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Following the stabbings of two Jewish men in the London neighborhood of Golders Green earlier this week, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer declared the following:
Of course, we protect freedom of speech and peaceful protest in this country. But if you are marching with people wearing pictures of paragliders without calling it out, you are venerating the murder of Jews. If you stand alongside people who say globalize the Intifada, you are calling for terrorism against Jews and people who use that phrase should be prosecuted.
I watched Starmer's full remarks. He said all the right things:
And yet the truth is while we can and we will bring the full power of the state to bear on this, this is about society every bit as much as it is about security. Moments like this we often say, 'This is not Britain,' That these attacks are an affront to British values, to British tolerance, British decency. But they keep happening, don't they?
And so today, instead, I will simply say that our values are not a gift handed generation to generation. They are something we earn each day through action. They come from us.
Anti-Semitism is an old, old hatred. History shows that the roots are deep and, if you turn away, it grows back. Yet far too many people in this country diminish it. They either don't see it or they don't want to see it.
Given his efforts to root out anti-Semitism when he succeeded Jeremy Corbyn as Labour Party leader, I am inclined to believe him. Yet this be may very well be too little, too late.
When Starmer visited Golders Green prior to his remarks, he was heckled with some calling him "Starmer, The Jew Harmer!!!"
Of course, the surge in anti-Semitism in the U.K. didn't begin under Starmer's watch. But it has certainly accelerated. Consider this summary by Jonathan Sacerdoti:
This comes after the Yom Kippur terror attack at Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation in Manchester, where a car was driven at people outside a synagogue and worshippers were stabbed, leaving Adrian Daulby and Melvin Cravitz dead and three others seriously injured. It comes after four Hatzola ambulances, run by a Jewish volunteer emergency service, were set alight in Golders Green, oxygen cylinders exploding and nearby windows shattering. It comes after petrol bottles and a brick were thrown at Finchley Reform Synagogue; after an attempted firebombing at Kenton United Synagogue; after counter-terror police arrested eight people over suspected arson plots against Jewish-linked sites; after a suspected security incident near the Israeli embassy in Kensington Gardens; after an arson attack on a memorial wall in Golders Green; after Jewish schoolboys were assaulted at Belsize Park station; after a Jewish man was attacked by teenagers in Hendon; after a Jewish father was abused on the Northern line; after Israelis were attacked in Leicester Square for speaking Hebrew; after a man in Wembley was asked whether he was Jewish and then punched in the face; after Jews leaving a West London synagogue were abused and assaulted; and after Gail’s in Archway was daubed with red paint and anti-Israel slogans because a bakery had somehow become another acceptable proxy for Jewishness.
The list is ugly because the facts are ugly.
Synagogues. Ambulances. Schoolboys. Restaurants. Shops. Tube stations. Memorial walls. Men in their seventies. Men wearing kippot. People speaking Hebrew in public.
One could make a case that the U.K. is the most dangerous place on Earth to be a Jew. In which case, the U.K. might as well as be Gaza.
In order for Starmer to effectively combat anti-Semitism, he will need to borrow a phrase from one of his predecessors, Tony Blair. Starmer will need to "say what he means and mean what he says" and punish those who support violence against British Jews.
The problem, of course, is that anti-Semitism is now tolerated in the U.K. Which means Starmer would have to stand firm against any pushback up to and including the risk of Labour supporters defecting to the Green Party and their openly anti-Semitic leader Zack Polanski (despite the fact he is Jewish).
Indeed, following the Golders Green attack, Polanski made a retweet which accused the authorities of excessive conduct against the suspect without mentioning the attack. Polanski would apologize for the tweet which he said was made "in haste" but he did not condemn the attack itself. This is not surprising considering several Green Party candidates have called for violence against "Zionists". It would seem that British voters who want to kill Jews have a home in the Green Party.
So, it remains to be seen if Starmer will have the wherewithal to mean what he says about combatting anti-Semitism in the U.K.
And even if he does, anti-Semitism might be so deeply entrenched in British society that even the full force of the state might be powerless in excising it
