Transcript

Arielle Angel 00:10

Hello, and welcome back to On the Nose, the Jewish Currents podcast. I’m Arielle Angel, your host, and I’m the editor at large of Jewish Currents. So, today we’re going to be talking about what’s been going on in the U.K. There’s been a spate of attacks: Firebombing of synagogues, of Hatzalah ambulances, a Jewish ambulance service, and more recently, stabbing attacks, first on a Muslim man, but then on two Jews in Golders Green, a Jewish neighborhood in London. This has all been the backdrop to a local election cycle, where both the Conservative Reform Party and the Green Party, led by a leftist Jew, Zack Polanski, picked up considerable seats. And so, we’re going to be talking about what is happening in the U.K. What do we make of these antisemitic attacks, and how are they being played out within the political ecosystem? To do that, I have two guests. Brendan McGeever, co-director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism at Birkbeck, at the University of London. Brendan, thank you for joining us.

Brendan McGeever 01:17

Thank you for having me.

AA 01:18

And Em Hilton, Jewish organizer and strategist, and co-founder of Na’amod: U.K. Jews Against Israeli Occupation and Apartheid. Hi Em, thanks for being here.

Em Hilton 01:28

Hi, thanks so much for having me.

AA 01:30

So, Brendan, I’m going to start with you. My colleague, Josh Nathan-Kazis, interviewed you a few days ago for the newsletter. If you’re not already subscribing to our newsletter, you should. It’s really good. But Brendan was in its pages a few days ago, saying that these attacks have been extraordinary. I know we’re also talking about—I should also mention that there was a synagogue attack on Yom Kippur in Manchester, in October 2025, that killed two people and injured three people. Kind of a combination ramming, stabbing attack. And so, I know that U.K. Jews are on edge, and it feels like something is different, that this is new. And as I said, you called these attacks extraordinary, out of the ordinary. I think you are asking the question of whether it does denote a rise in antisemitism or not. Like, how do we actually understand what’s with these attacks? So, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what is new here: What do we know about these attacks? How do they relate to this catch-all term of rising antisemitism?

BM 02:36

Sure. I think that’s a really important place to start. It might be helpful for your listeners—I’m thinking, especially here, of those who are not in the U.K.—it might be helpful for your listeners to know just what the British Jewish population is like, in terms of the absolute basics. So, there are roughly 300,000 Jews in Britain today, and they comprise around 0.5% of the population. So, this is a considerably smaller Jewish community than the one that we find in the U.S.A. And exactly as you say, these incidents have caused real fear and alarm among British Jews. And actually, that’s not new. The fear and alarm are not new. I mean, we know from research in this area that Jewish fears about antisemitism in Britain have indeed been growing for several years. So, there was a report by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, the JPR—and we might be coming back to them again, perhaps in the course of our discussion—but they indicated recently that as many as 47% of British Jews view antisemitism as, quote, “a very big problem.” Back in 2012, that figure stood at just 11%. So, clearly something has been developing over the last decade, decade and a half. 

BM 03:52

But what is it that we’re talking about when we talk about antisemitism? As a scholar of antisemitism, I would like to make the case for caution and precision. There are different ways of rendering the object—antisemitism—when we make claims about it. There are different ways of measuring it. So, some measures suggest that it’s rising, and others suggest that it’s flatlining or in decline. The data available to us doesn’t add up to a single clear picture. But let’s take the most recent attacks on Jewish people and property. They’re both new and extraordinary, and as I said to your colleague in the newsletter of Jewish Currents a few days ago, they are out of the ordinary. This is not what everyday antisemitism looks and feels like in Britain. The attack in Manchester at the synagogue last October was the most deadly in modern-day British history. There’s been a rise in the number and frequency of these extraordinary attacks, and it’s this that has given rise to the considerable alarm that many Jews are feeling and living with right now. 

BM 04:57

Which raises the question: Where is this coming from? What is ultimately the source of this? Is the source to be found in what we at Birkbeck call the reservoir of antisemitism that exists within Britain? Or alternatively, is this about a foreign state coordinating domestic attacks on British Jews as part of a hybrid war? As we hold this conversation now, we don’t know the answer to that question, but it’s important to note that both the police and the government are currently investigating and pursuing the line that this is, indeed, part of a hybrid war, in which proxies are being bought to carry out attacks on British Jews.

AA 05:36

Just to be clear, I’ve read a report in the Guardian, in the New York Times, that Iran is essentially recruiting young people to carry out these attacks as a way of destabilizing and showing that there will be consequences for the aggression against Iran.

