A flyer calling for the expulsion of an ethnic group from parts of London was widely shared online yesterday. There were also reports of menacing chants being made outside a place of worship. Were the far-right thugs of riotous Britain up to no good again? Actually, this time the bigotry was coming from the other side, from the self-styled anti-fascists of the radical left.
I thought these protests were about riotous bigotry here at home, not conflicts in the Middle East?
Yes, it seems yesterday’s anti-racist gatherings may not have been entirely anti-racist. A group called Finchley Against Fascism shared a virtual leaflet inviting people to gather in Finchley in north London to show their opposition to the bigotry and chaos of recent days. We need to mobilise, it said, in order to ‘Get fascists, racists, Nazis, Zionists and Islamophobes out of Finchley!’
Wait – Zionists? Jews who believe their people have a right to a national homeland? To lump Zionists in with fascists and Nazis is bad enough. To then say Zionists must be driven ‘out of Finchley’ is horrendous. Finchley is one of the most heavily populated Jewish areas of the UK. Many of its Jewish residents are likely to identify as Zionists. Let’s be clear about this: expelling Zionists from Finchley means expelling Jews from Finchley.
Not surprisingly, the online flyer caused distress to Jews. Local MP, Sarah Sackman of Labour, herself a Jew, was contacted by ‘concerned residents’. The flyer is ‘clearly anti-Semitic’, many of them said. It is. Saying ‘Zionists out’ in Finchley is as bad as those awful cries of ‘P*kis out’ that we heard during the recent riots. In both cases, bigots were essentially calling for the ethnic cleansing of parts of the country.
Some people also reported hearing chants of ‘Free Palestine’ outside the synagogue by Woodside tube station in Finchley. I thought we’d all agreed that political agitation near places of worship is a bad thing? There were Palestine flags on many of the anti-racist gatherings yesterday, too, and spontaneous eruptions of the chant, ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!’.
Was this really necessary? I thought these protests were about riotous bigotry here at home, not conflicts in the Middle East? People on the left are well aware that the ‘river to the sea’ chant makes many Jews feel uncomfortable, because they believe it implies the erasure of the Jewish State from the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Could that chant not have been parked for one measly evening in the name of that ‘unity’ everyone was talking about?
It should concern the organisers of yesterday’s gatherings that some Jews reported feeling uncomfortable at them. Raymond Simonson, the CEO of JW3, a Jewish cultural centre in Finchley, said he attended the ‘huge anti-facist demo’ in Finchley to ‘show solidarity with refugees [and the] local Muslim community’. But he felt ‘uncomfortable’. There was a ‘real edge’, he said, knowing ‘there were people around who don’t like me’.
Could that chant not have been parked for one measly evening?
Sure, it was a small minority at yesterday’s protests who said – or at least thought – ‘Zionists out’. Yet the fact that anyone said it, the fact there was an ‘edge’ to these demos that niggled at some Jews, speaks to a blind spot on the self-styled anti-racist left. They are fast to spot prejudice and intolerance when its targets are Muslims or black people, but the blinkers seem to come down when it’s Jews being menaced.
Indeed, Britain’s Jews are well within their rights to ask why there weren’t anti-racist gatherings in protest at their persecution following 7 October. Over the past ten months, synagogues in the UK have been daubed in graffiti. They’ve had their windows smashed. One in St John’s Wood in northwest London was targeted by a ‘pro-Palestine’ mob. Just two months ago, a teenage Nazi was jailed for eight years for plotting to blow up a synagogue. This week, yet another ‘surge’ in anti-Semitic hate crime has been reported. Where’s the demo?
Every decent person agrees that the targeting of mosques by rioting mobs in recent days was disgraceful, pure bigotry in action. It is just a shame that the low-level, almost year-long targeting of synagogues by so-called ‘anti-Zionists’ has not provoked anywhere near the same level of anger among leftists. Unity is good, sure. But moral consistency is better.
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