When I saw the news of the stabbing attack in Golders Green, a feeling of despair weighed heavily on my bones.

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This is the third attack in three weeks on Jewish spaces and synagogues, including 2 arson attempts on synagogues in Harrow and Finchley. My heart goes out to the community, the victims and their family and friends.

Jewish people, like all people, deserve to live in safety, attend their places of worship and go about their daily lives without a fear of violence. The UK is increasingly a hostile place to minorities and marginalised communities, and Jewish people are one of many bearing the real brunt of a politics of misery that scapegoats the vulnerable and plays divide and rule to sew division and mistrust. Understanding these phenomena as interconnected does not diminish the severity of antisemitism - rather, it gives us new understanding and new pathways to dismantle it.

​The only consolation in this moment was meaningful solidarity and support from antiracism groups like Runnymede, who have made clear that dismantling antisemitism is part of the broader struggle of dismantling racism and shared safety. But my heart also sank when I saw that this horrific moment, which signifies a wider rise in hate for my community, was going to be used by the Right for their political advantage, to promote regressive and repressive policies and clamp down on our civil liberties.

​This is why it is incumbent on progressives and the left to recognise that stopping these attacks and tackling antisemitism is not only morally necessary, it is for winning against the ascending far right politics that threaten our democracy and collective safety. From the grassroots to Parliament, the left needs to have answers for how to meet this scary political moment for so many, and show that we offer the solutions to the polycrises facing the UK - including the increased vulnerability and targeting of UK Jews. Not doing so leaves a vacuum that will inevitably be filled by the Right, who will offer a false sense of security for Jewish people in exchange for laundering their islamophobic, racist and anti-democratic politics via their ‘support’ for Jewish communities. We need to see through this ruse for what it is. It is appalling that Reform UK are already capitalising on this horrific attack, which is particularly galling given their leader’s own alleged history of antisemitism. In a Britain and wider Europe increasingly hostile to minority communities, from migrants and asylum seekers to trans people, to Muslims and Jews, minority groups should join forces to take on the threat and violence the rising populist right represents.

​An increasing normalisation of people who express violent and racist ideologies that endanger minorities is being mainstreamed in politics and culture. Just look at Kanye West’s now-cancelled performance at Wireless. We are also seeing so many calls in the last 24 hours for the shutdown of the pro-Palestine protest. As a co-founder and organiser of the Jewish bloc at the London Palestine marches and of Na’amod UK, I know that there is no competition between Jewish safety and Palestinian freedom - and that I am not alone in this belief. The solution to anti-semitism isn’t reactionary policies that curtail our civil liberties, but instead tackling the root of antisemitism in our society.

Em (Emily) Hilton is a Jewish writer, organiser, and strategist based in London.

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