Antisemitism is rising in the UK

Outbreaks of mass disease in the past have often provided a context for antisemitism. Jewish communities have suffered doubly in times of plague: From the biological disease itself, and the pestilence of hate. This pandemic year is no different. It took some time to build, but Jews are now being attacked again in the cities of Europe.

The conflict between Israel and Palestinians is the pretext, but this is simply an excuse to express the antisemitism that has become endemic in Britain since Jeremy Corbyn's time as leader of the Labour party. His tenure saw a mainstreaming of antisemitism under cover of anti-Zionist sentiment, and we now reap the consequences.

The background to Britain's latest outbreak of antisemitism is the latest spate of violence in the Middle East. In the UK, it began with the circulation of TikTok videos showing Jews being beaten by Arab gangs, followed by extremist far-right Jews marching through Jerusalem in response to those beatings.

Over the last two weeks there were increasingly violent protests from Palestinian Arabs in and around the Al-Aqsa Mosque and in Jerusalem more generally, over the planned eviction over non-payment of rent of Palestinian tenants from properties in a neighbourhood called Sheikh Jarrah. The protests around Al-Aqsa were bolstered by specious claims that Israel wanted to destroy the mosque.

The weekend of May 8 saw clashes between police and rioters in Jerusalem grow increasingly fierce. Meanwhile a march of far-right Jewish nationalists through the city to the Western Wall ended in chants to erase Palestinians and their children. The atmosphere in Jerusalem and the rest of Israel was charged, with clashes erupting between Jewish and Arab communities.

Hamas took advantage of the situation to reassert their relevance and entrench their hold on power in Gaza by giving an ultimatum for Israeli law enforcement to leave Al-Aqsa on Tuesday May 11, or they would attack Israel. Israel since been under mass rocket bombardment, to the tune of 2,500-3000 missiles fired indiscriminately at civilians. In turn, Israel has retaliated with targeted air-strikes on Hamas targets in Gaza.

It was against this backdrop that a pro-Palestinian march through central London was organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign group (PSC) for Saturday May 15. Tens of thousands of people attended, draped in Palestinian and other national flags. The march, like others before it, was a festival of Jew hatred and anti-Israel vitriol.

Israeli flags were ripped and burnt to wild cheers and applause. There were chants of "Khayber Khayber Ya Yehud jaish Mohammad Sauf Ya'ud" (Khayber Khaybar oh Jews, Mohammad's army is returning)." This references a battle between the early Muslims in Arabia and the Jews of the Khaybar oasis that ended in defeat for the Jewish forces. The chants proclaim the defeat of Jews both in Israel and in Britain, with the violence that entails. This is a call to war and violence against Jews, and cannot be seen any other way.

This was threatening enough, but throughout the march could be heard repeated calls of "From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free!" The referenced river is the River Jordan and the sea is the Mediterranean. The chant is a call for the destruction of Israel, and no matter how so-called anti-Zionist activists try to dress it up as a peaceful dismantling of Israel into a bi-national state, it cannot be seen as anything less than genocidal.

There is no conceivable way there would be a peaceful removal of the Jewish state from the map, given the violence of the call itself and of those for whom it supports. The result would be a massacre of Israel's Jews. It seems that is what many in the march wish for, even those who won't admit it.

There were other chants that were aimed at undermining of the Jewish state, necessary if the murderous aims of those who call for Israel's destruction are to be realised. One such ditty went "1,2,3,4 occupation no more! 5,6,7,8 Israel is a terrorist state!" This was repeated again elsewhere along the march. This does not just present Israel's security presence in the West Bank as an occupation, but Israel itself as a European settler-colonial interloper on Palestinian land, the Palestinians being the real indigenous population to the area. This is the narrative on the far-left and was mainstreamed by Jeremy Corbyn's time as Labour leader.

Calling Israel a "terrorist state" is part of this push to destroy its legitimacy, portraying any measures to protect itself as illegitimate and immoral. The simple binary (so beloved of woke Left politics) of Israel = Oppressor, Palestinians = Oppressed places an unbearable burden on Jews and Israel, and removes any responsibility and agency of conduct from the Palestinians.  A series of Instagram posts pushing this message has gained almost 500,000 likes. The singling out of Jews and Israel, holding them to uniquely high standards that are impossible to meet is an anti-Semitic trope.

Another classic trope is comparing Jews to pigs and depicting them as such. There were chants of "Israel sons of pigs!" while a blow-up figure of Mohammed bin Zayd, Emir of the UAE was depicted as a demonic figure with devil horns, porcine nose and trotters, transposing the medieval anti-Semitic pig-like demonic Jew onto a leader who made peace with the Jewish state. The reader will be shocked, I'm sure, to learn that Jeremy Corbyn gave a speech right next to this abomination, introduced as "the real leader of the opposition" by someone who called current Labour leader Keir Starmer a "sh*tbag."

Speaking of which, most of the signs on display were the work of the far-left Socialist Worker's Party (SWP), emblematic of the alliance between West-hating left-wingers and Islamist groups. In the latter camp, there were signs from the Muslim Association of Britain with "Exist, Resist, Return!" on them, alongside a Black Lives Matter style fist.

The MAB has been linked to the Muslim Brotherhood by the British government, and its current leader Anas Altikriti is connected to the Muslim Brotherhood through The Cordoba Foundation. The MAB signs were also joined by the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), an Islamist group with links to the Iranian regime. These were the people, along with the PSC and SWP, behind the march on Saturday that saw some of the most vitriolic Jew hatred on London's streets for years.

This is not all. Rabbi Rafi Goodwin was attacked outside his synagogue in Chigwell, Essex. Meanwhile, anti-Semitic graffiti was daubed on a synagogue door in Norwich. As a final, obscene capstone to an appalling weekend, footage emerged from Finchley in north London. It showed a group of cars, driving through the heavily Jewish area, a man shouting through a megaphone "Fuck Israel! Fuck the Jews! Rape their daughters!" This was a disgusting call to sexual violence against the women and girls of an ethnic minority on the streets of Britain's capital.

There was condemnation from across the political spectrum, but the Prime Minister's message was distinctly limp and disappointing, while the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, equivocated and put forward the "both sides" argument, this low-point in a low-grade tenure as mayor distinguished by its cowardice.

Anti-Semitism is as rootless as its adherents claim Jews to be. It is the most malleable of hatreds, shaping itself to the time and place in which it finds itself, always managing to adapt to wring the most hatred out of any given situation. Israel has become the world's Jew and British Jews have been conscripted as representatives of Israel: subject to the same anti-Semitic libels, calumnies and attacks as faced by Europe's Jews through the centuries. Israel, and British Jews, represent the darkness for whichever group needs and longs for an enemy to fight and resist, a convenient opportunity for deflection from their own iniquities.

One can see the hard edge of what it means for Israel to be a state in its air strikes on Hamas targets that tragically kill civilians among which purposefully Hamas hides, using them as shields. There has been violence in Israel from both Arab and Jewish communities. To import a regional conflict into Britain, to blame British Jews for the actions of the Israeli government, legitimate or otherwise, and to use this as an excuse for rampant anti-Jewish bigotry, is a sign that antisemitism has become endemic over the last six years since Corbyn's time as Labour leader.

Antisemitism, whether implicit through so-called anti-Zionism, or stated outright, has become an acceptable prejudice for the liberal centre, the woke left and the Islamist radicals, and it must not be. Whether we resist this rising tide of hatred is up to us. Britain has failed too many times before to stand with its Jews. Let this not be one of them.