To think this attack on London Jewish schoolchildren should have been headline news

Those poor children, it sounds terrifying. I hope the Police get the perpetrators (sounds like it was widely filmed).

I am not expressing intolorance when I state the objective fact that some countries have antisemitic curriculums, nor the opinion that educational provision for adult refugees in the UK is very inconsistent and largely depends on where they are. It is entirely possible that a refugee flees a country where they were taught that Jews aren't human and settles in a rural part of the UK. If they already speak enough English to function and / or are supported by their own family or community, they could really have very, very little formal education in the UK. Assuming they don't move to one of the few small towns which still has a Jewish community, and that they aren't super into political TV, they could live in the UK for years without realising that that science topic they studied years ago and haven't really critically examined since, would be considered outragously racist to their neighbours. It's a problem with the system, but me talking about it isn't intolerance. It will only get funding to fix it when people are aware of the problem and recognise the importance of changing it.

My DC's state primary school has this too. It takes ages when all the parents have to go in for something simple like a stay and read session.

I am not sure it's safety. DH's mum is orthodox jewish and in the 1990s was trapped in a 1 bed flat with 3 children in nw london (her dh had lost his job and property prices had crashed). It was 7 years before she could afford to buy a terraced in the same area with family help but before she upsized, her rabbi tried to persuade her to be part of a scheme to move to an ex mining town (she was self employed so not bound to London) where they would set up a Jewish community complete with school, shul, Jewish bakery. She ultimately decided not to because in her words she wanted choice of 8 synagogues within walking distance, kosher supermarkets, mikveh and community. You can't replicate that in a small town. She even thought 1990s Edgware had too few Jewish facilities.

I think what happens in the small towns is that the young Jewish people either marry non Jews (and their kids no longer identity as jewish) or they move to London/Manchester/israel where there are more jewish young people. They ultimately settle in a place where their partner is likely to be agreeable with (and as the jewish community in uk is so diverse- might even be a different country). The jewish elderly ultimately pass on. DH has cousins who live in small British towns/Wales, precisely none are married to jewish people (though one has a jewish ex wife and son). In contrast dh who grew up in London has a jewish wife (I converted but that is also because I was able to convert living in London) and dh's siblings who moved to Israel to find partners also have jewish partners.

I don't think it is appropriate that on thread discussing antisemitism and the hatred and violence that stems from it by expressing intolerant views about another group of vulnerable people.

ODFOD. Its not a fact. But what is a fun fact is that I will challenge/ debate show frustration to any person of race or religion, even other Black people when it comes to statements like Comedycook's. As for you and your statistics, you are no better, we can all produce statistics.

I visit many schools and they all have stickers with photos. All have an airlock reception too so no chance of sneaking in. That includes primary and secondary.

ALL of this.

This is not like schools I have visited.

There is an ipad to sign in. But no sticker with your photo. The secretary is always busy and rushing from one task to another and consequently it would be very easy to sneak in when someone else opened the door. There is no security guard, and a secretary is not a substitute for that ( as described).

@Purspectiveplease interestingly there's a growing community of Orthodox Jews who have relocated from Stamford Hill to Canvey Island of all places

Excellent. Next time there's a thread where someone of Chinese descent posts that they were called a racial slur, screamed at, had things thrown at them, and made to fear for their safety on the street, I look forward to the ten page thread that will definitely be allowed to stand, where we debate how bad the incident actually was compared to China's treatment of the Uyghurs. We can then tell them it probably was nothing to do with their ethnicity and that it happens to lots of people.

When your colleague at work mentions that she has Sudanese heritage, I look forward to seeing her grilled on her feelings about the civil war. I look forward to every conversation she starts being brought back to that. And when she's the victim of hate crime, we can shrug and tell her that there just simply needs to be peace in Sudan.

Most of all though, I look forward to seeing your name on all of the threads about Palestine, where you shout from the rooftops about all of the other innocent people worldwide who are dying .

No you're wrong there. We've had a Jewish community in our town since the 19th century and they are still here. They have a cemetery and about 3 congregations. My immediate next door neighbours are Jewish and so are my best friends parents.
None of them have felt threatened in this town and I've known them 14 and 35 years respectively.
Mind you - my neighbour is a bit paranoid - her bins were blown down the road a few weeks ago and she said she was worried it had been done on purpose because she was Jewish. I reassured her that 50mph winds don't know the difference between Christian bins and Jewish bins. She laughed.

