Terrible but not surprised - Jewish community under threat

I am not surprised by those figures. I rarely hear religious hate expressed towards any other groups.

It is extremely concerning that once again the Islamic State are influencing terrorist attacks in Britain and that Jews are the target. Terrorist ideology has no place in modern societies and I am sorry to hear how unsafe Jewish communities are feeling in the UK. No one wants that, no one should feel fear going about their daily lives and practicing their faith. People should be free to live their lives however they want and despite all the disagreements and opposing view points I would be very surprised and disappointed if this was not the majority view.

There's definitely a lot of ignorance - this is why I prefer, when I see it demonstrated, to try to educate people from a Jewish standpoint rather than immediately yelling at people that they are antisemites.

You can usually tell, looking at someone's social media, if they are an antisemite or ill-informed, and if the latter I make a point of explaining to people why they might not want to say something. Trying to shame people by screaming 'Antisemite!' at them is unhelpful as then of course they will get defensive and are more easily influenced by dodgy people coming along and going 'Ugh, those Jews, they just call everything antisemitism' - I prefer to approach it as 'I don't think you want to be saying that, you need to understand it's antisemitic' as that might actually cause some reflection because you are calling out what they said, not casting aspersions on them as a person.

Yep.

And whilst Jewish people may not always be ‘visible’ the fact I know so many who have changed their family name at some point to prevent attacks and discrimination speaks volumes

Well I stand by my statement and I believe the marches are fuelling the fire to antisemitism. Whilst many of the ‘protesters’ may be calling for peace, a great many of them are terrorist sympathisers and clearly hate all Jews. The ‘mindless sheep’ I was referring to are the virtue signallers, students etc who see it as the latest cause to get involved with. Waving their ‘from the river to the sea’ banners not even knowing which river or which sea. Half of them don’t have a clue about any of it and yet will follow the antisemites blindly - without even realising!
You only have to see the treatment of that poor Israeli girl at Eurovision and how those idiots thought they were on the ‘right side of history’ by harassing and intimidating her (possibly worse if the police/security hadn’t been there). Where are their critical thinking skills? They really believe a 20 year old girl has anything to do with what her government are doing?

I’m not Jewish, by the way, but I stand with them and what I see happening in my country lately absolutely sickens me.

Anyway rant over.

Those statistics are shocking and what is even more shocking is the disproportionate rate of attacks on those two groups. To put into context:

Muslims make up 5% of the UK population and get 40% of religious hate crimes.

Jewish people make up 0.4% of the UK population and get 23% of religious hate crimes

Awful

I'm very against Israel's actions, but not its existence, as the answer to the suffering of the Palestinian people is not to create an equivalent disaster for the Jewish people. Whether you believe Israel should be there or not, it is there and 7 million Jews live there and there is no safe, sane way to disestabilish it even if you wanted to. I

I believe in some kind of two-state solution with Israel in '67 borders and settlers cleared off land they are not entitled to. In some people's eyes this would make me an evil, ethno-supremacist Zionist, but in some Jew's eyes I'm a self-hating Jew anti-Zionist because I oppose their actions in Gaza and have attended marches.

I'm a lefty and concerned about the recent, and in my opinion antisemitic, rise in characterisation of Israel as 'Israelis are just white Europeans colonising brown people' - it's blantantly a play to make calls for Israel not to exist acceptable to guilty white liberals who are torn between opposing Israel's actions but acknowledge how the catastrophe of the Holocaust led to its foundation. And 40-50% of Israeli Jews are of Middle Eastern or North African descent and definitely not 'white colonists'.

Yes it’s interesting that to some people the concept of Jewish people being murdered in the U.K. is not the most horrifying party of this thread but that someone called another set of people NOT at risk in the UK, ‘sheep’

Yes and then you have people talking at cross purposes. A guy with the wrong definition and a ‘fuck Zionists’ sign who is told that most British Jews are zionists will then assume most British Jews support ethnic cleansing.

Even Al Jazeerah defines Zionism as:
" a nationalist, political ideology that called for the creation of a Jewish state, and now supports the continued existence of Israel as such a state."

Moreoever, 46.2% of Jewish people worldwide live in Israel.

