How can anyone claim surprise? Jews have been warning of this for years. We all knew it was not a question of if, but when

Photo: David Dixon

T

he announcement here in Britain that Prime Minister Keir Starmer would recognize a Palestinian state in September was hailed by some in the political and media elite of Britain as “brilliant diplomacy.” To us Jews, it felt like something else entirely — a reward for terror, and a capitulation to the extremist mobs that have filled our streets every week since October 7, chanting for an intifada and jihad.

It confirmed a truth many of us have felt for months: that Britain is becoming too weak, too frightened, to confront the cancer of anti-Semitism and extremism growing within it. More and more, rather than stand up to those who hate us, our leaders are trying to appease them.

That is the context in which every horror of the past weeks in Britain must be understood. The murder of two Jews in Manchester as they walked to shul on Yom Kippur. The banning of Jewish soccer fans from traveling to Birmingham — Britain’s second largest city — because the police “could not guarantee their safety.” A Jewish man arrested in central London for wearing a Star of David. These are not isolated incidents. They are symptoms of a country that no longer knows how — or no longer has the courage — to protect its Jewish community.

We are told that Britain was shocked by the attack in Manchester. But how can anyone claim surprise? Jews have been warning of this for years. We all knew it was not a question of if, but when.

For over two years, crowds have marched through London calling for an intifada — the violent uprising and killing of Jews — and nothing happened. Chants of “jihad,” “from the river to the sea,” and open calls for murder were excused as “political expression.” The police looked on. Politicians looked at their shoes. Commentators insisted it was “context.”

So no — you do not get to be shocked when hatred, left unchecked, spills into blood on our streets.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer keeps repeating the same promise: that he will do “whatever it takes” to protect the Jewish community. Yet since two Jews were murdered in Manchester, the only action he has announced is more money for Community Security Trust, an organization that provides security for the British Jewish community.

That might sound reassuring. It isn’t. It is an admission of failure. It says: We can’t stop the people who want to kill you. We aren’t strong enough to try. So here is some extra money to build higher fences and thicker doors before the next Islamist attack by those we allowed to call for intifada for two years.

That isn’t protection. It is surrender.

And increasingly, it feels like we are being told to stay home and stay quiet. If the answer to anti-Semitism is to exclude Jews from public spaces — to make football stadiums, universities, protests, even city centers effectively Judenrein — then we haven’t defeated the hatred. We’ve capitulated to it.

Worse still is the rise of sectarian politics in our Parliament. Members of Parliament elected on “Gaza tickets,” who do not speak for universal British values but for one religious or ethnic constituency. MPs who invite extremists into Westminster, who defend terror apologists, who celebrate when Jews are excluded from public life. Britain has five such MPs who call themselves the “Gaza MPs.” They sit on Select Committees. They vote on our laws. They use parliamentary privilege to launder ideas that once belonged on the fringes — that Jewish safety is conditional, that Jews are legitimate targets, that Britain belongs more to the mob than to the law.

Then came Birmingham — which is represented by several of these UK “Gaza MPs.” West Midlands Police banned Jewish and Israeli soccer fans from attending the match between Aston Villa and Maccabi Tel Aviv  — not because they had done anything wrong, but because their presence might provoke violence. “We cannot guarantee your safety,” they said.

The police are meant to protect citizens from the mob. But here, they protected the mob from having to see the Jew. It is a moral inversion my great-grandmother Lily Ebert a"h would have recognized from before the Holocaust in Eastern Europe.

She survived Auschwitz. She came to Britain because she believed this country was different — that here, Jews would never again be told to stay at home for their own safety. She rebuilt her life from the ashes of the Holocaust on the promise that Britain was a place of law, fairness, and tolerance. She lived to 100. Had she seen this Britain, I am not sure she would have recognized it.

And just when it seemed it could not get worse, it did. A Jewish man was arrested by police in central London — for wearing a Magen David necklace. Not for violence. Not for provocation. But because his Jewish identity — his mere existence — was said to “antagonize” others. The police did not arrest the men and women shouting abuse. They arrested the Jew.

Being Jewish has always antagonized anti-Semites. That is not new. What is new — and what we thought Britain would never allow — is a state taking the side of the mob rather than the minority.

This is where we are now, with a government that says it will do whatever it takes, except the one thing that matters: confront hatred openly and unapologetically.

Recognition of a Palestinian state was not diplomacy. It was weakness. It was a message to those chanting for intifada: We hear you, and we are bending. It was proof that intimidation works. And once a nation starts rewarding threats with policy, it is very hard to stop.

This is no longer about football, or protests, or rogue police officers. It is about whether Britain is still the country my great-grandmother believed it was. Whether Jews can live here openly, proudly, safely — not behind fences, not hiding their Jewish school blazers on buses and trains, not afraid to wear a Magen David.

I do not want to live in a Britain where Jewish schools need armed guards, where parents tell their children to hide who they are on public transport. This is not normal. This is not safety.

The choice now is simple. Britain can be a country that stands up to those who hate Jews. Or it can be a country that keeps giving in — step by step, street by street — until it is too late.

So what must the government do? It needs to move beyond statements and take real action. That means proscribing the IRGC — one of the world’s largest state sponsors of anti-Semitism and terror — and banning chants that glorify violence or call for the murder of Jews, such as “jihad,” “intifada” and “from the river to the sea.”

It must revoke the visas of foreign nationals who are guests in this country yet abuse that privilege by spreading anti-Semitism or inciting hatred. It should withdraw public funding from Islamist institutions and mosques where extremist ideology is being preached — many of which are already known to the police and security services — and ban hate preachers from entering Britain, while removing those already here who use our freedoms to undermine them.

Above all, it must make it clear that the role of the police is to protect Jews from the mob, not to protect the mob from having to see Jews.

Because history teaches us this: when a nation cannot protect its Jews, it will soon fail to protect anyone. The Jews are the canary in the coal mine. And right now, the canary is gasping. —

Dov Forman is a British author and influencer recognized as a leading young voice in Holocaust education and in the fight against anti-Semitism. He co-authored the New York Times and Sunday Times best-selling memoir Lily’s Promise with his great-grandmother, Auschwitz survivor Lily Ebert a"h.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1083)