They really don't need to be like fortresses though. I worked with the CST in Prestwich for a couple of years and there was definitely a culture of shock to help keep the need for the organisation. Their risk management was also totally over the top but it gave good optics.

Oh ok, then how about just on topic that encompass the ME conflict then?

Ok @Paddymcpaddy . So your argument is that when racists use a conflict in another part of the world to launch a racist attack in the UK, by linking innocent UK victims to participants in a conflict elsewhere, we should promote their racist thinking through the way we report the story, by parroting their narrative that somehow these victims are linked to the perpetrators elsewhere.

Right.

I did a 20 second advanced search and think if you truly believe we should shout it from the rooftops, perhaps lead by example.

I would expect that your lovely coastal town is inclusive to anyone except Jews. The majority of the old Jewish communities of small towns across the UK have fled their small towns for London / Manchester because there is safety in numbers. A small town is unlikely to have a big enough community to afford / justify the security resources they would need in order to be able to run a Synagogue, Jewish school etc. There might be a few single Jewish families flying under the radar in your town still though.
Large refugee intake typically mean more antisemitism, not less. Many refugees who flee their homes as adults were educated abroad and will arrive in the UK with the knowledge they were taught by their school's curriculum and their culture. People all over the Muslim world are explicitly taught in science classes that Jews are not human, e.g. many people from Yemen will have learned this in school, unless they attended a private international school. Others will have been taught that the Jews deserved the holocaust or that it didn't happen or that Israel is a colony of the USA / the EU or any number of antisemitic tropes. Obviously when they arrive as refugees, their safety is more important than their education, but even once they are settled, there isn't always a good programme to teach them English and British values.

Because they dress it up as being against Zionism rather than Jews, but we all know what they mean!

Yeah and the signs calling Rishi and Suella 'coconuts', absolutely disgusting.

A lot of the anti racist protests which happened recently had lots of anti Zionist signs

This really appalls me. How can people who think they are anti-racist do this?

It's not just a few, synagogues have been attacked, children have been attacked outside synagogues. It's disgusting and not acceptable.

I have name changed for obvious reasons. I went to JFS. I initially started in Camden and part way through, we moved to the new site in Kenton. I went on the school bus. There was a period of time where the situation in Israel was unstable. On one journey home, a group of kids were waiting at my bus stop. They didn’t get on the bus but the threw stones at it and called us a Jewish slur.

I am nearly 40 now and it stays with you. I hope those poor children are feeling as ok as can be. I chose not to send my children to a Jewish school and I am glad with my choice. I don’t want them to ever be fearful but I do want them to be proud of their background, culture and religion..

That said, I wouldn’t expect it to be headline news. Given how much is going on in the world, it isn’t headline material. That doesn’t take away from the importance of raising awareness of antisemitism and all kinds of racism.

Oh ok, then how about just on topic that encompass the ME conflict then? Including when posters say it’s not children’s fault that Israel seem intent on wiping out an entire people?
Which it absolutely isn’t of course, not those kids on the bus in London, not kids anywhere.
It’s not headline news because a bunch of kids abusing a bunch of kids from another school isn’t in the grander scheme of things, disgraceful though it is.
Not if it was racial, not if it was sectarian, at least not while Trump is about to be in power again, Putin is threatening to use nuclear weapons. South Korea is/was under martial law, the Palestinians are being slaughtered,
Hamas aren’t defeated and the whole
ME is a danger if starting WW3.
So shitty that it is that school kids got abused, It’s a local news story, not headline news.

People are accepting of this now, especially on here, it's very scary how people will quickly other and dehumanise people.

Oh don't talk bollocks yourself.

That poster made the very pertinent post that Jewish people get racism from the left and the right. I can't think of any other racial or ethnic group that gets that. Jews are also 0.5% of the population yet 33% of the victims of religiously motivated hate.

Tell me, which other racial and ethnic groups do you attack when they talk about the facts of the specifics of the racism they face?

The irony of you talking about the complexities of antisemitism and then making that comment to Black woman on the subject of racism.

The unexpected shit can come at you from the Left is mind-blowing... I see what you mean.