So people proclaiming to be anti-Zionist is quite uncomfortable to hear.

Yes, before demonising Zionists it would probably be a good idea to check you all know what a Zionist is. That really should have happened 7 months ago.

People saying ‘I’m anti-Zionist’ should be aware that a lot of people saying it mean they don’t think Israel has the right to exist, where they probably assume it means ‘I don’t like the actions of the Israeli government’.

“By Zionist, I mean people who want the territorial expansion of the state of Israel (see the settlers in the West Bank and the eviction of the Bedouins)”

This is a straw man version of Zionism. The mainstream Zionist position held by most Israelis and indeed most Jews worldwide is belief in the right of the state of Israel to exist.

This attitude is exactly why progress into trying to eliminate any form of racism is slow.
Racism is based on ignorance and fear. Education is the only way. Trying to understand why someone is racist is vital. You are not born racist, you become one.

Sorry but totally disagree with you - these marches are EXACTLY why anti semitism is rising and attacks are increasing. Your refusal to accept the connection is a huge part of the problem;
Antisemitism is rising because people conflate Judaism with Zionism. You can be a Zionist and Jewish but you can also be Jewish without being a Zionist. By Zionist, I mean people who want the territorial expansion of the state of Israel (see the settlers in the West Bank and the eviction of the Bedouins).
Antisemitism is rising because people do not understand that the Israeli government is behaving the way they are, not because they are Jewish, but because they have an agenda.
Do I believe some marchers are antisemitic? Yes, without a doubt. All of them, no. I understand the anxiety of the Jewish community around the marches. I have been there when the EDL marches. My husband and I have been victims of open racism, some by the police.
You also make some very personal attacks on my character whilst you know nothing about me and my background. You also make a lot of baseless assumptions about me. Kindly, refrain from repeating this. It is uncalled for.

@Muthaofcats I think you misunderstand what a protest march is for. People don't tend to march just to show outrage (though sometimes they might), the strategic aim of a march is to put pressure on the state to change policy. Obviously, the UK state doesn't support Hamas, so marching against them wouldn't do anything.

I suggest proportionate defence would not involve killing tens of thousands in return (including thousands of children) and levelling a city. The Israelis did defend themselves quite ably from the initial Hamas attack, what they're doing now is just revenge slaughter. Their justification that wiping out Hamas would be an act of defense doesn't hold water when they have to create countless additional blood feud grievances to do it. No one expects the children who manage to survive this attack in Gaza to grow up with love in their hearts for Israel.

Where does all this end?

1. You can have the problem rumble on until the Palestinians are eliminated, their lands absorbed, the people exiled or murdered. This could take another 100 years or more.
2. A regional or world war happens and Israel is wiped out by neighbouring states. This seems unlikely now, but who knows what the world will look like in another few decades.
3. Some form of peace process (like that in Northern Ireland) with some kind of political settlement with agreed borders or political representation and an end to the violence. The people in power on both sides right now are belligerent, but in the next generation this could change. A peace summit managed to end the Second Intifada, after all.

People who are steadfastedly against a peaceful settlement are essentially saying that they would prefer that one side should eventually be wiped out by the other.

Sadly yes - oct 7th was a direct action against Israel and many of the activist seem to take the view that Israel should give way on all fronts. Israel was not the start of this conflict. As Israel is the only Jewish state there seems to be an increase in anti Jewish sentiments which is fuelled by the demonstrations

Do I personally think it’s proportionate? I don’t feel qualified to determine if Israel’s actions are proportionate. I will wait to see what the ICJ decides, having had access to all the evidence. (It’s very hard to know whether the sources we are all accessing are real; and there’s always an element of confirmation bias, particularly for those who use social media to inform themselves as we know algorithms just serve you more of what you like. )

So that point aside, sadly collateral damage is a fact of war; and it has been accepted by the ICJ that Israel DOES have a right to defend itself. So in that sense yes I do think Israel has a right to retaliate and sadly that does mean suffering of innocent citizens caught up in it.

