BY PETER HARRIS

British Jews have reached an existential crisis, so what is to be done?

Edwin Landau, a Jewish Prussian veteran of the Great War, when contemplating the national boycott of Jewish businesses on 1 April 1933, could not grasp how anti-Semitism could manifest in the twentieth century. For Landau, such behaviour was medieval. Nor could Landau comprehend how quickly the course of events had turned against Jews. Germany, the nation for which he and around one hundred thousand other Jewish German men had endured trench warfare, now suddenly felt like a foreign country.

Faced with a dizzying increase in anti-Semitic crimes in British society since Hamas unleashed on 7 October a massacre of Israeli civilians and other nationals living in Israel, one is left with the same question as Landau: how could such levels of anti-Semitic criminality manifest in modern, multi-faith, multi-cultural Britain. Witnessing pro-Palestinian agitators rejoicing in Hamas’ depravities with specific reference to the Israeli Jewish victims and mostly with impunity on London’s streets makes Britain suddenly feel like a foreign country also.

It is important not to push the analogy too far. Nazi anti-Semitism was orchestrated by Hitler’s government whereas anti-Semitism in Britain is perpetrated by individuals and groups whose conduct is proscribed by law. The end-game of Nazism was the Final Solution whereas no such epoch-shaking horrors are envisaged by any British legislator. Far from it. Moreover, there are supporters of the Palestinians who are intelligent enough to make a distinction between Israeli government policy and the Jewish people wherever they may reside. 

But one of the salutary lessons of history is that it can happen anywhere, it being the worst manifestations of human conduct. Landau’s error was to describe anti-Semitism as an historical horror when in fact it has been and is an ever-present stain on modern European civilisation. He was too close to events to have the objective vantage point, but Landau and the rest of Germany’s Jews were at the sharp end of a concatenation of forces that had catapulted Hitler into the office of Chancellor. The narrative is well known and extensively chronicled: Germany in 1933 was in crisis because of the Great Depression and a series of failed governments. Franz von Papen forged a coalition between his Catholic Centre Party and the popular Nazi Party as the means of securing stable government through a maintainable parliamentary majority. Hitler was appointed Chancellor with Papen as Vice Chancellor to keep Hitler under control. But Hitler as leader of the largest single party in the Reichstag was too powerful to control and with the death of the President, Paul von Hindenburg, shortly after Hitler’s accession as Chancellor, there was no one in the Reich strong enough to circumvent a Nazi dictatorship.

It is not hyperbolic to assert that circumstances have coalesced in Britain to produce a situation that poses the worst existential threat to British Jewry since the Second World War. We are at the painful conjunction of cultural forces that may well see British Jews fleeing Britain and seeking asylum in Israel and in nations that can better control their anti-Semitic elements. It is not too late to prevent a Jewish flight that would bring great shame to Britain, but significant and coordinated efforts will need to be made if Britain is to retain its small Jewish community. What are these circumstances that are now converging and what responses are needed?

First, there is the powerful alliance of anti-Semitic Islamism and the Left. For British jihadis (and jihadis everywhere), Israel is an occupying force of lands destined for Palestinian Muslims and as a nation needs to be cancelled. This is the reason the two-state solution has never materialised. Though Israel has advocated this solution, Palestinian leaders have rejected it for they want all the land for themselves. The Left, which has given up on its historic mission of attempting to convince working class people that they are victims, has adopted identity politics which preaches that the real victims are those determined not by class, but by ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation. The incorrigible villains are white, heterosexual men and the oppressed are all people of colour and those within the LGBTQ+ communities whose acronym is an ever-burgeoning list of letters. The Left has continued its traditional opposition to colonialism, and as the British Empire has transfigured into the Commonwealth, the Palestinians are the new oppressed, suffering under the heel of Western-Israeli neo-imperialism. That Hamas executes gay people and feminists is lost on the Left which has a stunning record of idolising its enemies. Remember Beatrice Webb going starry-eyed over Stalin?   

Attempts at holding such forces of hatred and racist anti-racism in check are undermined by anti-Semitism’s termites that have long eaten away at many British institutions. The BBC, long suspected of bias against Israel, and rightly so, refuses sententiously to describe Hamas as a terrorist organisation for the sake of supposed neutrality. Yet in an open letter to the BBC’s Office of Communications on 11 October, four barristers confronted the BBC with three examples of its use of the words terrorism and terrorist. According to Jeremy Brier, David Wolfson, David Pannick and Anthony Grabiner, the BBC referred to the Manchester Arena bombing as terrorism, and describes Al Qaeda and the Irish Republican Army as terrorist groups in its “Bitesize” guide for GCSE students. If the BBC is refusing to use the words terrorism and terrorist only within the context of Israel, it is evidence, according to the learned silks, of partiality against Israel.

Universities, those supposed bastions of civilised values, have augmented and embellished the febrile anti-Semitic atmosphere. Before the atrocities of 7 October, Jews on British campuses were already the target of hatred and violence. According to the Community Security Trust, there were 150 reports of anti-Semitic incidents affecting Jewish students and university staff across the UK during 2020/21 and 2021/22. Now, according to the Trust, there have been over sixty-four recorded incidents of anti-Semitism on British campuses since 7 October alone.

