The far-right rioters have no right to pretend they are ‘friends of Israel’

Many Jews find themselves in a kind of British no man’s land – stuck between and wanting to reject both extremism from the far right and from the far left, writes Teddy Leifer

Riot police hold back protesters near a burning police car in Southport (Getty Images)

It has been a shocking couple of weeks in the UK. Like most of the country, Jews have been appalled by the far right’s cruel and opportunistic attacks on the Muslim community, migrants, asylum seekers and other minorities.

Online hatred was initially whipped up, fuelled by a falsehood on X – formerly Twitter – that the devastating knife attack on children in Southport was perpetrated by a Muslim immigrant. He was neither, but the calculated cynicism of the far right was enough to light a fire online and then watch it spread onto the streets.

Another lie also comes from the far right, which always seeks to trade off fear. This lie, though not brand new and previously touted by Tommy Robinson, is that they are friends of Israel. They are not and only have a faux interest in the country because, cynically, they regard this as a method through which they might rile some British Muslims. However, in their base assumption, they have made a miscalculation about the fundamental values of British Jews, who happen to know a thing or two about fascism and understand that what starts as an attack on one minority doesn’t usually end there.

The far right do not like Jews, our history shows that and The Great Replacement Theory – which remains their conspiracy du jour – claims there is a plot (often blamed on Jews) to cause the extinction of white people through forced assimilation and mass immigration. That they may currently hate Muslims a fraction more than they hate Jews provides no comfort; quite the contrary. It underpins that they are our natural adversaries, as they were at Cable Street, and we should be at the front of protests against them.

I am pleased therefore that the response from the British Jewish community has been swift and unequivocal. The Board of Deputies was quick to show solidarity and the Community Security Trust (CST), responsible for security within the UK Jewish community, including at synagogues and other premises, has been providing urgent advice to mosques and other places of worship via its ‘SAFE’ programme (Security Advice For Everyone).

Notwithstanding the clear Jewish response to these far right attacks, a further lie which has been circulating – this one from the extreme left - is a bizarre antisemitic conspiracy theory that the riots can be traced to Israel and Jews, with the controversial academic and anti-Zionist agitator, David Miller, describing the violence as “an Israel-sponsored anti-Muslim pogrom designed to punish them for protesting against genocide”. He provided no evidence for this claim. Jews are, inexplicably, accustomed to being on the receiving end of blame via wild conspiracies from the extreme right and the extreme left.

Counter protests which have mostly been admirable and impressive in their scale against the far right, have also featured bigoted and highly conspiratorial elements of their own, with activist Anas Altikriti on a megaphone in Harrow declaring: “The real enemy…the filthy rich people in our midst…organisations and capitalists that are directly linked to the Zionist state…because of our opposition to genocide…are a cancer to all human beings”.

Meanwhile digital leaflets for a North London counter protest read, “Get fascists, racists, Nazis, Zionists and Islamophobes out of Finchley!” Producing these leaflets targeting Finchley, one of the most heavily populated Jewish areas in the UK, was no accident. The suggestion that Zionists (which is most British Jews) would side with the far right in this moment of fear and vulnerability for Muslim and other minority communities is entirely without foundation and cruel in everything it insinuates.

Stand Up To Racism organised the counter protest in Finchley which was in opposition to a far right group planning to gather outside a local immigration centre. Despite the troubling blind spot in the publicity material (from which Stand Up To Racism has distanced itself), the counter protest was still well attended by Jews. Elsewhere, Labour councillor Ricky Jones was arrested and charged after encouraging a crowd to cut people’s throats during a speech he made at an anti-fascist rally in Walthamstow last week as he and those around him chanted, “Free Palestine”.

We ought to be able to gather in pursuit of racial justice in the UK without the intrusion of international politics and without single issue activists hijacking the process, but this has proven challenging in the last couple of weeks, even in the face of an adversary – far-right fascists – that any reasonable person should see is poisonous for all parts of society.

So, many Jews – perennially nomadic – find themselves in a kind of British no man’s land; stuck between and wanting to reject both extremism from the far right and from the far left. As Jews, we must stand with the Muslim community and our fellow minority neighbours in staring down the far right, even though doing so requires us occasionally to be in some unpleasant company. Two groups of highly motivated extremists intend to divide minorities from one another and we cannot allow them to succeed.

Teddy Leifer is a five-time Emmy winning documentary producer and Academy Award nominee