Antisemitism….and all forms of racism

So imagine that Heaven forbid you and your kids are innocently caught up in an armed robbery and someone shoots your 10 year old son. As you wait at his bedside after he comes out of surgery, the news starts going round your family and friends, as well as the news media. Messages start pinging on your phone – “So sorry to hear the terrible news about Jamie….and of course remembering at this time all the children who died at Dunblane”; “Awful about Jamie – give him our love…..and lets of course just think about all the structural inequalities in society that lead people in to crime”. And so on. Of course, no one would be so insensitive, so crass, so downright unhinged. But somehow, if it’s antisemitic tragedy, this kind of “so sorry but let’s remember too” messaging is OK. So after two Jews were deliberately murdered for the crime of being Jews by a fanatic on the streets of Manchester we get messages such as this, albeit prefaced with a recognition of the impact on Jewish students and staff – “The University of Manchester stands as one against all forms of violence and hatred. We believe in freedom of speech and robust, respectful debate, but we will not tolerate antisemitism, Islamophobia, or other forms of racism, prejudice, abuse, or harassment.”

For Jews, what we felt on hearing about Heaton Park was a visceral shock of grief and fear. Other people might of course also feel shock, upset, dismay, but they don’t feel it in the same way because it wasn’t their brothers and sisters who were targeted and died. On a fundamental level, Jews feel “Oh my G-d that could have been me, it could have been my father, my brother, my uncle who died”. Jews feel it as an attack on their very being and identity. They feel it as Jews. They don’t feel it as some sort of universalised “intersectional” mixed-up gloop of generalized suffering. It wasn’t an attack on any other group. It was an attack on Jews, because they were Jews. So at that moment of shock and pain and grief, other forms of racism, prejudice or harassment, of other people, don’t come in to the picture. All they are is a distraction, an affront, an insult really, to the reality of our pain in that moment.

In Judaism, we are very careful with grief and mourning. In the book of Job, Job’s friends try to rationalize and explain his suffering. But they are rebuked for this and the lesson we draw as Jews is that there are no rationalizations for suffering. Indeed, based on the story of Job, the Rabbis recommend that the best way to comfort a mourner during the seven days of the Shivah is just to sit with them, in silence, waiting until they want to speak. There should be no explanations, rationalizations or comparisons – it’s just being there that counts. Of course the very worst thing you could do is to tell the mourners that other people are suffering too, or have it worse than them. Or even that they deserved it.

I think of course that most right thinking people understand this. People, at least if they have any sense, do not as a general rule try and rationalize or minimize the grief of others. Neither do people tell other people who have suffered national tragedies that they should forget about their grief, and start thinking about other disasters. Noone with an ounce of empathy told the people of Aberfan, or the families of the 7/7 victims, or the members of the community after the Finsbury Park Mosque murder, to think about others in the time of their grief.

The Jewish community in England is very, very small. A small, tight knit, but vulnerable minority. The murder of two Jews, and the attempted murder of many many more affects us all. So why then is it that so many people, and you only have to spend a bit of time on social media to realise that it is many people, think that “so sorry but let’s remember too” is an appropriate response to Jewish tragedy. Of course, I’m sure that the people who write these statements would come back and say that they are just standing up against intolerance in all its forms. Well, I can see this for what it really is – a rhetorical move. It may in some cases be fuelled by good intentions, just as naïve visitors to the mourner might say “it could be worse…”. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Yet all the HR professionals and other leaders who put together these statements are not naïve nor inexperienced. It is notable that the  “…and all forms of racism” formulation usually only goes one way. People rarely add “And antisemitism” in relation to events involving other groups. The need to qualify grief in this way only applies to Jews. Why? There are no easy answers, but the most obvious one, at least to me, is that Jewish grief just isn’t that important. In 2025 Jews are (of course falsely) perceived as too powerful, too well ensconced in English society, too successful, and so very much on the side of the “white ruling classes” to be deserving of the undiluted benefit of their own grief. The  grief of the Jew doesn’t fit the modern progressive narrative where it is only the downtrodden of the earth whose grief can really be seen as important. Thus recognizing the impact of antisemitism, even antisemitic murder, by itself doesn’t make sense, unless they also mention all the other racisms. They must feel this dissonance – the dissonance of the grieving Jew so so strongly that they can come to the mourner’s home and tell them “it could be worse”, or even that it was all their own fault because of events happening thousands of miles away. They can send a message to the Jews of Manchester that their grief isn’t even important enough to merit a clear sentence by itself. And not even realize that they are doing it.