A surge in antisemitic intimidation, paired with political equivocation, is testing Britain’s civic compact and exposing the state’s difficulty in confronting modern extremism.

Britain likes to imagine itself as a country tempered by moderation: pragmatic in politics, restrained in rhetoric and broadly tolerant in public life. Yet beneath that self-image sits a growing unease, nowhere more visible than within the country’s Jewish communities. In parts of London where Jewish life has flourished for generations, the calculations of ordinary life are changing. Synagogue routes are reconsidered. Religious symbols are concealed. Public visibility increasingly carries risk.

What was once dismissed as fringe hostility has become harder to ignore. Antisemitism in Britain is no longer confined to obscure online forums or isolated acts of vandalism. It has moved into the texture of public life: shouted from passing bicycles, woven into demonstrations and, increasingly, expressed through acts of intimidation and violence.

The attack in Golders Green in April crystallized those fears. In one of Britain’s most established Jewish neighborhoods, a knife-wielding assailant targeted people he believed to be Jewish near a synagogue in what police treated as a terrorist incident. The symbolism mattered as much as the violence itself. Golders Green has long represented the confidence and permanence of Jewish life in Britain. An assault there was interpreted by many British Jews not simply as a criminal act, but as evidence that the boundaries of acceptable hostility are........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)