Starmer makes antisemites of us all

Responding to the ‘terror’ attack in North London, Starmer says:

But I also call on every decent person in this country top open their eyes to Jewish pain, Jewish suffering and Jewish fear [1]

The attack in North London seems to have been carried out by someone who is described by the authorities as having “a history of serious violence and mental health issues”

There have been a series of attacks on Jewish communities recently. This is how the Guardian sums it up:

Amid fear and anxiety among British Jews, Starmer is facing calls to do more to protect them after a string of antisemitic attacks, which appear to have intensified amid the Israel-Gaza war, and US-Israeli strikes on Iran.

The actual attacks are:

In a statement from Downing Street after visiting Golders Green, Starmer acknowledged the fear among Jews, highlighting that the latest attack came after an arson attempt in Hendon, an attack on the Jewish ambulance service, a firebomb at a Harrow synagogue, and the murder of two Jewish men at a Manchester synagogue last year

I love the way the Guardian is so coy about how there might be a link between the events in Gaza/Lebanon/Iran/Syria and these attacks in the UK – the attacks “appear” to have intensified since the Gaza war. Well – they either have, or they haven’t. Why “appeared”? Because in the weird world of what currently defines ‘antisemitism’ it would be seen as antisemitic to suggest there was a connection.

Obviously, there is a connection. You cannot commit genocide, murder thousands of children in Gaza, deliberately starve an entire population, tolerate the cruelties inflicted on Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank, (murder of children being a speciality), gloat about “pager operations”, wipe out an entire school, (and not even aplogise for it), and so on, and so on, and expect that there will be no blow-back. Note – observing that there is a connecton is not the same as validating attacking Jewish people for the sins of Israel.

And, before, this site is accused of antisemiticism I can point out that reform UK Jews make this point:

What the government of Israel does reflects on us as Jews and reflects on our Judaism. Therefore, it is our Jewish obligation to be in dialogue with that in some way. [3]

This is, unfortunate, but inevitable. The state of Israel claims to somehow represent the entire Jewish nation in dispora and well as in Israel. In zero way is any given Jewish person in the UK responsible for what the State of Israel does, simply by virtue of being Jewish – but if someone is claiming to act in your name that does, in some way entangle you.

Starmer, who is not very bright, said this:

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 ‘globalise the intifada’, you are calling for terrorism against Jews, and people who use that phrase should be prosecuted.

The danger of that position is one might then turn that around and ask whether the Jewish Community in the UK is calling Israel out for what multiple respected NGOs and UN experts call genocide. Genocide.

Once again – to attack Jewish people because of what the State of Israel is doing, is stupid. A kind of error in thinking, as well as ethics and humanity. But to pussy-foot around the connection between the objectively speaking relatively small number of terrorist attacks in the UK against Jewish people and the genocide/mass war crimes in Gaza, is bizarre. People who are mentally-ill, at the margins, in the UK’s large immigrant population might well turn themselves or be turned into “terrorists” in this context. (Note, and this is a separate point, but because of the D-notice, no one can actually admit that part of the totality of the situation is the UK’s immigration policies and behaviours; only in some detached from reality corporate world can you bring in large numbers of Muslim immigrants while backing a gencoide against Muslims and think there won’t be problems. Such problems are not solved by a few posters on college walls about “5 British values”).

It would be nice to see Starmer talking about feeling the pain, fear and suffering of the people in Gaza or the West Bank. But, that is unlikely, given the UK’s complicity.

When Starmer drags us all into this fake concern for jewish people, not grounded in humanity and ethics, when he, effectively, accuses lots of decent people who have nothing to do with antisemiticism of being antisemitic because they decline to say that the world should stop because two Jewish people got stabbed by a mentally ill naturalised immigant, he is perverting what antisemiticism actually is. If the standard of not being an antisemite is that one should call for the world to stop when two Jewish people got stabbed in North London, but be totally indifferent to the pain, suffering, and fear of millions of people in Palestine, (in the West Bank where settler violence is currently out of control as well as in Gaza), or even back it, then he completely, in an absolute sense, devalues antisemiticism. In doing so he spreads antisemiticism. For Starmer it is a game, a media performance. No ethics at the core.

Update

Talking of conortions in the media – this is an odd one, in the Guardian. It is in an article about Starmer’s visit to a community centre in North London near where the attack took place:

The stabbing of two Jewish men in Golders Green, declared a terrorist incident by the Met police, has been met by loud demands for action; reassuring words are said to be insufficient in light of the concerted terror campaign against the UK’s Jewish community. [4]

The second part of this is very odd; “reassuring words are said to be insufficient in light of the concerted terror campaign against the UK’s Jewish community”. Said, who by? The journalists writing this article seem to be trying to globalise this view. In fact – this view, that the government is not doing enough to protect the community, is the view of a specific lobby group. Here it is presented as some kind of global statement, using the impersonal reporting “are said” construction. Why not say who is making these claims? A lobby group. Again, at the least, a certain coyness.

(As for concerted terror campaign – I am not at all sure that there is any evidence for such a thing).

Notes

Starmer makes antisemites of us all

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