BM 05:52

That’s right. These attacks—and there’s been several others in Europe—have been claimed by the Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia, the HAYI. And again, we don’t know for certain whether that organization is responsible for them, but that is what’s currently being investigated. If it turns out that that is the case, then the source of these recent attacks would not appear to be societal antisemitism. And this is actually at odds with the picture that’s being depicted to us by senior politicians and by leading figures and Jewish legacy organizations. The picture that they give us there is that antisemitism in Britain is rising exponentially. But as I said a moment ago, there are different ways of measuring antisemitism, and not all measures add up to a clear picture. Incidents suggest that it’s rising dramatically, but then, if we turn to societal attitudes—that is, if we ask non-Jewish people in Britain what they think about Jews, and actually, there are several surveys that do this—we find that antisemitic attitudes are either flatlining and, in some cases, in decline in Britain. And there’s some polling on this that’s been conducted by YouGov, which over the last decade shows antisemitic stereotypes—the number of people in Britain that subscribe to those has fallen over the last decade. So, we have this incomplete picture of antisemitism. There’s certainly rising Jewish fears. There’s a rise in recorded incidents. Other measures depict a very, very different picture. And of course, we also have the political disagreement about how to recognize, let alone respond to antisemitism.

AA 07:29

Em, do you want to respond to some of that?

EH 07:31

Yeah. So, thank you so much, Arielle, for having me on. And thank you, Brendan, for that very clear overview. I think the things I would respond to, particularly, I think, is how we assess this is a very important question. It is also just true that I think a lot of Jewish people in this country at the moment are feeling a lot of insecurity and vulnerability, and there are real questions about whether gathering in Jewish spaces is actually safe to do. This is a very small community. I know one of the rabbis at one of the synagogues where there was an attempted firebombing. Like, this feels very close to home. I think holding that, alongside two, I think, important points about the reality of political life in the U.K. right now—we are seeing these antisemitic, anti-Jewish violence and attacks happening alongside a broader political picture, in which the safety and well-being of minority communities in general has been, from my experience of living here, like at a pretty low point. We’re also seeing rising Islamophobia, rising hostility and racism toward migrants, toward asylum seekers, attacks on trans people. 

EH 08:35

This is, really, all part of a broader far-right political ascension and a polarization,   extremism, actually fueled also by, I would say, a center-left Labour government, who, instead of trying to put forward actual political policies that can meaningfully address the many, many economic and social challenges that this country faces, fuels culture wars. I think that’s been particularly overt in the response to these attacks from the government, where we are seeing even potentially well-meaning attempts to try to address the anti-Jewish violence being immediately politicized by those in power and those wanting to get power, whether that be Starmer’s government—assuming, at time of publication, that Starmer will still be in government_the rising Reform U.K. politicians, who are very clearly using this to attack Muslim communities, to suggest that higher education is not safe for Jewish people, very much straight out of the far-right playbook, but also this attempt to really flatten or conflate the struggle against antisemitism as one of a state project of repression. 

EH 09:39

That is really, really concerning, particularly because these attacks, as far as we know, have no basis in the pro-Palestine marches in this country, which have been very, very strong, very well attended, hundreds of thousands of people marching in the streets, initially weekly, then monthly. But they have been blamed for these attacks by many mainstream legacy Jewish institutions, by many politicians. Immediately, the day after these attacks, you had Conservative politicians, Reform politicians on the television, saying these marches need to be banned. You had the leader of the Conservative Party saying that these marches need to be banned—the Conservatives being the other main political party in the U.K. for now. And so, really, this conflation, I think, is both very reflective of a political reality in the U.K. right now, but also incredibly dangerous for our ability to actually understand these attacks. I think what was very pertinent to what Brendan said is that I think one of the things that’s causing so much chaos and anxiety is that we actually don’t really know what’s happening here with these. We don’t actually fully know what is causing this. Is it foreign hybrid war attacks? Is this a result of a rise in antisemitism because people assume that Jewish people support Israel, for example? Is this about a reservoir of antisemitism coming to life? Is it all three? But I think that our inability to really separate these things out and analyze them is being crushed by the attempts by these politicians to make political meals out of this. That is very dangerous for Jewish people,s and what we really need to be focusing on, in trying to address and make sure that we don’t have this being used as another opportunity to silo Jewish people out from other communities, who are experiencing similar threats.

AA 11:13

Yeah, I saw, as I was preparing for this, just a short clip of a Green Party activist on some British show—I think his name was Ashok Kumar—with Julia Hartley-Brewer. Basically, because she didn’t want to recognize that the first person to be stabbed in the Golders Green attack was a Muslim person.

Ashok Kumar 11:36

Why haven’t we mentioned that? The prime minister didn’t mention that. The media hasn’t mentioned that. Do Muslim lives not matter?

Julia Hartley-Brewer 11:42

He wasn’t hospitalized. I think that’s what—the attack was aimed at Jews, is the viewpoint of pretty much anybody involved.

AK 11:49

But why not even mention that a Muslim was attacked first? And he was hospitalized, actually. But his life matters too. That’s not antisemitic. That’s not anti-Jewish hatred. Can you mention that? Shouldn’t you mention that? Is that islamophobia, not to mention that?

JHB 11:59

The Met Police and the prime minister keep talking about two Jewish men being stabbed.

AK 12:05

Yeah, but you’re a journalist. You’re a leading journalist in this country.

JHB 12:09

Who was being targeted? Who do you believe was being targeted?

AK 12:15

A Muslim and two Jewish people.

JHB 12:17

You think the Muslim was targeted because he was Muslim?

