On April 29, two Jewish men were stabbed in Golders Green, a visibly Jewish London neighborhood. Police called it a terrorist attack. A 45-year-old suspect was arrested amid a wave of antisemitic violence and fear in Britain’s Jewish community.

What happened in London was not only an attack on two men. It was an attack on Jewish normalcy. It was an attack on the right of Jews to walk through their own neighborhoods without calculating the distance to the nearest exit, the nearest guard, the nearest ambulance, the nearest synagogue door that might or might not be locked. And this is exactly why the Jewish future cannot be built by apology.

For years, Jewish communities across the West have been told to stay calm, trust the process, wait for another statement, another police review, another security grant, another solemn condemnation from officials who always seem shocked by the thing Jewish communities saw coming. But Jews cannot live forever as a protected minority waiting for the next emergency meeting. Security matters. Police matter. Government action matters. But none of it replaces identity, confidence, courage, and a generation of Jews who know exactly who they are.

There comes a time in the life of a people when it must stop asking the world for permission to exist. For Jews, that time has come again. Not because Jewish history is new or because antisemitism has suddenly appeared out of nowhere, but because too many Jews have forgotten the most basic rule of survival: if you do not define yourself, your enemies will define you.

That is the crisis beneath the crisis. The danger facing the........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)