On April 29th in London, an attacker stabbed a Muslim acquaintance before traveling to the largely Jewish neighborhood of Golders Green and stabbing two Jewish men at random. This was only the latest in a string of attacks on Jews, synagogues, or other communal infrastructure in the UK since mid-March; other instances have included arson attacks on three synagogues as well as Hatzola ambulances. The British Jewish community—already on edge since the Yom Kippur attack on a Manchester synagogue that killed two and injured three—is in a state of rising alarm. Predictably, Jewish communal leaders, politicians, and the police have baselessly sought to tie the attacks to the Palestine solidarity movement, justifying crackdowns in civil liberties and proposing increased police budgets.

The backdrop to these attacks is a local election cycle in which the two major parties, Conservative and Labour, lost substantial ground to tertiary parties on their wings: Reform on the right, and the Green Party on the left. Though newly elected members of the Reform Party include avowed racists and Holocaust deniers, much of the media attention has been on candidates whom the Green Party has removed from contention because of charges of antisemitism. There is particular focus on the head of the Green Party, 43-year-old Zack Polanski, whose Jewish identity and pro-Palestine stance has shattered some of the received wisdom about who British Jews are, announcing a new era in UK Jewish left politics.

To discuss the London attacks and their political fallout, Arielle Angel speaks with Brendan McGeever, co-director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism at the University of London, and Em Hilton, co-founder of Na’amod, an organization of British Jews opposing Israeli occupation and apartheid. They parse what we do and don’t know about these attacks, and critique the government’s response, which casts Jews as special wards of the state at the expense of civil liberties and the safety of other minority groups.

Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for editing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”

Articles Mentioned and Further Reading

Brendan McGeever in the Jewish Currents newsletter

Jewish Policy Research survey on UK Jews’ feelings about antisemitism, UK Jewish voters voting Green, and UK Jewish identification with Zionism

“The present crisis,” editors of Vashti

“Good Jews, Bad Jews,” Barnaby Raine interviewed by Gavin Jacobson, Equator

“The difficult truth about antisemitism in the UK,” Brendan McGeever, Ben Gidley, David Feldman, Prospect

“Anti-terrorist programme Prevent ‘outdated and inadequately prepared’, report finds,” Rajeev Syal, The Guardian

David Cameron’s 2015 speech at the Community Security Trust

Keir Starmer echoing Enoch Powell

“U.K. Vows Crackdown on Pro-Palestinian Protests After Latest Antisemitic Attack,” David Luhnow, Wall Street Journal

“Five members of biggest British Jewish body suspended after Israel criticisms,” Harriet Sherwood, The Guardian