On my way to a recent march, I found myself feeling nervous. Sitting on the tube with my placard, its painted slogan calling for the release of hostages as well as a ceasefire, I realised I was avoiding people’s eyes and that my heart was racing. When I got out of the underground and heard the drums and the chanting, I wondered if I should have stayed home. As a Jew, was I safe?
If I had taken advice from Robin Simcox, the government’s commissioner for countering extremism, I would have stayed home. He stated last week that London turns “into a no-go zone for Jews every weekend”. He is following many others, such as the Telegraph’s Allison Pearson, who said that Jews were “too intimidated to venture into the heart of their own capital city”, or Simon Schama, who said the marches were “weekly public calls for their [Jewish] annihilation”, or the Jewish Chronicle’s Stephen Pollard, who also called London on Saturdays a “no-go zone for Jews”. Such comments really do stoke a sense of vulnerability.