Such vile conduct might be attributed to a minority of hot heads among the student population, but what is more troubling is that there are unashamed anti-Semites among university staff who are charged with shaping the minds of undergraduates. Recently at University College London, some lecturers called for mass uprisings against Israel in Gaza, the West Bank and across the Middle East and declared ‘Intifada until victory!’-a slogan which a number of academics at Oxford have also adopted. According to the Jewish Chronicle, there are British academics who regard Hamas’ violence as a ‘legitimate struggle’ and a project of ‘decolonisation.’

Surely, our political leaders can be relied upon to take a stand against anti-Semitism and drive it out of mainstream culture? Both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer have condemned the massacre of Jews and have affirmed Israel’s right to defend itself. So far, so good, yet why should we be glad that they affirm what might be termed the bleeding obvious? There is nonetheless a whiff of appeasement to both men’s positions. It is reported that Sunak refuses to proscribe the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) that support and succour Hamas for fear of losing diplomatic relations with the Iranian regime, a regime by the way that once arrested the British ambassador, seized and interrogated Royal Navy personnel and incarcerated illegally the Anglo-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. Starmer is clearly nervous about the consequences for his position as leader and for Labour’s chances of winning out an outright victory in the General Election. How much support Starmer gives to Israel is circumscribed by the fact that anti-Semitic British Islamists will desert Starmer at the ballot box for his defence of Israel.   

If all else fails, surely, we can rely upon the British bobby, that stalwart ally of decency and justice? Well, no we cannot. The Metropolitan Police, lambasted for institutional racism and sexism, is working overtime to prove how fashionably woke it is. Therefore, rather than arresting those chanting for jihad during pro-Palestinian protest marches, the Met tweeted, ex cathedra, that the word jihad has a range of meanings, including the inner struggle that Muslims have to remain loyal to Allah. Thus, the protestors might have been engaged in an internal, spiritual reflection on Zion rather than calling for Israel’s extinction. Palpably the boys and girls in blue have never heard of that wise legal expression: fiat justitia, ruat caelum.     

What worsens the situation for British Jews and for multi-ethnic cohesion is what the Institute for Economic Affairs has recently reported on, which is that the UK police do not investigate hate crimes against white people which include calling for the death of whites. Most people in the UK therefore have potentially no protection from racism. Perhaps it is because white people are the majority that they are not the police’s priority, but it is also the practical conclusion of the ideological wickedness that states that white people are irredeemably racist and colonialist and therefore deserve their persecution. By the lights of such an asinine argument, British Jews, who are deemed by the woke squadristi as white, though many Jews are not (think of Ethiopian Jews), therefore qualify to be as resolutely unprotected by the police as other white Britons.

What of the great British public with its innate sense of fair play and tolerance? Surely, if there is hope, it lies in the proles? Well, perhaps not. There have been no protests in favour of protecting Britain’s Jews except by Jews themselves. We might hope for a spontaneous coalition of assertive decency, such as that formed by the London working class who turned out to see off another anti-Semitic force at the battle of Cable Street-that of Oswald Moseley’s risible black shirts. But with the reputation of passivity that Joe Public has and the everyday challenges of a cost-of-living crisis absorbing the focus of many, that is probably not going to happen.   

The consequence of all these factors is that, as Justin Cohen, news editor and co-publisher of Jewish News observes, British Jews now live in dread in a way that Cohen has never witnessed before. Jews now avoid wearing religious insignia and clothing in public and parents are keeping their children at home, rather than sending them to their Jewish schools. Who can blame them when anti-Semitic actions have increased fifteen-fold since 7 October?       

What would it take, therefore, to restore the situation for Britain’s Jews? The answer is not to ban pro-Palestinian marches, but to arrest those on these marches who spout hate speech and make others feel threatened. The Public Order Act of 2023 gives the police ample powers to do so, but that would mean a police force that actually enforces the law against all who transgress it, including genocidal jihadis. Britain’s Left must distance itself from anti-Semites in their ranks and denounce them for the vile racists they are. Mainstream media ought to label as terrorists those deserving the name and ensure that prominent public figures who cannot bring themselves to cannot name Hamas as terrorists   are given an extremely tough time over that fact in every interview they face. University governing bodies should warn then discipline its students and employees who believe it is academically respectable to express Judeophobic opinions. It is time for a Tory government that has long talked tough on controlling immigration to pass and execute legislation that refuses asylum to immigrants who come from those parts of the world where anti-Semitism is rife. This is not a discriminatory policy: it is common sense. Why give refuge to agitators for mass murder who in turn would give no harbour to Jewish refugees? Former, but unrepentant, commanders of Hamas who live in Britain at the taxpayers’ expense ought to be repatriated immediately back to Gaza. If they are so concerned about the Palestinians, why are they not there? These policies, I should like to assert, are matters of common sense, decency and civility. They will protect our society from civil unrest and declare that no one is fair game for extremists’ hate. But what is required also is the courage to implement them. Britain has been polite, tolerant and hospitable long enough. For the sake of our nation, and, for our Jews, it is time to wake up and bloody well do the right thing.  

Peter Harris is the author of two books, The Rage Against the Light: Why Christopher Hitchens Was Wrong (2019) and Do You Believe It? A Guide to a Reasonable Christian Faith (2020).