Antisemitism and anti-Israel-ism not the same - Bruce Whitehead
Violent criminal attacks targeting Jewish people are deplorable and vile, and protection of Jews must be prioritised. In the latest London incident, underfunding of mental health care may also be an issue.
Media coverage persistently connects antisemitic attacks with Israel's wars against Palestine, Lebanon, Iran and Yemen's Houthi rebels. Indeed, attackers usually conflate the Jewish state with Jews elsewhere. Finally Israelis and Zionists in general routinely accuse those opposed to Israel's actions of antisemitism. So it is extremely difficult for legislators to balance the right to protest with genuine fears.
On Thursday the BBC's Nick Robinson suggested to a Jewish civilian security guard that "many British Jews think they'd be safer in Israel in a war zone". This was a supposedly impartial journalist seeking to connect a domestic antisemitic attack to Israel's wars, and the guard agreed, suggesting that repeated peace marches (protesting against the bombing of Arab Palestinian families) were "hate marches".
No doubt some antisemites join these marches to stir hatred, but the dozen or so in Edinburgh which we attended as a family were hate-free, most including a strong group of Scottish Jews utterly opposed to the bombing.
Having deftly muddied the waters between domestic antisemitism and anti-Israel-ism, Mr Robinson then asked Shabana Mahmoud whether supporting Palestinian rights and showing anger about Gaza "constituted hate marches that incubate hostility to Jews in Britain".
Luckily the Home Secretary could retort that legislation had just passed, allowing police to remove hate mongers and route marchers away from synagogues. But Robinson persisted, reminding Ms Mahmoud that because she has protested against Israel as a devout Muslim, that might make Jews feel hated and encourage violence against them.
To her credit Mahmoud did not rise to the bait and rightly focused the issue back where it belongs: whatever the deranged beliefs of mentally unstable murderers, an attack on a British Jew – however horrific – is simply antisemitic. Israel is irrelevant.