Antisemitism spirals out of control in once ‘Great’ Britain

The photo features a child holding a sign with the flag of Palestine and the words ‘Save Our Children!’ Twitter

By Andrea Widburg

For a week now, I’ve been meaning to write about raging antisemitism in once “Great” Britain, but those plans keep being interrupted, whether by delightful days when content from our wonderful volunteer writers fills the site or by American news that deserves more immediate attention. But today’s a very sleepy Sunday, the last day in a long holiday weekend, so I can finally clear my browser.

Britain has long had an up-and-down relationship with Jews. Jews began immigrating to England from France after the Norman Conquest in 1066. They were welcomed then because they were the only ones who could lend money in a time when usury was forbidden to Christians. Monarchs desperately needed the liquidity Jews provided.

The medieval era, however, also gave rise to the “blood libel” slanders. These were horrible false accusations against Jews, such as accusing them of using the blood of Christian children to make their matzo (an unleavened cracker which has as its only ingredients flour and water). If a disease came to town (and this was long before the Black Death), Jews were accused of poisoning the wells, even as the diseases took them, too. Monarchs who couldn’t pay off their debts used these canards to encourage massacres. Their motto was, if the creditor is slaughtered, the debt is erased.

One of the worst anti-Jewish massacres of the medieval era occurred in 1190, in the cathedral town of York. Two Jewish York residents earned the citizens’ wrath by daring to attend Richard I’s coronation. When a fire broke out in the city, York’s residents used the fire as an excuse to attack the two Jews’ home. They succeeded in slaughtering one of the coronation attendees and everyone else in the house, but the other attendee managed to escape to York Castle. The rest of York’s Jews soon followed him.

Eventually, 20-40 families were holed up in the castle. When the mob attacked, the Jews realized that they could not survive the assault. Therefore, they copied the pattern set at Masada so many centuries before: They all committed suicide rather than be torn apart by the mob. It’s estimated that about 150 people died in all.

One hundred years later, King Edward I banished all of England’s Jews to get parliament to approve a tax for him. When Shakespeare wrote The Merchant of Venice at the end of the 16th century, which became the template for how the British viewed Jews—cruel, avaricious, dishonest—it is very possible that he’d never actually met a Jew.

Jews finally returned to England in 1655, when Oliver Cromwell invited them back in. This was consistent with the Puritan allegiance to the Old Testament.

Upon the Restoration of the British Monarchy in 1661, Jews were treated much as other Dissenters (that is, sects that were not part of the official Church of England). They could not hold public office, work in the government, attend university, etc. However, for the most part, while viewed with disdain as the other, the British left them alone. By the 19th century, a Jewish convert—Benjamin Disraeli—became one of Great Britain’s most successful Prime Ministers.

The Biblical affinity for seeing Jews in the homeland was so strong that, in 1917, the British government, which now controlled the Holy Land, promised to establish a “national home for the Jewish people.” Unfortunately, Britain’s second-tier bureaucrats disliked that idea.

This state of affairs was still the norm when I lived in England in the early 1980s: The British didn’t particularly like the Jews who lived in the UK, but they weren’t actively hostile to them either. That falls in with my philosophy, which says that you don’t have to like me, but you don’t get to kill me.

However, beginning decades ago with a massive influx of Muslims from across the Indian subcontinent, Africa, and the Middle East, and accelerating with the hard left turn in the British government, things have changed. The UK is now one of the most virulently antisemitic nations in the Western world. I’ll stop my analysis now and just leave you with a few recent stories out of the UK:

Sir Michael Ellis has written an excellent summary about the aggressive antisemitism that is overtaking every single British institution:

  • The National Health Service has a growing problem with (mostly Muslim) healthcare providers discriminating against and abusing Jewish patients.
  • The BBC is antisemitic in every aspect of its operations, whether in the news it reports or its behind-the-scenes shenanigans (including working with terrorists for anti-Israel war “documentaries).
  • The police routinely ban Jews from the streets when Muslims are out protesting, saying that the Jews create a hazard—when, in fact, they should be protecting the Jews from Muslim aggression.
  • Academia in the UK, as in America, is rife with antisemitism, both in the classrooms and on the campuses as a whole.
  • The government routinely attacks Jewish charities based on politically motivated complaints.
  • The courts impose de minimis sentences on violent pro-Palestinian activists engaged in manifestly illegal conduct.

 In other words, Britain has become a systemically antisemitic nation.

Speaking of the police, Melanie Phillips has written a superb essay about the West Midlands Police’s war on the Jews. It’s worth noting that these police operate in what is probably the most Muslim part of Britain, the area around Birmingham.

In Dublin, the city’s politicians are planning on renaming Herzog Park. That park was named after Chaim Herzog, who was born in Belfast and raised in Dublin before becoming Israel’s first president. That’s quite a trajectory for a native son, and something of which Dublin should be proud. But times change, and perhaps it’s not unreasonable for Dublin to rename the park after a Dubliner, whose fame lay in Dublin itself.

That, naturally, is not what the Dublin councilors are planning. Instead, in a deliberate antisemitic slap, they voted to rename the park “Free Palestine Park.” The Free Palestine cry is part of the “From the river to the sea” chant. The antisemites know that the river is the Jordan and the sea is the Mediterranean. The chant calls for the extermination of the Jewish people. Remarkably, there was enough of a backlash that they reversed themselves, but I fully expect them to try again.

Just yesterday, thousands of people marched through London, chanting in support of Gaza and attacking the London Christmas market (a now-common Muslim attack also seen in Brussels). And of course, they called for Israel’s end. As a sidenote, the police allowed this, even as they slapped down a farmers’ protest:

I’ll end with this excellent commentary from the Accidental Talmudist (actually, Salvador Litvak, who wrote and directed Guns & Moses), with his take on why people hate the Jews. I think he’s right. Not all Jews are saints (far from it), but we remind too many people of a moral code they’d prefer to forget.

Antisemitism spirals out of control in once ‘Great’ Britain – American Thinker