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Anti-Jewish violence / Britain is playing catch-up in the fight against antisemitism

25 0
04.10.2026

This coming week brings another round of anti-Israel protests to our campuses and to our city centres, cynically timed to coincide with the anniversary of Hamas’s 7 October atrocities. The usual noxious mix of extremism and antisemitism will be on display. Some marchers will wave the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran, despite that regime’s involvement in attacks on British soil. Others will show their enthusiasm for Hamas, barely hidden behind coded support for ‘resistance’ and ‘Intifada’. Some of the organisers hold a deep ideological hostility to the West as a whole.

Extremists have the right to protest, as we all do. And many of the people on these demonstrations may have more reasonable views. But overall, the anti-Israel movement in our country has proven to be a powerful incubator for the normalisation of antisemitic attitudes and violent rhetoric, and the fruits of this incitement are plain for all to see.

That antisemitism is at shockingly high levels is now beyond dispute. It is a year since Jihad al-Shamie brought his Islamist extremist hatred to Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester, a terror attack that resulted in the deaths of Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby. Since then, there have been arson attacks on Jewish-owned ambulances and synagogues in London and the stabbing of two Jewish men in Golders Green.

The innate sense of safety that Jews always carried with them in Western societies has evaporated

The innate sense of safety that Jews always carried with them in Western societies has evaporated

This is also a global problem. A year after Heaton Park fell victim to violent Jew hatred, it was the turn of the........

© The Spectator