AK 12:20

Well, I don’t know, but I don’t think we should not mention that. I don’t know the whole story.

AA 12:23

And in fact, until I saw that clip, I didn’t know that that existed. I had seen the headlines of two people were stabbed in London, two Jews in a Jewish neighborhood, and completely elided the fact that the first person to be stabbed was Muslim, in a different neighborhood, and also that the assailant was reportedly mentally ill. It’s not totally clear, when you have the whole picture, what’s actually going on, but it is very clear what the narrative is. Which is not to say that these were not attacks on Jewish people, but just that actually, the fact that there was another victim, and that that doesn’t fit the story, and then, that part of the story is totally dropped.

EH 13:06

Yeah. I think the challenge is that we don’t entirely know the full story because it was also reported that this was his friend, who he had a dispute with. This is the challenge as well, is that there is very clearly a problem with the way that the media reports violence against other minority communities, as well as Jews. I think the question, though, for us in that conversation, is: Who does that politics serve, when there is a media and a political class who doesn’t want to report on attacks on minority communities, attacks on Muslim communities, on asylum seeker hotels, in the same way that they report about antisemitic violence? And that is, from my perspective, part of a divide-and-rule politics. 

EH 13:42

I think it’s also important to note two things on that. The first being that the assailant, or the alleged assailant, who did the stabbings two weeks ago, was also referred to the PREVENT program, which is a very controversial government “anti-extremism program”—I’m saying that it inverted commas—and basically fell through the cracks of this system. This is a system that has come under huge amounts of criticism from human rights organizations about the fact that it is much more of a surveillance of repression tool and very little about actually addressing so-called extremism. I think that’s also something that’s worth noting, is that this is also a failure of government strategy to actually deal with the issues—I think, similarly, with the economic crises that have befallen mental health services in this country. There is a very important picture here. I just think it’s also important that we recognize how this is also contributing to this anti-Jewish violence as well. This is part of a big story.

EH 14:34

But I think the second thing as well is that we’re also dealing with a government—and I think this is where the response by the government actually could potentially put Jewish people in more danger and subject to further antisemitic violence or antisemitism in general—because this is a government, particularly led by Starmer and also the government previously led by the Conservatives, who have repeatedly put forward racist policies and racist attacks on different minority communities. This government, that is now claiming to be trying to create this huge summit to address antisemitism, has previously refused to call far-right racist riots against Muslim communities, where mosques were attacked, Islamophobic. We have our own prime minister quoting well-known racist MP Enoch Powell in a speech where he was clamping down on immigration. So, this is the discourse in which we are existing, and the attempts by the state and also our legacy Jewish institutions to silo Jewish people away, make this about Palestine, make this about Muslim threat to the U.K.’s way of life. We had Gideon Falter, who led a campaign against antisemitism, calling it the Britifada, like the intifada of the British obviously. And so, these elements just add up to actually, I say, put a target on Jewish people’s backs and suggest that we are, essentially, the shepherds for this state-backed repression and attacks on other communities.

AA 15:53

Yeah. I just wanted to bring out a few things, a few specific things that I read about. You have the Board of Deputies—kind of like our U.S. Conference of Presidents—the president of that organization, Phil Rosenberg, saying: It’s clear how we got here. Horrible, horrible language being used on demonstrations and online without consequence. These paint attacks—and he’s referring to Palestine Action—then arson, then stabbing attacks. That these are steps on the way that start with Palestine protest. And you have the same idea from Mark Rowley, the police commissioner, who has submitted a proposal for a special police force—£25 million more for policing, and adding 300 extra armed officers to the streets. We see this in the United States as well, a focus on more policing and larger budgets for police and surveillance. He’s also talking about banning the Nakba Day march, which he equated with an anti-immigration fascist march by Tommy Robinson, who’s a provocateur, basically saying that these marches are going to march near synagogues. Really feeding the fire.

BM 17:08

Yeah, I just wanted to come in quickly on something Em said about the government’s PREVENT agenda. Completely agree that this is a highly contentious and controversial agenda that has stoked Islamophobia and surveilled British Muslims. But what many people may not know are the interesting ways in which the politics of anti-antisemitism have actually articulated with PREVENT. A decade ago, in 2015, the then-Prime Minister David Cameron gave a speech at the CST, in which he outlined a vision for combating what he called the root cause of antisemitism. He said Jewish safety ultimately required not just the kind of securitization approach, as you say—like funding Jewish institutions and security at those institutions—but also securitizing British borders. He framed antisemitism as being directly tied to Islamist extremism, as if this is the source of societal antisemitism in Britain. I think this is just one illustration of what I think Em’s addressing here, is a very problematic politics of anti-antisemitism, which actually can manifest as the racialization of other minoritized communities—in this case, and in particular, British Muslims.

