This morning, two Jewish men were stabbed in Golders Green, north London. The two – one in his seventies and the other in his thirties – have been taken to hospital following the attack. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has issued a statement of his ‘concern.’

Two Jews were stabbed, and the Prime Minister is ‘concerned.’ When will the Prime Minister be concerned enough to act?

This is far from a unique incident: in Slough, a man on a bicycle passed a visibly Jewish man at work (who gave his name only as Moshe), clocked his kippah, and decided – in broad daylight – that he deserved to be threatened, hit, called a ‘dirty motherfucking Jew,’ and accused of killing babies. And he is not a terrorist; he is not part of a cell. This is a man on a bicycle on a Tuesday.

Last month, four ambulances belonging to Hatzolah, a Jewish charity that aids both Jew and gentile alike, were set alight in north London; two weeks ago, two people dressed in balaclavas threw a brick and petrol bombs at a synagogue; a few days later a fire was set next to the former offices of a Jewish educational charity that had not yet removed the Star of David from its window; the memorial wall for the victims of the brutal massacres of 7 October were set alight the night before today’s stabbing; – not to mention the Heaton Park Synagogue attacks that murdered two Jews on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. Melvin Cravitz, 66, and Adrian Daulby, 53; dead on the steps of their synagogue.

And all the government can offer is words.

Concern is what politicians express when they wish to appear engaged without accepting responsibility. I, for one, am more than concerned that two people can be stabbed in broad daylight in a country with one of the world’s greatest living standards, and the Prime Minister cannot see fit to call it out.

Sadiq Khan promised high-visibility patrols – the right words are always found. But note what the Chief Rabbi said after the murders at Heaton Park: that this was ‘the day we hoped would never come, but which deep down, we knew would come.’ The day has come; the Jewish community has been waiting for years and has been ignored. So the question is not whether the government can produce the correct statement; it is what happened in the months between Yom Kippur in Manchester and this morning on Golders Green Road?

There is this refrain among politicians today of ‘never again.’ In case they have not noticed, it never seems to keep happening, again and again. Little has changed; little was done. The results are now visible in the blood.

Ministers have had eighteen months of warnings. They have watched Jewish schools increase security, synagogues harden entrances, families reconsider where they walk and what they wear as Jews are violently attacked on the streets. Every British minister ought to feel utterly humiliated at the fact that many British Jews would say they feel safer in Israel, a country living under drone and missile threat, than they do walking through parts of London in a kippah. And the state still behaves as though each attack is sudden and isolated. It is not.

Take the example of Hatzolah. It has 61 unpaid volunteers. They respond to cardiac arrests and road accidents. They treat whoever is in need, Jew and gentile alike – Jewish, Muslim, Christian, none of the above. Their ambulances are not symbols of Zionism; they are ambulances. And someone set four of them on fire. If you want to know what antisemitism actually is, it is this: burning the ambulances that come when your neighbour’s heart stops.

Now, in the wake of the ambulance arson, infamous self-hating Jew Zack Polanski, the leader of the Green Party, was asked by a journalist about the wave of attacks and the sensations of unsafety and fear British Jews were feeling. These are his words: there is a ‘conversation to be had [among British Jews] whether it’s a perception of unsafety or whether it’s actual unsafety.’

Four ambulances are now ash. Two worshippers are dead in Manchester. Petrol bombs are being thrown through synagogue windows. Two Jews are stabbed for the crime of being Jewish. And the leader of a British political party wants to have a conversation about whether the fear is real. Ask the question directly: would he say this about any other minority? If mosques were being firebombed, if Muslim men were being stabbed at bus stops because of their clothing? The reader knows the answer. So do you. So does he.

Government exists first to preserve order and protect its citizens. When a minority repeatedly faces targeted violence, and ministers answer with statements rather than strategy, the state is little more than decorative.

Antisemitic hate crimes have been rising in Britain since 7 October 2023. The government funded security measures, but security guards and CCTV cameras around synagogues and Jewish areas do not change a culture. They only manage a threat, and managing a threat is far from the same as confronting it. The question this government has failed to answer, even failed to ask clearly, is where this hatred is coming from, and who is cultivating it. The Islamist mosques preaching that Jews are treacherous; the university campuses where Jewish students have been made to feel unwelcome for decades, long before the war against Hamas in Gaza; the political parties in which describing Jews as an abomination does not lead to a resignation.

And the government is ‘concerned.’

Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby knew it was real. The men in Golders Green this morning knew it was real. Moshe knows it is real. The only people still having the conversation are the ones who have decided, for reasons of their own, that Jewish lives are the exception to every rule they claim to believe in, and they are the ones in power. Their uncertainty has become the public’s danger.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)