AS I write this, I look out from my study in north west London over a Jewish primary school.
Parents are picking up their young children. Alongside them are police and security guards, and the pavements are blocked off from the road with barriers.
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Police investigate a cordoned off area in the Golders Green neighbourhood of north London Credit: AFP
Video showing stabbing in Golders Green at bus stop today Credit: X
Their presence is, however, not in response to today’s terrorist attack in Golders Green.
The police have been outside the school for months – since the recent wave of attacks on Jews.
The security guards have patrolled the streets by the school for many years.
That’s because Jewish schools – and the Jewish community generally – have been under threat of attack from terror for many years.
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Stephen Pollard says police have been outside the school for months Credit: Getty
The Met Police detain the 45-year-old suspect after two Jewish people were stabbed Credit: X
What happened today was different only because the scale and frequency of such attacks on the Jewish community have now accelerated to a level that has become the new normal.
In October two people died after an attack on Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester.
Last month ambulances belonging to a Jewish charity were firebombed.
Synagogues are now the target of arson, as are buildings used by other Jewish institutions.
And as we saw today, ordinary British citizens going about their business who are visibly Jewish through wearing their kippah on their head, are now targeted by terrorists.
As a British Jew, I am not ashamed to say that I am scared. I have faced death threats myself.
When I edited the Jewish Chronicle my name was found on a terrorist hit list and I had to have armed police protection.
That was over a decade ago.
In all honesty, I feel more threatened now than I did back then. Such threats were specific and – relatively – rare.
Today, the entire Jewish community is under threat from random attacks – many of which, it seems, are at the behest of the Iranian government.
But I am angry far more than I am scared: angry at how we have got here.
We hear the same warm words from politicians after every such incident – that there is no place for antisemitism in Britain, that we all stand together against hate, and so on.
Such words are not just meaningless – they are a lie.
Every attack disproves the idea that there is no place for antisemitism. There is a very large place for it, as we see demonstrated repeatedly.
And what do the authorities and politicians do about it? They feed it.
By doing next to nothing beyond mouthing platitudes, they make it worse.
In 2021 a convoy of cars drove through areas in north west London with large Jewish populations, blasting their horns and screaming “F*** the Jews, rape their daughters.”
The police identified those responsible. What happened to them? Nothing. The Crown Prosecution Service refused to prosecute.
It is a familiar pattern. For over two years the streets of London and elsewhere have been regularly taken over by hate marches, at which protestors shout antisemitic chants and parade banners pushing various forms of Jew hate.
Initially, the police stood and watched, sending a clear message that such behaviour would be tolerated.
That inaction led to the marches getting worse. Only in recent months have the police begun – far too late – to take any action
As if the marches were not bad enough, the resurgent Green Party has become a vehicle for many of the country’s worst antisemites – many of whom were kicked out of Labour.
What is the response of the Greens’ Jewish leader, Zack Polanski?
Shamefully, he questioned whether Jews had any reason to worry about antisemitism, saying it was important to distinguish between an actual threat and the “perception of unsafety”.
We know from history and recent experience that antisemitism spreads further if it is allowed to develop.
And when Jews are killed that inspires others to try themselves to kill more Jews. That is one reason why every Jew I know believes that these attacks are only going to get worse.
They do not arise in a vacuum. We have a government which says how much it opposes antisemitism but whose behaviour has created an atmosphere in which Jew hate flourishes.
By portraying Israel as something close to evil for defending itself from Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists and their Iranian funders – as an almost uniquely evil country – the government sends a signal to antisemites that Jews are fair game, despite British Jews having no responsibility for the actions of Israel.
No other minority is held responsible for the actions of a foreign government.
And when, as happened earlier this week, the Iranian embassy in London calls on Iranians living in UK to sacrifice their lives for the regime, what is our government’s response?
To call the ambassador in to see a junior minister for a ticking off. Why are the Iranians even allowed to have an embassy here, from which they can direct their campaign of terror?
If any other minority was subject to the wave of violent attacks now targeting British Jews it would prompt a sense of national crisis. Instead, all we get are words of support. It is no wonder so many of my fellow Jews are concluding we have no future in the UK.
