This Government Must Repent: Dead Jews Aren’t the Price
Dead Jews should not be the price of belonging. And yet, time and again throughout history, it is only in our mourning that the world embraces us.
This evening, as I switched my phone back on after Yom Kippur, together with hundreds of others, I discovered the horror. A terror attack here in the UK, on the holiest day of the Jewish year. The numbness was immediate. Silence felt like the only possible response: the silence of shock, of disbelief, of grief too deep for words. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families who have lost loved ones, with those who are wounded, and with all whose lives have been shattered.
But silence cannot last forever. At some point, words must be spoken. For this was not only an attack on individuals, not only on Jews, but on the very fabric of British life. It has revealed, in blood, what many of us have felt for some time: that the atmosphere in this country has grown increasingly hostile, and that Jews are being placed in danger by a culture that allows Zionism to be maligned and Jewish loyalty to be questioned.
Why is it that we hear warm words and promises of a hug for the Jewish community when Jews die, but not when Jews stand up for their homeland of 3,000 years? Why is sympathy granted to Jewish death, but suspicion cast upon Jewish life? This is not compassion. It is an abdication of moral responsibility.
Let us be clear. Zionism is not racism. It is the simple belief that the Jewish people, like every people, has the right to a homeland. To delegitimize that belief is to delegitimize Jewish identity itself. For decades, British Jews have lived with a dual loyalty that is no contradiction. We have been proud Britons and proud Jews, rooted in this country while bound to the destiny of Israel. Yet the rhetoric of our public culture, too often fueled by cowardice, political expedience and appeasement, seeks to drive a wedge between these two truths. And in that wedge, hatred festers.
Leadership must mean more than offering condolences after tragedy. It must mean standing with Jewish communities in life, not only in death. It must mean drawing a clear line between legitimate political debate and the demonization of Jewish identity. And it must mean having the courage to stand up to Islamist fundamentalism and the poisonous narrative it has spread about Israel and the Jews.
If this government allows chants of “Globalize the Intifada” to echo through our streets week after week, then this is the inevitable outcome. If hatred is given a megaphone, violence will always follow.
Yom Kippur is a day of Teshuva, of repentance, reflection and new beginnings. That is the call of this moment. This government of Britain must repent. Its left-wing agenda, and the left-wing media that has followed suit, have created this environment. They have allowed a culture of hostility towards Jews and towards Zionism to spread unchecked. Their silence when they should have spoken has put lives at risk. Their words when they should have defended truth have emboldened hatred.
Teshuva teaches us that mistakes can be rectified, but only if there is honesty, courage and speed. This government must repent, and it must do so now. Repentance means not being afraid to stand up to Islamist fundamentalism and the narrative it has fostered about Israel and about the Jews. Anything less will leave us condemned to repeat this cycle of silence, sympathy in death, and abandonment in life.
May the memory of those we have lost be for a blessing. May the wounded find healing. And may this moment of horror lead to something redemptive: a Britain where Jews do not need to die in order to belong, but can live proudly as Jews and proudly as Britons, without fear and without apology.