EH 18:21

Yeah, I think that that’s something that we see happening across Europe as well, this idea of imported antisemitism, which is like the mirror of great replacement theory—that the only reason Europe has any problem with antisemitism is because of Muslim immigration. We see this being fertile politicking by far-right parties in the Netherlands, in Germany, in France, and other places as well. And so, I think really understanding again, also—these attacks and these ideas are not just happening in a vacuum. It is very clear that their far-right ideas and ideologies are going across borders at this point. That’s why we also need to be thinking about these attacks and these phenomena as something that, I think, an international left and international Jewish left should also be concerned about. Because it is really harming our security and safety collectively, but it’s also harming our movements, too.

AA 19:12

Right? I mean, Barnaby Raine, the Jewish British writer and activist, in Equator, was talking about that we need to actually shift the way that Western power is constructing the Jew—the idea of the Jew. That we are—this is what he says—the protected minority of Western power, and that’s a strategy for defending that power while simultaneously throwing Jews under the bus. I think he’s absolutely right about that. I mean, we’re kind of being put up front as the minority in need of protection, I think, when it serves the kind of Western exceptional minority subject par excellence, and then, that special treatment is used against other minorities, as you’re describing. 

AA 19:57

I want to talk a little bit about not just how it affects other minority groups, but also the question of civil liberties more broadly. As I was preparing for this, I was confused by some of the stories that I read because—I mean, we already know about Pal Action. My guests can’t talk about Palestine Action because of what’s happening, which is that if you say you support them, you are subject to arrest, to detainment, etc. But I just want to talk about a few other things that I read about in preparing for this, which is that two guys making TikToks, where he’s like harassing Jews or where they’re being antisemitic on the street—they’ve been arrested. Two candidates in the Green Party were arrested for antisemitic posts. I mean, obviously, antisemitism sucks. Nowhere linked to these TikToks, so I couldn’t see for myself what kind of harassment it was. But also, in the United States, being antisemitic is not a crime. You can’t be arrested for an antisemitic post. So, I am wondering what’s going on here. 

AA 21:10

And also, without talking about Palestine Action—without talking about them as an organization—there also seems to be a way in which there has been a kind of erosion in their trial process. There are people talking about whether the trials themselves have been politically influenced, that they weren’t allowed to bring certain kinds of witnesses, either from Elbit or other defense witnesses. So, this is the question: Not only how this is affecting minority communities, but also how this is eroding civil liberties more broadly, how this is a bit of democratic backsliding that we see through the guise of Jewish protection. So, I wonder if we could talk a little bit about that.

BM 21:55

Sure. I mean, I think the recent interventions by the government against antisemitism have been accompanied by a worrying politics that has restricted freedom of speech and freedom of political expression in the name of Jewish safety. That’s been widely criticized by human rights organizations, by civil liberty organizations. It’s really worrying for us who are engaged in the politics of the Jewish left or confronting and dealing with the question of antisemitism because it further separates and drives a wedge between Jewish left organizations and, potentially, the wider anti-racist movement, when Jewish issues and Jewish concerns are being used politically to close down speech and protest that are actually trying to address other forms of racism, and including genocide in Israel. 

BM 22:49

The other deeply problematic thing about this, of course, is that it essentializes British Jews in the same breath that it claims to protect them. As Em said, there’s no evidence to support the claim that pro-Palestine protest represents the source of these recent attacks on British Jews. Manchester appears to have been IS-inspired, and the London attacks that we’ve seen in more recent weeks, the authorities are exploring whether they’re Iran-backed. In other words, it’s not about pro-Palestine solidarity, and yet, this is exactly what the government has said and done. And of course, this rests upon a really essentialized idea of Jewishness, that the Jews are united in the view that pro-Palestine protest makes them feel unsafe. And actually, British Jews are increasingly divided, not just on the question of Israel but of Zionism more broadly. Indeed, this is part of the context for someone like Zack Polanski’s emergence with the Green Party. So, what we have to contend with here is not just antisemitism but an essentialization of Jewishness within the politics of anti-antisemitism, and we have to hold these thoughts in play at the same time.

EH 23:49

Yeah, I think one of the other collateral of this political moment as well is that I actually think it’s good that people want to try and address antisemitism. I think it’s very clear that this is an issue that, there’s a lot of divisiveness. Again, it’s part of this broader backdrop in general, I think, of rising hostility toward minority communities. I think the challenge is that when there is a sole focus on the securitization approach—when there is a sole focus on policing, when it is politicized in this way to attack civil liberties in general and specifically around Palestine in this moment—it actually undermines the ability to do that, and it actually creates a lack of safety and has the adverse effect. I think that’s one of the challenges that progressive Jewish people and Jews on the left at this time see, is that this is a time of anti-Jewish violence. 

EH 24:35

And the response we have from our mainstream institutions, who claim to speak for all of us—which is much easier to do in a society where there’s only 300,000 Jewish people—is that it’s actively aligning themselves with far-right politicians like Reform. Richard Tice, the deputy Reform leader, spoke at this “extinguishing antisemitism” rally. Which is a real slap in the face for the actually numerous anti-racist and other human rights organizations that spoke out against the antisemitic attack in Golders Green, to then be aligning with someone with a party who recently elected councillors, including one that suggested that Nigerian people should be melted down as potholes, that claim that the Holocaust was a hoax, that used slurs against South Asian people. When Michael Wegier, the president of the Board of Deputies, was asked about this, he said that: Well, there are a lot of supporters of Reform in the Jewish community. I’m paraphrasing, that’s basically what he said. 

