What was the first thing you saw yesterday morning? My phone buzzed with an image of bloodied human rights lawyer Arsen Ostrovsky, shot in the head while celebrating Hanukkah with families at Australia’s famed Bondi Beach. He survived. Many others didn’t come home. Ostrovsky’s family fled state-sponsored Soviet antisemitism, and now another anti-Jewish ideology targets them. Today the authorities largely look away.
I recently witnessed police protecting extremists targeting St John’s Wood synagogue in north London. West Midlands Police banned Israeli Maccabi fans from attending an Aston Villa match, apparently bowing to pressure from this vocal minority, and then misled Parliament about it.
Jews are now increasingly being forced to protect themselves. Last week Palestine Solidarity Campaign protesters targeted Miznon restaurant in Notting Hill. Their crime? The owner’s business partner once worked for an aid organisation. Counter-protesters moved them from the doorstep while police again failed to maintain order.
Months earlier in Australia, masked extremists ransacked another Miznon branch, attacking customers while chanting “death”. The same slogan is heard globally, inspired by band Bob Vylan’s anti-Jewish rant at Glastonbury that was broadcast live on the BBC. In November last year, Jewish football fans were ‘hunted’ through the streets of Amsterdam.
Yet so often, the media provides cover for hate. After the Manchester synagogue attack, in which two innocent worshippers died, documentarian Louis Theroux gave Bob Vylan a platform, laundering his calls for “armed resistance” to be presented as non-violent protest. Theroux himself then scapegoated “Jewish identity” as a role model for white supremacists like Viktor Orbán and Donald Trump.
Last week rock band Primal Scream used their London concert to associate the symbol of Jewishness with Nazism – in images depicting a Star of David being merged with a swastika – an unambiguously racist conflation. Some music reviews praised this as virtuous. Meanwhile, Jewish bands like Oi Va Voi are excluded by venues caving in to pro-Gaza activist pressure.
Incitement has been carefully cultivated. On university campuses and at street rallies, activists chant “globalise the intifada”, an Islamist call for violent uprising. On Saturday in Birmingham, marchers led with a huge banner demanding “one solution” of “intifada revolution”.
They got their wish – violence against Jews has been globalised. The “One Solution” for Jews is being rolled out across the western world before our eyes. The Nazi Final Solution: repackaged and reintroduced to the west through Islamist slogans, Palestine flags and modish keffiyehs. Like it or not, there is a link between these marches, whether overtly or covertly antisemitic, and the horrifying scenes we saw in Manchester in October, in Amsterdam in November last year, and yesterday in Australia.
Once again, we awoke to the horror of families gunned down for being Jewish. An industry of hate is feeding off Jews, working to snuff out Jewish life. History is repeating itself while our institutions provide cover. Our police stand down. And British Jews are abandoned.
- Alex Hearn is Director of Labour Against Antisemitism
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