We Should Welcome Our Allies In The UK

In 1936, Cable Street in the very heart of London’s Jewish East End, saw a remarkable coming together. With Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists preparing to provocatively march through the area, thousands of (mainly working class) non-Jews chose to stand alongside the threatened Jewish community. On the day of the planned march, and with Mosley also having the support of the Metropolitan Police including officers on horseback, the Jews and their anti-fascist friends were to hold firm under a credo of No Pasaran – literally ‘They shall not pass!’- and following some brutally bloody scuffles, the march was successfully thwarted.

Fast forward nearly 90 years and Britain’s Jews are again under threat. The ugliest displays of antisemitic hatred in this country for decades, are today coming largely from Islamists and their supporters who overtly decry the State of Israel and its policies. On closer inspection however, they are found to harbor a hatred of Jews, a hatred that tragically claimed two Jewish lives in Manchester’s Yom Kippur terrorist attack.

The capital’s Jewish population has now largely migrated from the East End. But if, heaven forbid, these modern Jew-haters were to march against us today in say, the leafy suburbs of north west London or the orthodox enclaves of Stamford Hill, would we attract a similar response as in 1936, with the nation’s noble working-class gentiles rallying to stand alongside us? I would like to answer that question with an emphatic ‘Yes’. Our conduct as a community however makes that answer less certain than it should be.

Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, popularly known as Tommy Robinson, is a divisive figure in British and communal politics. A man with a checkered past, he is both lionized and loathed in the UK, with major political parties together with the UK’s Jewish communal bodies shunning any association with him whatsoever.

What is clear however is that irrespective of anyone’s personal opinion of the man, Robinson is a totemic figure in his campaigning against the spread of Islamism in the UK.

At the invitation of the Israeli Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, Robinson has spent the last week touring Israel. When he spoke this weekend at a sold-out rally in Tel Aviv, he received a standing ovation.

Many Israelis have told me they are puzzled at the official British stance towards Robinson. They are not alone. Many British Jews also support him, but such is the pressure of political correctness and fear of stigma that has been fomented amongst British Jews, largely by the UK’s mainstream Jewish media, that they are too afraid to voice their opinions openly.

I attended both Robinson’s Unite The Kingdom rally in early September, and then the Palestine Solidarity Campaign rally earlier this month. At both central London rallies I proudly carried the Israeli flag. While both marches drew supporters in their hundreds of thousands, at the September event the spirit amongst the crowd was safe, warm and inclusive and I frequently found myself receiving friendly greetings from complete strangers, nearly all non-Jewish, who expressed their support for Israel, some in tears. At the PSC hate march however I needed police protection for my own safety. Draw your own conclusions.

Robinson’s past may be flawed, but he nonetheless inspires millions of Islamist-sceptic followers who are not the knuckle-dragging thugs that much of the media may suggest. Rather, they appear to be citizens, and of all backgrounds and races, who are fearful at the ongoing decline of the UK and the West and who appreciate the battle that Israel is waging against a common enemy. Those millions may not know it, but they are taking to heart the words of the UK’s Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks z”l who in 2014 wrote: “The hate that begins with Jews never ends with Jews”.

Before being quick to condemn, we should reflect and remind ourselves that it will be from those same millions that our supporters and friends will rally to our side, should a latter-day Battle of Cable Street ever be repeated. The message is clear: We should not shun such allies, we should welcome them.