Thread by @NudderingNudnik

Long thread on where #LabourAntisemitism ends.

Today my wife and I went to shul (that’s what we call synagogue – using the Yiddish word). Our shul has a very small but committed & friendly congregation & is in a city with a tiny Jewish population.

The once vibrant Jewish community in that city has long since departed, leaving us with a beautiful, unusual but often almost empty 19th century synagogue.

When we arrive for services we are always greeted by a policeman.

The synagogue & congregation have suffered threats and worse in the past so the police presence is welcome. We are thankful to the police for their care & they are fine & firm friends of the synagogue.
But today when we arrived (minutes late) we were greeted by 4 police officers.

As we took our seats & found our place in the prayer book I wondered why 4? Perhaps it was aimed at widening knowledge of our tiny community amongst the force?

After the service we held the kiddush (a light lunch prepared by volunteers for the congregation to enjoy together).

I asked someone whether the 4 police officers who joined us today and who were also enjoying the food with us - and even trying the soup with kneidlach (matzo meal dumplings) - were on a social visit?

I knew of course that was unlikely.

So I wasn’t surprised when I was told that there were 4 police officers today because the shul had received a credible threat to harm the building and the congregation.

The harm was threatened in the name of the Palestinian people.

So after my week was punctuated by reporting anti Jewish racism from Labour members, candidates & councilors – all this racism in the name of “solidarity with the Palestinian people” – I found the place where my wife & I go to find Jewish communal life & to enjoy quiet meditation

& sometimes also matzo meal dumplings was not quite the refuge it usually is.
Our refuge (and us) were under threat of harm from the same obsession and hatred that has brought the Labour Party down into the sewer of institutional political racism.

Yes, the threat has always been there but the threat was escalated and explicit today.

Those who propagate anti-Jewish racism via the instrument of their pathological obsession with “Palestine” will not recognize their connection with my experience today.

Some of them may perhaps describe this thread as more “smears & lies” invented by Jews to attack Jeremy Corbyn & Labour. Others will not say that, but will quietly wonder at my motives.

They would (the vast majority of them) never dream of threatening violent harm to a Jewish place of worship & the Jews who attend it. Therefore, they will argue, they have no responsibility for the actions of an extreme & violent individual or group.

But they are responsible. They are part of the building wave of obsession & hate. They share the same beliefs & spread the same lies, half-truths & distortions of history.

The “Palestine” obsessed Left – today’s Labour Party – will continue until the inevitable happens.

Hate begets violence (this already happens to Jews) and violence will eventually begat an act of mass violence against British Jews.

And then the voices of the Left & the Labour Party will be raised in condemnation, bathed in the glow of their righteous innocence.

But really - in reality - the Left will in fact be bathed in the blood of British Jews.

Ends