We’re sending our solidarity and support to Jewish communities after a frightening series of targeted antisemitic attacks. Jewish people, like everyone else, have the right to safety and belonging where they worship, work and live.

There is far too much presentism in the antisemitism conversation, too many claims that ‘Oct 7 changed everything’. The notion that there has been a big rise in antisemtism is around 20 years old. In 2007 Channel 4 Broadcast The War on Britain’s Jews, a documentary by Richard Littlejohn.

It seems Starmer's whole defence is that the civil service conspired to not tell him things, as if they were plotting against him. Can't see this going well....

Poacher turns gamekeeper. What a shonde for the JC to give fascist Farage a column. www.thejc.com/opinion/jews...

This is a sobering read but what it reiterates to me is the unwiseness of combining a large range of diverse phenomena under the term ‘antisemitism’. It makes it all but impossible to deal with any of them. Much better to consider them separately and specifically. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

No idea of the accuracy of this but it sounds quite plausible. And if correct has nothing to do with a generalised ‘rise in antisemitism’ in society. observer.co.uk/news/nationa...

Continuing my interest in cases of overlooked historic antisemitism, when Anne Widdecombe accused Michael Howard of ‘having something of the night about him’ in 1997 it was blatantly antisemitic. But everyone, including the Jewish press, was like ‘nothing to see here, move on please’.

Best not to jump to conclusions about motives. But IF this is motivated by Israel then 1) it’s utterly misplaced - diaspora Jews have no power over the Israeli gvt 2) it’s highly counterproductive - bolstering the most fearful and reactionary attitudes in the community www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Chutzpah.

A Yom Hashoah reflection from a religious anti-Zionist perspective yaaqovshenkin.substack.com/p/world-war-...

7 year old: how long does it take people to convert to Judaism? Me: maybe 2-3 years? 7 year old: well it takes 10 years to become a sushi chef.

Brilliant and compelling essay by @deborahfeldman.bsky.social blnreview.de/en/ausgaben/...

"The Holocaust proved the Bund was wrong" is both disgusting victim blaming and incredibly stupid. Hundreds of thousands of Zionists perished in the Holocaust. Does it prove Zionism was wrong? No Jewish ideology/social movement was able to come up with a plan to survive the Nazi genocide.

Kanye is right-wing so she doesn’t see him as a threat

Absurd views aside, the most famous British Jewish historian is surprisingly incurious about British-Jewish history. He jumps from his schooldays to the present, as if there were no intermediate steps. My findings are that communal security took off in the 1980s www.timesofisrael.com/historian-si...

Zionism continuing its war against the Jewish diaspora www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/202...

What is this from Melvin Benn who booked Kanye West

Good piece

As the Seder ritual is around 2000 years old and the Zionist movement was formed in the 1890s, Passover Seders are neither intrinsically Zionist nor anti-Zionist. More relevantly, they are profoundly against slavery and oppression and in favour of liberation, for everyone. Gut Moed, Gut Shabbes.

So Good Friday is the Christian Yom Kippur yes?

Wishing all who celebrate a zisn Peysakh, a happy Passover. My all Pharaohs fall and all oppressed peoples go free. This Pesach reader from Halachic Left is truly liberatory drive.google.com/file/d/1MfyP...

Brave and necessary piece www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

It bears repeating, but: the idea that the Green Party or the left in general is a kind of Islamic/Bolshevik conspiracy to undermine and destroy the Reich has a very specific historic pedigree, and it’s not one that anyone should be politely accepting as a suitable point for debate.

Great to see another Jewish socialist get elected, as Avi Lewis (husband of Naomi Klein) wins the leadership of Canada’s NDP. Feel like this calls for a Lechayim. Perhaps even a Shehecheyanu?

Any conversation about apparent antisemitism in the Green Party must recognise that Labour’s ‘procedural anti-racism’ of 2015-2021, which demanded members be expelled at the merest hint of an trope, was an absolute failure and did nothing to reduce racism in society. It’s not a model to follow.

