaganda outlets of hostile foreign countries like Russia or Iran, the war has been made to feel immediate and local. In that world-view almost anything can be reframed as a legitimate target against “Zionist oppression”.
In his 2023 review of the Prevent counter extremism programme, William Shawcross identified hatred of Jews as a force uniting Islamists, the extreme right and parts of the extreme left “in a kind of modern-day Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact”. We’re seeing that convergence play out on our streets and on our screens. Antisemitism is not simply being expressed – it is being mobilised. What begins as rhetoric is translated, in some cases, into intimidation, sabotage and violence directed not only at Jewish communities but at the fabric of the British state.
A society that tolerates this will find not only its Jewish citizens under threat, but its democratic institutions weakened and its national security eroded. The government, but also the great mass of the British public, must recognise that this is no longer solely a question of speech or protest, but of action by a radicalised minority with consequences for all of us in Britain.
Marc Goldberg is head of investigations at CST
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