This Sunday, thousands of members of our community, alongside allies from wider society, are expected to come together in front of Downing Street. Those present will participate in a demonstration against the rising tide of antisemitism which threatens to swamp this country.
After the horrors of the terror atrocities in Heaton Park and Sydney last year have come a succession of attacks on our community in the past few months. With each appalling incident – from the firebombings of the Hatzola ambulances to last week’s stabbings in Golders Green – there has been both profound shock and, more troubling still, a creeping sense of inevitability.
Alongside the violence has come an extraordinary normalisation of antisemitism in public life. Across the country, political candidates and activists now openly trade in conspiracies, slanders and rhetoric that, not long ago, would have ended careers in disgrace. Instead, too often, they are indulged, excused or simply ignored.
In short, Britain risks drifting into a climate in which hostility towards Jews is no longer treated as an aberration but as background noise: ever-present, tolerated and increasingly unremarkable.
It is understandable that British Jews are angry. For a long time, many of us have felt ignored when we have described how we are under attack. We have been targeted while travelling, or in our workplaces. We have been targeted when seeking medical treatment, or while in school or university. We have been targeted when seeking to perform at venues, or have been frozen out under the guise of “security concerns”. Even now, in the wake of a concerted campaign of terror against our community, there are high profile people who have sought to equivocate, downplay, and gaslight the general public regarding the threat we specifically face.
What we must not do is allow our justifiable anger to overwhelm our sense of reason. That is not our way, and never should be. Instead, we must channel our anger into determination: the determination to defend our community, uphold our values and insist that Jews in Britain have the same right as anyone else to live openly, safely and freely.
Sunday’s gathering of Jewish leaders, communal organisations and allies from across British public life carries significance beyond the immediate moment. It’s a chance not merely to express solidarity, but to reaffirm something larger: that Britain will not surrender its civic culture to intimidation, sectarianism and extremism.
Jews here are, by and large, not big rally-goers, or marchers. Yes, we have rallied when necessary, but we do not see that as an achievement in and of itself, as others seem to. We hope that Sunday’s demonstration will be talked of for a long time to come as an example of Jews gathering alongside those courageous enough to stand with us, to make it clear that while we may have been forced out of England once before, that will not happen again.
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