Two weeks ago, a friend asked me how I was doing. Not bigI answered him. There was an attack in a synagogue where I grew up. They stopped, confused. But you didn’t grow up anywhere near Kenton.
I never thought I’d explain that no, the north London synagogue in Finchley where a brick and two bottles thought to contain petrol were thrown. April 15 is different from the north London synagogue in Kenton, where a bottle containing an accelerant was thrown from a window at April 18. The first is a stone’s throw from the house I’ve lived in for two decades, which I’ve attended many times, most recently for a funeral last year. The latter is at least seven miles away, and I think I’ve only been there once, for a Bat Mitzvah 21 years ago.
Both incidents are completely separate from the attack on April 17 in a building formerly occupied by Jewish Futures, a charity that promotes Jewish education and community engagement. It took place in Hendon, which is very conveniently located between Kenton and Finchley. This should not be confused with the arson attack on the Jewish Hatzola ambulance service March 23 at Golders Greenin the parking lot of another synagogue, which in turn should not be confused with the double stabbing on April 29which also happened in front of a synagogue in Golders Green, but another one.
Did you get the picture yet? Because if not, I can draw you a map, six miles square, of our little corner of north London. I can tell you about the synagogues – it’s hard to count how many there are because each denomination keeps its own list, but I’d count about a hundred, about a fifth of the total in the UK. I can tell you about the strife between two rival Jewish cultural centers (obviously there is some truth to the old Jewish joke about the synagogue or community center that we not go to) in the area which culminated in an antagonistic merger in 2015. The winner, JW3 on Finchley Street, defiantly insisted last month it would stay open despite mounting security threats. The organization runs summer camps for Jewish children. It houses a Jewish nursery school.
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Recent media reports have suggested that the Jewish community in Britain feels under attack. This is incorrect. in ARE under attack, figuratively and literally. Petrol bombs are being thrown at our cultural and religious buildings; people are trying to stab us. Are they acting alone, radicalized by online hate or tormented by untreated mental health conditions? Are they part of an organized and organized terrorist effort? Or are they hired hands, providing violence on demand to extremist groups who turn to the dark web to carry out such attacks?
I will leave that to the police and security services; for the target community, it hardly matters. Attacks on Jewish people and Jewish spaces, simply because they are Jewish. Isn’t there a word for it? A word that would help us place the wave of hate crimes in north London in the context of the rise of anti-Jewish hostility, which would link it to other, less dramatic but increasingly commented incidents: security threats to Jewish schools, vandalism of Jewish businesses – and, yes, online smears and abuse aimed at members of the Jewish community under the guise of a distant opposition to the government.
It took 30 seconds after I shared the news of today’s Golders Green attack on social media for the first comment to blame Israel for the incident.. Repetition. Revenge. Tragic, but what do you expect? Anti-Semitic attacks do not occur in a vacuum. They occur in a climate where hostility – online or in real life – towards Jews is deliberately, repeatedly, systematically justified and dismissed by diverting attention to the Israeli government.
Jew-hatred, we are constantly told, is all in our heads. It is simply hatred of Israel – which happens to be the only Jewish state in the world, created in the wake of a genocide against the Jewish people that followed millennia of anti-Jewish persecution. If it weren’t for Israel, there would be no anti-Semitism. It’s our fault really. What did we expect?
After the Kenton synagogue attack, but before the Golders Green stabbing, I watched a video of Green Party leader Zack Polanski, who himself grew up Jewish, wondering if the growing alarm in the British Jewish community about what is happening in this country was “a perception of uncertainty or whether it is actual uncertaintyHe made it clear that neither is acceptable, which is good, but so far he has had little to say about whether that uncertainty or the perception of it could be exacerbated by the candidates standing for his party next week, who have made or distributed the most objectionable content about Israel, Israelis, Jews, often blurring the distinction between the three in a bilious racist frenzy.
Printed on this subject in an interview with New statesmanthe Green leader warned of “weaponizing criticism of the Israeli government” and put tackling anti-Semitism on a par with the need to “push back against false accusations of anti-Semitism”. If these two things were equivalent. As if the risk of someone being accused of hating all Jews, when in fact they simply hate the Jewish state and every Jew who resides in it, is as dire and worthy of concern as the risk of stabbing a Jewish person in the street.
Polanski’s perspective is not unusual. It’s a prospect every Jew in this country is used to. Whenever there is an attack like the Golders Green stabbing, this country and its politicians react with horror and condemnation. How could this happen here?
And soon after, the condemnation fades and the excuses—perhaps not for the attack itself, but for the merciless culture that instilled it—resume. Until the next attack. The time between them is getting shorter. Tonight, in my little corner of north London, I can’t help but wonder: where’s next?
(Further reading: Jews are no longer surprised by violence against us)
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