In the early hours of Monday morning, four ambulances belonging to Hatzalah – the volunteer Jewish emergency service that provides medical care to Jews and non-Jews alike, whose name literally translates to ‘rescue’ or ‘relief’ – were set on fire outside a synagogue in Golders Green.

Nobody was killed, though.

That is a fact that will be noted often, as a form of reassurance for the Jewish community of London, to which I belong. But that argument must not be allowed to carry too much weight.

The issue is that ambulances are functional objects: they exist to close the gap between medical crisis and subsequent medical care. To target them is an act of interference – a deliberate degradation of the Jews’ capacity to respond to emergencies.

As per usual, the BBC described this attack as a ‘suspected antisemitic hate crime.’ The Metropolitan Police, meanwhile, have called it what it is, and removed the ‘suspected’ part.

What will it take for the BBC to realise that this was a Jewish organisation, Jewish ambulances – built for both the Jew and the gentile alike? Hatzalah is embedded in daily Jewish communal life and is frequently the first on scene in moments of acute need. Their impact is so great that the fundraiser dedicated to........

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