It's worth saying exactly why false flag claims are often problematic. It's not wrong to assert that one specific case in which nobody was hurt could have been carried out by Israeli agencies, in order to further geopolitical goals. It's different to claim this about every attack on Jews 1/

My piece on the Golders Green arson attack in which I give some little-known historical context from the 1960s, lay out all the possible groups who could have carried out this attack and suggest that simply calling it antisemitic is not analytically meaningful. www.toratalbion.org.uk/the-fire-of-...

I've written a piece about the Golders Green arson attack, with some historical context. I suggest we should pause to find out who was behind it before proposing solutions. www.toratalbion.org.uk/the-fire-of-...

Cllr Andrée Frieze - - Assigns much power to a hyphen.

This is one reason why British Jews and Muslims must show solidarity between one another: fascists want to kill us both, while the state sees the concept of Jews as a convenient tool to suppress Muslims (while politicians hate us both). But we have far more in common with each other than with them

In this video John Mann (not Jewish) implies that anti-Zionist Jews only hold their views in a vain attempt to gain protection from antisemitism. Alongside the Islamophobic nonsense, this is a vile thing to say. He can fuck right off. m.youtube.com/watch?v=vJiI...

If you think that Jewish people living in certain ares of London and having their own communal services constitutes Zionism then your brain may have been fried, probably by social media algorithms

Hatzola is one of the least Israel-connected institutions in the British Jewish community. It’s literally a local community service for Orthodox Jews. So I doubt that this attack has anything to do with Israel. But let’s see what evidence emerges. And any false flag claims are total nonsense.

My grandfather worked at a Jewish restaurant in Golders Green for twenty years. When he was taken ill at work one day, this ambulance service rushed him to hospital. This is such a cowardly, immoral, hateful act.

We need to see who is responsible for the horrific arson attack in Golders Green before we analyse it. It could be Christian fascist / white supremacist, IS or affiliated groups or Palestine-related/ anti-Zionist. While it is certainly an antisemitic attack, that label is insufficiently precise.

Horrified by the antisemitic attack in our city. Antisemitism is vile and has no place here. Solidarity with the Jewish community in Golders Green - and with our communities across the country who will be feeling this today.

Good editorial from @jewishnews.bsky.social - and one that earlier generations of British Jewish leaders wouldn't have written, as they attempted to practice Judaism privately, following Yehuda Leib Gordon's maxim of 'Be a man in the streets and a Jew at home'. www.jewishnews.co.uk/voice-of-the...

Are the politicians who think religion in public places is ‘un-British’ aware of the very long history of Passion Plays?

I look forward to Kemi visiting each orthodox synagogue and lecturing the participants over male and female separation and “British values” over the mechitzah

Do not be surprised when a person is both an antisemite and an Islamophobe. Let it be the start of a new Jewish-Muslim coalition against fascism.

At least Edward Heath sacked Enoch Powell from the shadow cabinet for his Rivers of Blood speech. Nick Timothy remains a shadow cabinet member after his 'Muslim prayer in Trafalgar Square' outburst, because Kemi Badenoch shares his conspiratorial Islamophobia.

Wait till Nick hears about the Aleynu. (Also he has a record of antisemitism as well as Islamophobia, doing Soros tropes and co-writing May’s Citizens of Nowhere Speech)

This is supposed to make us safer? Stop treating diaspora Jewish communities as satellites of the Israeli state www.thejc.com/news/mossad-...

It’s not just that Badenoch is Islamophobic. It’s that she routinely presents Islam as a threat to society, in exactly the the same language used by the antisemitic movements of 1879-1945.

Brilliant. Happy St Patrick's Day all.

On the one hand I have lots of work and family responsibilities I should be getting on with, on the other hand I really want to write a piece on yesterday's UJS report entitled The Union of Dubious Statistics.

The Union of Jewish Students survey has a headline finding that 20% of students would not want to houseshare with a Jewish student. This is the actual question, which is seriously leading, prompting students to consider the geopolitics, and this emphasises the challenges of such a share.

Good piece, true in the UK too forward.com/opinion/8123...

In the last several months & maybe longer, Susan Abulhawa has steadily adopted the framing & terminology of the fascist anti-Zionist Right. It's been sad to see. Elon Musk's algorithms can fry anyone's brain if they're not careful. But nobody benefits from downplaying this