EH 25:24

I think that’s also where this is happening, is that we are seeing this convergence or this perfect storm of rising anti-Jewish violent hate crimes alongside a far-right capture of our communal institutions, alongside the active derision of Jewish people who don’t agree with that view. We’ve seen the ways in which anti-Zionist Jews have been pilloried by the community—that we’re not real Jews because we attend the Palestine marches. So, I think that’s also happening in our community, which is also very heartbreaking and something that is part of this conversation and has wider implications because of the way that these politicians use Jewish people, as you say, as their battering ram against other minorities. 

EH 26:04

But I think the second thing that is also happening is that it’s important to understand that this repression against the Palestine movement has been in the works for years. Even before October 7th, there was an attempt to pass a bill in British Parliament banning public bodies from taking part in BDS, like councils or education institutions. We then, as soon as the Palestine marches happened, there was an immediate attack of them as hate marches, of two-tier policing, of saying that Central London is a no-go zone for Jewish people—which was echoed across both politicians, and the media, and then also community. And then, I think the other thing which is important that’s going through right now is an amendment to the Police and Crime Bill in the House of Lords, which is getting a bit technical, which is basically the same kinds of bans on protests within the vicinity of sites of religious worship.

AA 26:51

The buffer zones happening in the U.S. Yeah.

EH 26:54

Yes, but there’s no actual definition of what a site of worship is. So, it could just be a church.

AA 26:57

Yeah, yeah, yeah. .It’s the same, yeah.

EH 26:59

So, that means that basically, that’s a way to stop the marches from going through Central London, which is about shutting down the fact that this is a broad public protest. And to do that in the name of combating antisemitism is a toxic cocktail of potential risk to Jewish people, as being seen as the shepherds of this.

AA 27:18

But I’m still just trying to figure out, like: How can you be arrested for antisemitism? How can you arrest candidates for antisemitic posts? What is the mechanism that allows something like that to happen?

BM 27:29

So, there are different pieces of legislation that have been introduced in Britain gradually and incrementally since the 1970s to offer protections for particular characteristics on the grounds of race and gender, sexuality, and so on. The legislation that’s most frequently used today to both record antisemitism but also to criminalize it is the hate crime legislation. So, people can be arrested and convicted for what’s called a hate crime, and antisemitism comes under that rubric. There’s also other legislation, such as the race relations legislation, that prevents discrimination on the grounds of protected characteristics in the workplace, for example.

AA 28:09

Yeah, I mean, we have hate crime laws, but there has to be an underlying crime. You can’t be arrested for posts.

EH 28:15

Yeah. Here, there’s an Online Communications Act, where you can be arrested for malicious communications.

AA 28:20

That’s wild.

EH 28:21

It’s that it’s also harassment, aggravated offenses. We don’t have the same emphasis on free speech that you do in the U.S. It’s one of the reasons, I think, some of the repression here has actually been much easier to put push, because I think also, something that is particularly uniquely British is this idea of public order, and civility, and being meek. I think it’s also why you are seeing a progressive center-left government pushing it, because it’s about respectability politics in many ways, as well.

BM 28:50

nd I think it’s also important to note that the question of antisemitism is a relatively recent one, in terms of mainstream British politics. This came on the scene around about a decade ago when Jeremy Corbyn was elected as leader of the Labour Party, and the current leader of the party, the prime minister—at least, at the time of recording—Keir Starmer, replaced Corbyn and came in as leader and ran that campaign on the grounds of confronting and removing the poison of antisemitism. So, anti-antisemitism has not been a peripheral theme in his period in office. It’s actually been rather a central one. So, these recent attacks, the response to them draws upon a certain politics that was already in circulation in Britain and has been there over the last decade. And okay, a decade’s a long time, but it’s still rather new and still rather unusual to have both antisemitism and anti-antisemitism occupying such a central place in the news cycle in Britain. Before 2016, it was much, much more muted.

AA 29:47

Right. I’d love to get into the kind of political backdrop in terms of the party politics, and I think everybody’s been commenting on how it feels a little bit like a resurgence of Corbyn-era politics, with the attacks on Zack Polanski, the head of the Green Party, who is Jewish, as the party surges, the attacks on some of their candidates, who have been caught saying antisemitic things, but also a very small number, and you see similar things on the Reform side that are not being treated in the same way in the media. So, you see a real media focus on the antisemitism problem. But also, I think one of the differences is that Labour has not been able to capitalize—I mean, Brendan, you were talking about the way that the moderate wing of the party was able to crowd out the kind of insurgent left wing on the back of this antisemitism issue. That isn’t working for Keir Starmer right now. I am wondering—I mean, I don’t know that much about U.K. politics. I’m looking at what’s happening in American politics. There is fatigue among the voter base with this cynical use of anti-antisemitism, and you’re starting to see some kind of backlash. And though it hasn’t really taken hold as much in the media, you still have Jake Tapper doing his thing on CNN, and you still have Barry Weiss’s CBS News or whatever, but the voter base is tired of it. So, I’m wondering if there’s anything similar going on in the U.K., and also: Why isn’t it working for Labour? Why isn’t this anti-antisemitism strategy working?