What is highly unusual in this war is that you have a target which has deliberately embedded itself in society and uses its people as shields. It is further complicated by the fact that many of these people support Hamas and have a very different ideology to the western world. Extreme Islamism does not value life and death in the same way as you or I do, so they make a different assessment about the cause and dying for it. They do not seem to value their children’s lives in the same way. I see that Israel actually works hard to warn people ahead of strikes or work to deliver aid. Whether it’s enough, as I say, I really am not placed to judge.

What no one can ever answer is what proportionate defence WOULD look like to them? Or is the only acceptable outcome one where Israel does not seek to defend itself at all?

would the same outrage be felt for the Jewish babies who died as a result of Israel being attacked again and again ? I didn’t see western people marching in outrage on October 7th despite seeing the footage of children shot in their mothers arms and Holocaust survivors being murdered and broadcast on their own Facebook. The eerie silence said everything.

@Muthaofcats, I'm not justifying terrorism. Rape and murder are bad, almost everyone in the world agrees on this point. The conflict didn't begin on October 7th but even if it did, do you think killing tens of thousands of Palestinians, destroying a whole city, and displacing and attempting to starve millions is a proportionate relatiation?

@NotSoBigCrocodile The big difference between this situation and places like India was the British eventually left India. That's not possible in Israel (they have nowhere to go back to). In this respect it is more like the apartheid regime in South Africa.

I agree there is a religious element to it— regional support for Hamas is motivated along Islamic grounds and the whole situation feeds into antisemitic conspiracy theories shared by many fundamentalist groups including Hamas. But if you stripped out the religion, you'd still have a conflict due to the political violence. If someone kicked you out of your house and took it for themselves, you would hate them regardless of religion.

So let’s accept you have two groups who both claim to originate from the same land; and one that disagrees with the apportionment in recent modern history.

Lets even go as far as to ‘accept’ what you say about the treatment of Palestinians in Israel, are you saying any of this would justify the rape and murder of innocent people?

if Palestinian take issue with this, will they next come to rape and murder British children and grandmothers in response to their occupation of Palestine prior to giving it back to Jewish people (done let’s not forget in response to the fact that Jews had been cleansed from most other countries and not as an attack on Arabs who to this day only continue to grow in numbers and are ‘safe’ to live in many countries across the globe).

I just don’t see how even on your facts one can justify terrorism.

Looking at similar events in the 1940s, WW2 (1939 - 1945) displaced 60 million people, and the partition of India in 1947 displaced 15 million. Millions also died in both. There are, of course, many, many more examples. But it wasn’t uncommon for that time in history, and it was certainly not limited to Palestine.

The occupation of the West Bank is unfortunate, but it’s hardly surprising, is it. The odds of the West Bank becoming another Gaza are high. I mean, it would more than likely become another Gaza.

This could, and by all means should, have been historic. But in the same way that the events of 7 October are ignored and dismissed, so too is the religious fundamentalism
that drives the ongoing conflict.

100%

My view of the UN has for numerous reasons, including this, has been irrevocably damaged.

The people who lived there and had and have their home dispossessed are Palestinian, the region has been called Palestine for over two thousand years. Not what I'd call "fairly recent". The people living in the area didn't pop into existence when Mandatory Palestine was formed. Ben Gurion explicitly recognised that the land was occupied and for Israel to exist they had to kill and exile Palestinians. That process is ongoing to this day.

It's not just a historic injustice (and there are people alive today who went through the first Nakba, so it's not just 'great grandparents'): Gaza is an open-air prison, Palestinians living in Israel are second-class citizens, and the West Bank is occupied and continually settled upon by Israeli settlers who dispossess current inhabitants. None of this is a secret and is obvious to anyone who spends even a little bit of time looking into it.

Is this before or after we hold hands and sing songs?

Someone commented that they didn’t think inter faith work was of value in stopping situations like this. Which I disagree with, I don’t think it’s the whole solution, but I think it should play a part.

So I wondered what factors and events they thought lead up to this? I wanted to understand what they think might reduce the risk of attacks and potential attacks.

Not looking to place blame on anyone, we are all ultimately responsible for our own actions, looking at it from a logical perspective with regard to what people think would be helpful.

Thinking of Jewish communities that are feeling unsafe, it’s not a nice feeling.