Where are the British Jews?

Tomorrow evening, the Garden Cinema in Covent Gardens, London will be screening Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone – the controversial documentary that was pulled from the BBC recently.

When I wrote to my friend, asking if they will be protesting this, they wrote back to me saying they had no plans to protest for a number of reasons and added “we can’t stop these terrorists and their supporters, it’s a lost cause”.

How many Jews would it take to protest outside this small cinema? Make it clear to the world that Jews will not go quietly whilst blood libels are being spread in their own backyard? These dangerous lies have consequences for Anglo Jewry and they cannot sit back and do nothing. Where are the non Jewish allies, who stand with the community. For every Jew that attends, there should be 200 non Jews.

Shame on the leadership, not a word of action, no organised approach to tackling the issues. Do you think staying silent will win in the face of this vicious mob overtaking the country? There is a huge criticism of the Israeli government and its negligence, but where is the criticism of the UK community organisations and their negligence? These threats have been building up for more than a decade. Why was the UK so unprepared? Why is the legal system still unable to adequately protect the Jewish community?

To all my friends in the UK, all I can remind you is of the famous quote of Hillel. Ignore the negligent leadership organisations, instead each individual needs to ask himself;

If I am not for me, who will be for me? And when I am for myself alone, what am I? And if not now, then when?