What are your red lines?

Human beings are very good at deceiving themselves. The brain is incredibly good at rationalizing and clever people are even better at doing it than most. That is how you end up with scenarios such as we have witnessed these past two years, with top government and senior security officials ignoring the obvious build up of Israel’s enemies in the North and the South of the country (which even I, a nobody immigrant saw coming a month beforehand). It is also how, you end up with university heads and PhD holders, supporting antisemitic protests across the Western world.

But we are all guilty of it in our day to day lives also, whether it is messaging on our mobile phones whilst driving or justifying the antisemitism that has infected Western societies as nothing to worry about.

I also believe that leaders of the Jewish community are also culpable here, just as in the Holocaust we tragically learn of the community leaders, specifically in the religious world, that could have saved whole communities had they shown the correct leadership and got people to escape on time. I was amazed to hear this week that a Chareidi Rav in London, at the end of his Tu b’Shvat shiur, turned to the participants and chastised them, saying it is time to go! Jews in the UK need to get to Israel – to the shock of many of the participants in the room. Let that be a Tikkun then for sins past. Very little is heard from British Anglo Jewry leadership in terms of preparing the community for Aliyah as a possible solution. If was in a leadership position, I would be making plans, finding backers for a British house for British lone soldiers or girls doing national service. A safe space for young British Jews to get on their feet in Israel for little or very low costs.

That is why, especially on the antisemitism issue, I believe individuals must write up and concretize exactly what their red lines on antisemitism are. As a couple, as a family, there should be little doubt of what those lines look like. Otherwise, you run the risk of the man in the boat not calling for help and relying on God, until it is too late.

Now let me make clear. We are not talking about 1930’s Germany and we are not talking about the Russian pogroms of the 1880’s. I also don’t envision, in the current mutation of antisemitism disguised as Human Rights, the gross violence being turned against Jewish people as a policy. [Please God, this should remain true.] Nonetheless, if your red line, IS waiting for that moment that they start beating and killing Jews in the street. Let me just tell you outright, you don’t fight today’s battles based on yesterday’s wars! The processes in place now in the West, are much more subtle but no less dangerous!

A recent incident, actually got me thinking about whether a red line has actually been crossed and whether this is sufficiently appreciated by Jews in Britain. The cases were the Bristol Elbit Systems break in case, that saw the acquittal of the defendants – who clearly on video evidence alone were very guilty of serious crimes including the assault and injury of a policeman.

As Amine Ayoub argues: The most striking part of the case was the acceptance of the “necessity” defense. Historically, this argument is meant for extreme, immediate danger – not political protest. Expanding it to cover ideological activism stretches the concept into uncertain territory. It opens the door to future defendants arguing that almost any illegal act was justified by a larger moral cause. Once that door opens, it is hard to close.

The Bristol case may not have been intended as a landmark. But it risks becoming one. If activists believe they can avoid punishment by framing vandalism as a stand against Israel, more such incidents may follow. And if that happens, the precedent will be clear: the law can be bent when the target is politically unpopular.

Once the law, is no longer able to protect the Jewish community. Worse than this, once the law can be used to justify on moral grounds, attacking the Jewish community, for example holding a Yom Haazmaut celebration in a synagogue. Surely this is a red line that there is no going back on.

Whether you agree with me or not, my advice to friends and family in the UK is:

1. Work out seriously where you would go. It might be Israel, it might be somewhere else. But you need to have researched, thought and considered this seriously in all aspects to know what you might do.
2. Write up as a family, your red lines. I made Aliyah in 2017, it was clear to me at that time, that the antisemitism fiasco with Jeremy Corbyn was unprecedented and for certain represented a red line for me. Define your red lines today, write them down, put them in an envelope, tell your kids what they are and when those lines are crossed, you will know what needs to be done.
3. Don’t run away from antisemitism. If you are there and you see it around you, now is the time to fight. Find your way to fight back, every week do something that shows you and your kids that you are fighting back.