EH 31:29

I think what I would first say is it’s not working for Labour yet. I think again, it’s about asking: Who does it serve to have the mainstream politicians and mainstream media going after a left candidate over the numerous scrutiny or problems within Reform? The decision was taken that attacking the Greens, I guess, was more important than attacking Reform by Labour. And I think that they’re reaping the consequences of that, which is basically being wiped out in their safer seats in the Northeast, for example, as well as other places—and obviously, in London, by the Greens, but in the Northeast, it was mostly Reform. I think in general, in the U.K., we have seen—particularly over the last few years—a real divide between the actions and intentions of those in power and the public, and that is actually creating a bit of a crisis of democracy on multiple levels. I think around both the issue of antisemitism and its politicization, and also Palestine, that has become very clear. 

EH 32:24

But it’s also around other things, too. Around the cost of living, around immigration. Lots of different things are actually happening in terms of that divide. I think in terms of whether it’s a repeat of Corbyn—I think that the genocide in Gaza has irreparably changed everything around this conversation everywhere. And I think also, in some ways—which maybe, Brendan, you’d disagree—I think the rise of, I think, a more organized Jewish left in the U.K. has also shifted things. I think that it’s much harder for the media and for politicians to say that there is just one united Jewish communal voice on these issues. That just isn’t true anymore. It still remains to be seen as to what the fallout and the impacts of that will be, and particularly, this was the most exciting local election, probably in decades, in the U.K. I don’t remember a time where people were so anxiously refreshing results. I think that now what’s in play is the general: What’s going to happen with Starmer? We’re still seeing the fallout.

AA 33:17

Yeah. Jjst really quickly, I just want to put Zack Polanski really on the table here because he’s been compared to Mamdani. He’s very reflective of this populist upsurge, but he’s also a Jew on the left, and that fact keeps getting erased. I saw an exchange with him on Sky News and he said:

Zack Polanski 33:40

Well, as I repeat, as a Jewish person, I march with many Jewish people on those marches. Now, there are already laws to deal with—

Interviewer 33:46

But you’re not all Jews.

ZP 33:47 

But why is my Jewish identity being erased from this conversation? And the Jewish identity of so many people on those marches?

Interviewer 33:50

No, I’m not erasing it. Don’t try that one on me.

AA 33:53

It’s like, this guy is a Jewish person asserting his Jewish identity, which itself is new. There’s very few examples of British Jews participating in politics as Jews. So, that in itself seems new, but also it’s not being allowed into the discourse, on some level. But I also hear you saying, Em, that you can’t keep that fact out, that people are starting to recognize that there is a split in the community. I just want to note that in the antisemitism rally that took place in the last week, you have Nigel Farage from Reform, who has been accused of antisemitism, being invited and, as you said, the Board of Deputies basically saying, “A lot of Jews are for the Reform Party,” and Zack Polanski, who’s Jewish, not being invited because of his stance on Palestine. So, a very interesting mix of things happening here. Maybe not surprising, but interesting nonetheless.

BM 34:50

Yeah, I think perhaps what this speaks to is a real schism and polarization that’s happening both among British Jews but actually in wider British society. There is a kind of political crisis unfolding, where the two-party system is breaking down, and voters are going in different directions. And that’s happening across the country. We saw that with the rise of Reform and the Greens, and it’s also happening inside the Jewish community as well. So, a poll conducted by the JPR last year, in September 2025, found that Jews were intending to vote for the Green Party at nine times the rate of the general population. More Jews were also saying that they were going to vote for Reform, but at half the rate of the population overall. So, there is this polarization taking place, and Polanski really represents that in many ways. He represents that growing constituency of British Jews that are identifying as non- or anti-Zionist. And once we get down to the granular level of this, this is not an insignificant number. Among British Jews aged 16 to 29, just 49% now identify Zionist. And the number of anti- and non-Zionists is increasing markedly among British Jews as a whole. It’s now up at 28%.

AA 36:08

Very similar to American numbers.

BM 36:10

Right. But what’s different to the situation in America is we actually have a leader of a mainstream political party who calls Israel an apartheid state, who describes its war on Gaza as a genocide, and is himself Jewish, and proudly so. And he, in many ways, gives voice to and represents that growing constituency among the community. What this means, actually, is that the communal “we” in British Jewish politics is just breaking down before our very eyes. Nobody has an answer to how to respond to that, and the polarization that we see is very much an expression of it. What we’re also finding now is that the politics of antisemitism and anti-antisemitism are getting entangled in that polarization, such as at the demonstration at the weekend, when Richard Tice was invited, but Polanski was not.

