Mick Hartley

Suzanne Moore in the Telegraph:

Hate crime is rising, and anti-Semitism on the Left is bare-faced. This was all happening before Oct 7. I see swastikas spray-painted on walls in my area of north London. I have seen Jewish women abused on the bus. I hear friends say they are frightened of going to central London when the marches are on. I have other Jewish friends who are in utter despair at what is being done in Gaza.

There is no monolithic view here, nor does there have to be.

Whatever you think of the actions of the Israeli government, British Jews here are not responsible for them. They live in Britain, and the state that they contribute to should protect them.

The pro-Palestinian protesters who, just after the murders in Manchester could not wait to put on a keffiyeh and get down to Liverpool Street to shout at commuters, are asinine. What cause they serve beyond their own imaginary self-aggrandisement is hard to fathom.

The rest of us, though, could open our eyes and listen to what Jewish people are telling us. Some are thinking of leaving the UK. Their children hide their Stars of David, and they no longer put mezuzahs on the doors. To be visibly Jewish is to be targeted.

The same is true over the Channel. You only have to wander around the big European cities to see that synagogues are now like fortresses, with barbed wire, barriers, scanners and armed guards. These are places of worship. Churches and mosques don’t need this. Jewish supermarkets are also vulnerable from Islamist attacks. The Chief Rabbi in Britain has spoken about “an unrelenting wave of hate”.

This hate has not come from nowhere. It was always there, hence the preparation. But it has been legitimated by parts of the Left, and by blaming British Jews for the actions of Israel. For the past decade, Labour has embroiled in endless arguments over the difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. Jeremy Corbyn could not address the anti-Semitism in his party, even when Jewish MPs like Luciana Berger had to have bodyguards to walk around.

This has led us to a moronic inferno where Left-wing idiots feel free to chant “globalise the intifada” on our streets, where calls for death and violence are the new radical and chic accessories of choice.

All of this has been cloaked in an anti-colonialist, anti-racist discourse to justify “the oldest hatred”. When British Jews have objected to this, they are at best ignored, and at worst seen as actual killers of Palestinian babies.

Are we really going to see these planned “honour our martyrs” events at UK universities today? – celebrating “two years of resistance”? A moronic inferno indeed.