The UK Needs Action on Antisemitism, Not Just Words
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley, left, with Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis as they visit Golders Green in London after two people were stabbed.
Photographer: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images
If Britain’s terrorism watchdog, Jonathan Hall, is right that antisemitism is “the biggest national emergency since Covid,” then the government has been slow to acknowledge the threat. Following Wednesday’s knife attack on two Jewish men in London’s Golders Green, Prime Minister Keir Starmer asked the country to “open its eyes to Jewish pain.” Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis rightly responded that “words of condemnation are no longer sufficient.”
Practical measures to tackle the cause of the increase in violence can and must be taken with immediate effect. The wider upsurge of antisemitism around the world, however, poses a far more complex challenge.