Two weeks ago, a friend asked how I was doing. “Not great,” I replied. “There’s been an attack on a synagogue where I grew up.” They paused, puzzled. “But you didn’t grow up anywhere near Kenton.”
I never thought I’d be explaining that no, the north London synagogue in Finchley at which a brick and two bottles thought to contain petrol were thrown on 15 April is a different one to the north London synagogue in Kenton where a bottle containing an accelerant was thrown through the window on 18 April. The former is a stone’s throw from the house I lived in for two decades, which I have attended many times, most recently for a funeral last year. The latter is at least seven miles away, and I think I have only been there once, for a Bat Mitzvah 21 years ago.
Both incidents are completely separate to the attack on 17 April on a building formerly occupied by the charity Jewish Futures that promotes Jewish education and community engagement. That one occurred in Hendon, which is conveniently pretty much slap bang in between the Kenton and Finchley. This is not to be confused with the arson attack on the Jewish Hatzola ambulance service on 23 March in Golders Green, in the car park of another synagogue, which in turn should not be confused with the double stabbing on 29 April, that also took place in front of a synagogue in Golders Green, but a different one.
Are you getting the picture yet? Because if not, I can draw you a map, six miles square, of our little corner of north London. I can tell you about the synagogues – it’s difficult to count how many there are because every denomination keeps its own list, but I’d reckon about a hundred, roughly one-fifth of the total number in the UK. I can tell you about the feud between two rival Jewish cultural centres (clearly there is some truth in the old Jewish joke about the synagogue or community centre we don’t go to) in the area that culminated in an antagonistic merger back in 2015. The winner, JW3 on the Finchley Road, defiantly insisted last month it would stay open, despite increased security threats. The organisation runs summer camps for Jewish children. It houses a Jewish nursery.
Media reports of late have suggested that Britain’s Jewish community feels under attack. This is incorrect. We are under attack, both figuratively and literally. Petrol bombs are being hurled at our cultural and religious buildings; people are trying to stab us. Are they acting alone, radicalised by online hate or tormented by untreated mental health conditions? Are they part of a concerted, organised terrorist effort? Or are they hired hands, providing violence-on-demand for extremist groups who head to the dark web to commission such attacks?
I’ll leave that up to the police and the security services; to the community targeted, it hardly matters. Attacks on Jewish people and Jewish spaces, simply because they are Jewish. Isn’t there a word for that? A word that would help us put the spate of hate crimes in north London in the context of rising anti-Jewish hostility, that would connect it with other, less dramatic but increasingly comment incidents: security threats to Jewish schools, the vandalisation of Jewish businesses – and, yes, online vitriol and abuse aimed at members of the Jewish community under the guise of political opposition to the government of a country two thousand miles away.
It took 30 seconds after I shared the news story of today’s Golders Green attack on social media for the first comment blaming the incident on Israel. Blowback. Revenge. Tragic, but what do you expect? Anti-Semitic attacks do not happen in a vacuum. They happen in a climate where animosity – online or in real life – to Jews is deliberately, repeatedly, systematically excused and dismissed by deflecting attention onto the Israeli government.
Hatred of Jews, we are told again and again, is all in our heads. It is merely hatred of Israel – which just happens to be the world’s only Jewish state, established in the wake of a genocide against the Jewish people that followed a millennia of anti-Jewish persecution. If it wasn’t for Israel, there would be no anti-Semitism. It’s our own fault really. What did we expect?
After the Kenton synagogue attack but before the Golders Green stabbing, I saw a video of Green Party leader Zack Polanski, who was himself raised Jewish, musing on whether the British Jewish community’s rising alarm at what is happening in this country was down to “a perception of unsafety or whether it’s actual unsafety”. He clarified that neither is acceptable, which is nice. But so far he’s had very little to say about whether that unsafety or the perception of it might be exacerbated by the candidates standing for his party next week who have made or shared the most abhorrent content about Israel, Israelis, Jews, often muddying the distinction between the all three in a frenzy of racist bile.
