3 hours ago
9
Banning protests will not make Jews safer (Some pro-Palestinian protests could be banned amid attacks on British Jews, 2 May). I am Jewish and I no longer feel safe walking the streets of north London where I live. But I don’t blame the pro-Palestine marches. I blame the Israeli government.
In the wake of the attack on Jews in Golders Green, suggestions that pro-Palestinian protests should be banned are dangerously misplaced. Antisemitism is real and rising, and violence against Jews must be confronted without hesitation. But the protests are not the primary driver of that fear.
I feel anger and shame watching the Israeli government carry out what I believe to be crimes against humanity in the name of protecting Jews: the war in Gaza, widely described by many as genocide; strikes on Iran; and the invasion of Lebanon. These actions are making Jews less safe, fuelling global outrage and blurring the line between Jewish identity and the policies of a government that many of us do not support.
Banning protests will not stop antisemitism. It will erode democratic freedoms and silence dissent, including from Jews like me who feel compelled to speak out against the atrocities of the Israeli government and take a stand for peace, social justice and a shared sense of community.
If our government is serious about our safety, it should focus on what works: policing hate crimes, investing in community security and fostering dialogue across communities. I want to feel safe again. That will not come from banning marches, but from confronting hatred while defending the freedoms that protect us all.
Jamie Lachman
Professor of child and family global health, University of Oxford
Jonathan Freedland (A British minority faces a murderous threat on our streets. Where are the so-called anti-racists?, 1 May) discusses the possibility of banning pro-Palestine marches and writes of the “Jewish bloc” who attends these demonstrations. As one of many Jews who has participated in multiple pro-Palestine demonstrations, both alongside the Jewish bloc as well as separately, I can say that I am proud to have contributed to combatting antisemitism in the UK.
Despite the efforts of many Israeli politicians to claim worldwide Jewish support for their murderous actions, many Jews such as myself continue to adhere to what the Israeli historian Avi Shlaim correctly notes as the core traditional Jewish values of “altruism, truth, justice and peace”.
Jewish participation in pro-Palestine marches is the best way to show everyone in the UK that Jews are not inherent supporters of state violence, and that those who are angry about Israeli policies are grossly misplaced in targeting British Jews.
Elliott Green
Professor of development studies, London School of Economics
I’m a longtime supporter of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and am appalled by antisemitic racism. It can’t be a coincidence that it has risen with Israel’s attacks on Gaza. An important way to combat it would be to make clear that the Jewish community is not the same thing as the government of Israel and is not responsible for its actions. This should be brought home to critics of Israel if, from confusion or malice, they equate the two.
But the issue is also blurred when the reaction to antisemitic attacks is to blame marches in support of Palestine, as if being against Israel’s actions were in itself a threat to Jews. Opposing marches, as well as threatening freedom of protest, contributes to antisemitism by reinforcing the mistaken idea that anti-Israel means anti-Jewish. We can stand up both against Israel and against antisemitism.
Caryl Churchill
London
Dave Rich is right that “extremist violence does not emerge from a vacuum” (After Golders Green, this is what British Jews need from the government, the police – and the rest of society). Attacks are fuelled by ideas and language that, over time, demonises and results in violence against a target group. He is right too that “thoughts and prayers” are not an answer.
But the analysis that is missing is not only ideological, it is operational. Essa Suleiman was referred to Prevent in 2020 and known to have a “history of serious violence and mental health issues”. Each of those signals sat in a separate system, governed by separate rules, justified by separate readings of data protection law. None of them reopened when the next signal appeared elsewhere. The pattern was held in fragments. No one was looking at the whole.
Sir Adrian Fulford reached the same finding in phase one of the Southport inquiry. The serious case reviews into Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson reached it before that. The vertical changes; the structural problem does not.
A whole-society approach to incitement, as Rich argues for, has to be matched by a whole-system response to the architecture by which we identify the people most likely to act on it. That is not principally a technological question. It is a legal and regulatory one: what services may share, when a closed file should reopen, who is permitted to assemble the picture. Until those rules change, the pattern Rich describes will keep arriving at the same address.
Caroline Wells
Founder, Iris Anticipa
