Antisemitism is on the rise in the UK.
It’s been getting more-and-more nasty and especially very scary.
The Golders Green attack of last month was a very dark day. Not just for two Jewish individuals brutally stabbed by a maniac, but because it demonstrates warnings about the normalisation of extreme anti-Zionist rhetoric, almost always a contributing factor to anti-Jewish violence.
Headline today shows university Jewish students receiving death threats! What is this?
Anti-semitism, is one of oldest and virulent of the irrational hatreds that saturates the Middle East. It is a key component of Palestinian Arab culture. It is also a significant undercurrent of Leftist ideology, and has been since at least Karl Marx and his self-loathing of his Jewish heritage. The antisemitism on the Right suffered a moral defeat after the horrors of the Holocaust. Today, about 80 years after the Holocaust, the generation that witnessed it first-hand have mostly passed away and antisemitism is undergoing a recrudescence. Now, Iran has replaced Germany.
Since Oct-7, the focus of attacks have been concentrated on Jewish targets. From the miniature Kristallnachts perpetrated on university campuses, to stabbings of clothing-identifiable Jews on the streets of major cities, to the vandalism directed at Jewish identifiable buildings; it represents a change in the direction of violence. The point is to separate Jews from their neighbours and community. In essence, while the antisemitism seems outrageous, it offers the West a way out of the current chaos: “allow us to kill off the Jews and we will leave you alone”.
I am in favour of free speech, but I think there is something deeply wrong in UK culture that it is mainstream and routine to call for the dismantling of the world’s only Jewish state, and when slogans such as “Globalise the Intifada” are tolerated under the banner of political expression. These nasty ideas carry real-world consequences for Jewish communities in England.
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Our King recently went to visit the Jewish community in Golders Green and met the Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis:
It’s a tough time for Jews, and I guess it pretty well always has been.
ReplyDeleteIt is a horrifying resurgence of evil. The same thing is happening here in the US. There is no longer any meaningful distinction between the left-wing Jew-haters and the right-wing ones. They're the same and they sound the same.
ReplyDeleteI think there are still decent people who are revolted by this, but they need to be a lot more vocal about it. I do what I can, with my blog, but far more people need to speak up.
Yes, evil is exactly the word for it.
DeleteWhen I was a kid in school, it was v. shocking to think people would be targeted merely because they were Jewish or wore distinctly jewish apparel. Some maniac tried to run over a couple of jewish school kids in London quite recently, I feel like we're going back to the 1930s.
Individuals should only be judged or condemned due to their actions/behaviours which harm other people, not on irrelevant characteristics like race, religion, sex, class, sexual orientation, gender expression, things like that.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. It;s just plain ignorance,.
DeleteThe resurgence of evil has happened to many communities in many countries over the centuries. I felt sorriest for African Americans, Australian aboriginals, Rohingyas, disabled people in wheelchairs and homosexuals because they are they easiest to detect just walking down the street.
ReplyDeleteBut Jews are not as easy to detect. So what has happened in Australia is that synagogues have been burnt to the ground, Jewish schools have been covered with swastikas, and people celebrating a Jewish festival on the beach were shot to death in public. The resurgence of evil has never ended.
It's shocking to me that this is happening in Australia. A civilised society behaving like animals.
DeleteYes, there's a big rise in anti-semitism in the UK and a lot of discussion about how to deal with it. If people feel free to voice anti-semitic abuse and death threats, it's hard to see how they can be stopped. For one thing, politicians and other public figures need to be much more vocal about defending the Jewish community loud and clear.
ReplyDeletenick
Deletepoliticians and public figures need to be more vocal about _all_ their citizens, whether they are black, Jewish, gay or any other minority.
Our King and the PM recently visited Golders Green in London, and then Sir Kier made a pretty decent speech afterwards about antisemitism. But you're right, it seems a bit reactive.
DeleteSame happened to Australia
ReplyDeleteYes, there's a big rise in this and it's not right. People really need to be more empathetic.
ReplyDelete