Pressed on this topic in an interview with the New Statesman, the Green leader warned of the “weaponisation of criticism of the Israeli government” and put tackling anti-Semitism on a par with the need to “push back against false allegations of anti-Semitism”. As though those two things were equivalent. As though the risk of someone being accused of hating all Jews, when really they just hate the Jewish state and every Jew who inhabits it, is just as terrible and worthy of concern as the risk of a Jewish person being stabbed in the street.
Polanski’s perspective isn’t unusual. It’s a perspective every Jew in this country has grown used to encountering. Every time there’s an attack like the stabbing in Golders Green, this country and its politicians react with horror and condemnation: how could this happen here?
And then immediately after, the condemnation fades and the excuses – perhaps not for the attack itself, but for the relentless culture that inculcated it – resume. Until the next attack. The time between them is truncating. Tonight, in my little corner of north London, I can’t help but wonder: where’s next?
[Further reading: Jews are no longer surprised by the violence against us]
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Subscribe here to commentThanks Rachel – a very important piece about how the Jewish community (across Britain) is feeling. It is hardly surprising. It does not take much looking (if any) to find anti-Semitism. I have been shocked how (now former) ‘colleagues’ on the left have entered so readily into this hatred. People who not long ago I would have shared space with on an anti-racism march or event now seem miles away from me in how they view this. The whataboutery (‘of course, if Israel stopped bombing…’ etc) is rife. I do not hear the same about British people or different ethnic or racial origins as being the ones to blame for the actions of a government far away – they are not facing attacks just for being who they are. I have known anti-Semitism exists for years. I have heard its low-level comments – called them out – for years, but this is of an altogether different scale. I cannot know how Jewish people are feeling – the sense of dread and fear. I can only say I will continue to do my best to call it out for what it is.
Are Russians in the UK being targeted for the despicable civilian bombing of Ukraine – or Syria. I don’t think so.
Of course what we are seeing here is antisemitism.
Of course a violent attack aimed at Jewish people on the street is anti-Semitism.
And a violent attack aimed at Russian people in the UK on the street would be anti-Slavism ?), and equally appalling.
But in connection with Rachel’s article above, my question is: Would an article condemning violent anti-Slavic attacks on Britain’s streets feel it necessary to blame the attacks on criticism of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and attempt to undermine the legitimacy of criticism of Russia by referring to violent attacks on Russians here?
I was with Rachel all the way, until half way through she started to muddle together vile attacks on Jewish people on the streets of Britain and criticism of “the world’s only Jewish state, established in the wake of a genocide against the Jewish people that followed a millennia [sic] of anti-Jewish persecution”. No mention of the Palestinians who occupied Palestine for almost two millennia, or Gaza, or the racist murders of Palestinians by settlers in the West Bank, or Israel introducing the death penalty but only for Palestinians
Chris
You should read the comments made before yours, eg russians living in the UK are not being attacked as a result of the war crimes being committed in Ukraine by the russian state. Jews are not necessarily Israeli citizens. Legitimate anger about Palestine does not justify racism and violence directed against UK citizens.
Of course it doesn’t justify it, but my comments were critiquing Rachel’s attempt to blame criticism of Israel for the attack and thereby delegitimise criticism of Israel, please see my reply to Mark which will not have been visible to you because of the delay introduced by the approvals process.
It took me a long while, as an ethnically Jewish convert to the Church of England, to develop a rule of thumb to assess when criticism of Israel crosses the line into antisemitism; and I offer it not because I am sure it is right but because I can apply it consistently. Wishing to give others the benefit of the doubt, I concluded that criticism of Israel for the culpable things it does not cross the line but criticism of Israel or Jews generally for culpable things someone else does crosses the line. A classic example, stated by a fondly remembered left-wing in-law on the subject of 9/11, was “of course it’s the Jews’ fault”. That statement obviously was not accusing Jews of flying the planes: rather it implied that, in the chain of events leading to 9/11, some Israeli misdeed was manifestly pivotal, the tacit trope being that Jews are excessively powerful. Another example was the gratuitous appearance of Netanyahu in Guardian Donald Trump first term cartoons by Steve Bell, implying that he was clearly pulling the strings.
If diaspora Jews are affected by Israel’s actions, perhaps they should demand the right to to vote in their elections.
Chapeau