Robert Philpot
Times of Israel, Oct. 19, 2023
“I’m upset because I see the full extent of hatred for Jews among the nation that has been the home for my family for more than 100 years. And I’m angry that the police do almost nothing about these people who are quite open about wanting to hurt people like me and my family.”
On Monday morning, Rishi Sunak traveled to a Jewish secondary school in north London. The British prime minister’s visit aimed to show, once again, his support for a community shaken by the horrors visited by Hamas upon Israel and the surge of antisemitic incidents in the UK which have followed in their wake.
“My heart aches for the people of Israel,” Sunak wrote in a condolence book during his visit to the school.
Forty-eight hours earlier, however, London had witnessed altogether different scenes as pro-Palestinian demonstrators took to the streets in what has been described as “a march of the evil, the ignorant and the stupid, joined together in Jew hate.”
Among the wider public, support for Israel isn’t as overt as the manner in which the country has rallied behind Ukraine, but there’s little evidence that the anti-Israel far-left reflects a more widespread popular sentiment.
Sunak, who arrived in Israel this morning, has been stalwart in his support for the Jewish state since Hamas’s terror onslaught nearly two weeks ago — a position also adopted by opposition leader Keir Starmer.
In the immediate aftermath of the bloody massacre that took some 1,400 lives, mainly civilians, and saw over 200 abducted to the Gaza Strip, the prime minister addressed a crowd of nearly 1,700 people at Finchley Synagogue in northwest London. … [To read the full article, click here]