EH 36:59

Yeah. I think, if I’m putting my organizer hat on for a minute, I think this is also actually really reflecting—and Arielle, we’ve spoken about this before—how the U.K. is usually just a little bit behind the U.S., in the sense of the breakdown in the credibility and trust of organizations like the ADL because of their political allegiances with Trump or Elon Musk, etc. I think there’s a real moment of opportunity here, because I think what happened at that rally is that it really exposed the ugly political truth of these institutions—whether they are cowardly cuddling up to these far-right organizations with this false sense f that they’ll keep them safe, or whether they’re actually embracing a racist, Islamophobic, anti-migrant politics. 

EH 37:42

But both of those present an opportunity for progressives—for the center left as well as the Jewish left—to really be thinking about: How do we build out new institutions, new political realities, new political coalitions that are actually based in our shared value. And that doesn’t actually need to be necessarily radical; that just needs to be that everyone in this country deserves to be safe. Everyone in this country deserves to live free from violence. Everyone in this country deserves equality, whatever it needs to be. Those are not far-left radical values. And I think that if these institutions are smart and strategic in this moment, there’s an opportunity to build a new Jewish consensus that can challenge this horrendous politics that has really taken hold. But there is a question, to me, about who will fill that gap and whether they’ll be willing to risk the potential ostracization of these community institutions, who call the shots around who is in the tent and who isn’t. 

EH 38:31

I hope that there is some real courage at this time because that’s really what’s needed. The threat of Reform is incredibly dangerous to everyone, including Jewish people. It’s horrifying to watch these kinds of people now get into power and just be sleepwalking into it, and our community being like: Well they’re good on Israel. That is an appalling position to be in, and we need to be challenging that at every opportunity, b. But we need those center-left and progressives to take up the mantle and say: We’re going to do something different now.

BM 38:57

Yeah. Quite recently, there was a test of one of the main legacy organizations in Britain, the Board of Deputies, when last year, 36 of its elected deputies issued a letter stating, and I quote, “We cannot turn a blind eye or remain silent to the renewed loss of life and livelihoods as a result of Israel’s renewed offensive in Gaza.” So, this was a breaking of the ranks, as it were.

AA 39:22

That was shocking to me, I have to say. It was very hard to imagine something similar happening in like, the American Conference of Presidents. I just don’t think we would see it.

BM 39:32

Right, and several of them were censored for it. So, it shows the limits of, at least, the Board of Deputies’ strategy of dealing with this dissent. I agree with Em, that this therefore represents an opportunity for new Jewish institutions to give voice to, to speak to, and to represent that really significant section of the community that is growing in the ways that we described.

AA 39:51

I want to ask one more question. I don’t want to gloss over the fact that there has been all of this reporting on Green Party candidates and different things that they’ve been saying, including calling certain kinds of antisemitic attacks like false-flag attacks and talking about Zionists being behind the 9/11 attacks, sharing posts like that. Also, just different ways of talking about Zionist Jews, that—we see this in the U.S. too—just a very dehumanizing or violent way of talking about it, and a way of talking about antisemitic attacks as purely revenge, a justification of those kinds of attacks on diaspora Jews. So, the Green Party has been talking about this as, essentially, a vetting problem. Within thousands of candidates, you have dozens of people who haven’t been vetted properly, and then they’re being kicked out. But I think it’s fair to say that we are seeing this tendency in our politics as people get angrier and angrier and as people accept the narrative on offer, which is that diaspora Jews are representative of the State of Israel and that there is such a weaponization of antisemitism that this must be a false flag, or this can’t be real. So, I guess my question is, with both of your organizer and researcher hats on: How do we confront this on our side of the aisle? What does it mean, and what do we do about it?

BM 41:16

I think the question of, “What does it mean?” is really important. It brings us back to the beginning of our conversation. What is the object? What is the problem that we’re actually trying to both describe and confront? It seems to me that we have to hold two thoughts in play at the same time here. Antisemitism is being weaponized against the Green Party by various political actors, and there are cases of actual antisemitism that have arisen within the party’s ranks. Which brings us back to: Where does it come from? This is why at Birkbeck, we conceptualize antisemitism as a reservoir. It’s a reservoir that exists within political culture, a series of narratives and tropes about Jews that not just hardened antisemites are fluent in and aware of but actually a much, much larger section of the population. And in different moments, in different conjunctures, people who otherwise have not been antisemitic will reach for that reservoir or find themselves standing knee deep in it. 

BM 42:15

And that brings us to: What is to be done. At a much broader level, the problem is not hardened individual antisemites going about causing harm. Those people exist. They are among us, and they are indeed a problem. But a much broader issue, especially for those of us on the left, is that reservoir of antisemitism and other forms of racism that exists within our political culture. The way that you confront that is through education. And of course, that leads us to: Well, what kind of education? The government is currently putting forward a program of education wedded to the IHRA, and that will not ultimately be successful for the reasons that we know, and for the weaknesses of that definition, and for the limits that it has for building a broad, multidirectional, anti-racist coalition. But it’s precisely that that we need, and we need a better type of education for antisemitism. So, if I was talking to the Green Party, that’s exactly what I would say to them. You need education and good education.

