The Left don't care about racist attacks when the victims are Jews
On Monday evening, three Jewish teenagers were attacked at Hampstead Underground station. According to a report by Jewish security charity Shomrim, a group of six or seven men attacked the boys, one of whom had to be taken to hospital. It was, British Transport Police later said, a 'racially motivated assault'.
Unless you read the Jewish media, you will be entirely unaware of what seems to be the latest attack on Jews for being Jews. Not a word on the BBC; not a word anywhere. Not a peep from any minister. Not a dickie bird from the Mayor of London. Nothing. It's just another incident. Just another statistic. Just another yawn, in fact. So what; it's only Jews.
Let's try a thought experiment. Imagine it had not been Jewish teenagers attacked for doing nothing except being visibly Jewish. Imagine instead it had been three Muslim boys attacked by a gang of skinhead thugs. Do you think there would have been total silence in response? Do you think the Home Secretary and other figures would have been mute? Do you think the Mayor of London would have ignored the attack completely? Or do you think, as I do, that there would have been entirely justified outrage, and that we would likely even now be in the middle of a national debate over bigotry?
But it was Jews who were attacked, and – as we have seen with unrelenting, unremitting frequency since the hate marches began after the October 7 massacre of 1200 Jews by Hamas – Jews don't count, as David Baddiel put it in his brilliant book of that title. Because the lack of any response to this attack is not a one-off. It is part of a now deeply entrenched pattern demonstrating that when it comes to hatred and bigotry, so long as Jews are the target then the bar that needs to be crossed for action in response is not so much high as out of sight.
The hate marches which are now a regular feature of city life are suffused with anti=Semitism. Backing for Palestinian 'resistance' – terror – is ubiquitous. Support for Hamas and Hezbollah – both of which are prescribed – is repeatedly on display. Calls to 'globalise the intifada' – are the norm.
You want to globalise the intifada? Start at Hampstead underground station – after last week's murders in Washington DC.
But it's not the perpetrators of hate who are dealt with. It's those who oppose it. Last week, for example, the Telegraph reported that a Jewish counter-protester was arrested and charged after he was seen holding a placard satirising Hassan Nasrallah, the former Hezbollah leader. In his police questioning he was asked over and over again if he agreed that the image would offend 'clearly pro-Hezbollah and anti-Israel' activists. No one who follows the police's actions – last year the Met pinned down a counter-protestor carrying a banner reading 'Hamas is terrorist' at a march and then arrested him – will be remotely surprised by this. At a march in Manchester after the October 7 massacre, for example, a banner reading 'Manchester supports Palestinian resistance' was protected by police standing alongside it.
Open anti-Semitism is rarely met by action, but it is often accompanied by drivel, the most frequent example of which is the phrase repeated ad nauseam by politicians that 'There is no place for anti-Semitism', followed by the name of a city or an organisation which has just proved there is every place for anti-Semitism in its fold.
In December, for example, after an expose of truly shocking examples of open anti-Semitism from NHS staff, health secretary Wes Streeting came out with the usual words: 'There is no place for anti-Semitism in the NHS'. The expose had shown that there is in fact a warm welcome for anti-Semitism in the NHS, with none of the NHS Trusts or managers having done anything about it. The same phrase falls regularly from the mouths of Yvette Cooper and Sir Sadiq Khan, but only after an incident which has proved the opposite.
This time, after Monday's attack on three Jewish boys on the Underground, they can't even be bothered to be as unbothered as before and trot out some meaningless platitude. Jews hate? Assault? We really don't care.
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