AA 43:07

Yeah, I mean, I want to agree with you so much, but I’m actually not so sanguine on the possibility that education can change things when what’s in front of your eyes persists. I think the only way that we actually get out of this is with visible activism that counters it from the Jewish side. I mean, that’s a form of education, on some level, but I feel a little bit that like the different example of Jewishness in the world, that performs that different example, is almost the best education in this environment. We can’t tell people: What you see happening, in terms of Israel claiming Jewish people, in terms of the Board of Deputies’ stated politics, and how they’re being used, that this isn’t happening. I mean, we can explain it in various ways, but at a certain point, if we don’t have the same kind of power, we can’t be surprised when people believe it. And so, I still feel myself trapped a little bit.

EH 44:06

I mean, I think there’s also a question of whether there is a capacity to build safety, even shared safety, in a time of deep political unrest and instability. I think we just have to reckon with that. That might actually not be possible anymore, and I think that we’ll always try, because we have a responsibility to try, and we have to show up. But I just think we’re in a new phase.

AA 44:27

I mean, Sarah Schwartz, when she came on after Bondi Beach in Australia, she said the same thing. We just have to change our expectations around safety. We may just be in a different moment.

EH 44:38

But I think, in terms of this issue around rooting out or challenging antisemitic conspiracies on the left, or these false-flag ideas, or the dehumanization—however you want to frame it—this does really go back to something quite basic, which is just that antisemitism harms Jewish people, and it harms our movements, and it harms society, and therefore, we should see this as part of a leftist problem that we want to address. And when we don’t have solutions, and we don’t have compassion, the right fill that vacuum, and they use it to destroy us and harm us. I think this is actually much more of a question of, for want of a better term, political will than it is of not understanding. The frustrations I have with the Jewish community and the Jewish institutions should not be misunderstood as reflective of power. The people who have power around what Israel is doing and who are enabling what Israel is doing, on a material level, are states. It’s government, and that should be our target. I think that actually, what a lot of pro-Israel organizations want to do is try to make it about Jews, and actually, we have a responsibility to say no: This is about power, and this is about states. 

EH 45:36

This is why it’s important to go back to Barnaby’s point around understanding how Jewish communities are being used. The problem is that these institutions in our communities are enabling that. And that’s what we have to be addressing on our institutional communal level. But on a national organizing level, we need to see: Whose politics is this serving? How do we reshift our focus onto power, of who actually has control over these things? How do we demonstrate there’s no competition for taking a stand against Israeli genocide, for Palestinian human rights, or Palestinian freedom, and supporting Jewish communities and Jewish safety? I think that’s the role of the left right now. Even if we don’t succeed, that should be a priority because if we don’t have that, then we don’t really have anything.

AA 46:11

Yeah, I think that Corbyn has become kind of a shorthand on the left for how, if you start to give in to like antisemitism claims, you’ve already lost. I think there’s some truth to that, and I think we’re in a totally new moment. And look, I think Corbyn failed at this also, in terms of just allowing for the fact that antisemitism exists and that you can hold a complex truth on this topic. I think we are in a really new moment politically, where on one hand, you don’t want to cede ground where you don’t need to cede ground, and on the other hand, you have to recognize what is actually happening and that even if it is connected to both the genocide and the behavior of Jewish institutions, the antisemitism that is produced is still a societal ill, and it also still has the capacity, as you said, to break up the left. And so, we have to find a way to address it. We cannot just let it slide, even if it’s quote-unquote understandable. It actually will come back to bite us.

EH 47:17

I don’t think it’s understandable to hold individual Jewish people in a random country responsible for what Israel’s doing, either. But I completely agree with you, Arielle, and I think that we need to not take the wrong lessons from the Corbyn era, and we need to be thinking about this is a new political reality that we have to be facing, and simply looking for lessons from the past might not serve us anymore. I think that’s the same with a lot of organizing right now as well, in general.

BM 47:37

I just repeat the plea for holding two thoughts in play at the same time here. If we can’t do that, we’re in deep trouble. I mean, if there are any resources of hope in this moment, it is the broader demographic and sociological shifts that we see taking place in the British Jewish community that are not episodic, which are not a kind of outgrowth of October 7th. Rather, they’ve been accelerated by October 7th, but they stretch back at least a decade and a half. And I think from that growing constituency among British Jews, we see the potential for a more multidirectional, anti-racist politics. It’s a constituency that’s growing and, there are new organizational forms that are emerging out of it, not least Na’amod, which Em co-founded. So, I think there, there’s a resource of hope for doing anti-antisemitism differently and for thinking about the politics of anti-racism and social justice differently. And that does indeed give me grounds for hope.

AA 48:35

Thank you. Thank you for bringing us back to hope, which is an emotion I am famously bad at.

BM 48:41

To paraphrase Stuart Hall, it’s hope without guarantees. There’s nothing automatic about this. That’s why I said a resource of hope, and resources can only be utilized if they’re put in the service of political projects.

AA 48:54

Well, this has been another episode of On the Nose. Thank you to our guests for joining us. Thank you to our editor, Jesse Brenneman. If you like this episode, share it, rate it, leave us a review, and as always, subscribe to Jewish Currents, JewishCurrents.org. See you next time.