Is ambulance arson the consequence of unchecked antisemitism?

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1:41In the early hours of Monday morning, three hooded arsonists set fire to four ambulances run by a Jewish charity in a synagogue car park in North London. The attack has shaken British Jewry amid growing concern over the normalisation of anti-Semitism in the UK. So, what kind of future can British Jews envision? Hi, and welcome back to The Standard Podcast. I'm Tamara Komornik. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. Coming up, the consequence of unchecked anti-Semitism.

2:28Today's episode is about the attack on Hatzola vehicles in Golders Green. Hatzola is a community-funded, volunteer-run ambulance charity, much like St John's Ambulance. The attack is being treated as an anti-Semitic hate crime and is being investigated by counter-terror officers, according to the Metropolitan Police.

2:52In today's episode, I speak to the CEO of Campaign Against Antisemitism, Gideon Folter, about the attack and its lead up. But first, I heard from Rabbi Sandor Millen, a member of the synagogue where the arson attack took place. He visited the evening prayers following the attack and sent me his initial reaction to seeing the debris in the car park. I'm actually standing currently on the site. and it is unbelievable and I've spoken to many of the congregants and it is a real, real shock. It's a real distressing. It's not unexpected, unfortunately, but it's just the pain of where they came to attack us.

3:37They attacked us on something that brings life. It's burnt out. It's really life-giving. We've got to remember that this is really not a... attack just on a synagogue per se, as much as the synagogue was damaged. This was attack on the heart of the community. This is not out of nowhere. We know that, that for years there's been hate marches. I mean, look at this. This is the result. So it's really a very, very distressing day to be a North London Jew, a Jew in the UK. Hatzala, the ambulance service, can be used by any local resident for free. Plus, it reduces the pressure on NHS first response units and serves as a lifeline to its local residents.

4:32Hatzala is the heart of the community. My daughter was taken in Hatzalah once and my wife was probably her life was saved because of Hatzalah on one occasion. So every person appreciates Hatzalah. The people are all volunteers. They are unbelievable and we have highest respect for them. It's for Jews and non-Jews alike, whoever is in the community. So it's a very, very distressing, very painful, very, very upsetting to see the destruction.

5:14Hearing from Rabbi Sandor, it's clear that the attack has shaken his local community. Up next is my conversation with Gideon Folter, the CEO of Campaign Against Antisemitism, a volunteer-led charity dedicated to exposing and countering antisemitism. Like I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, the attack is currently being treated as an antisemitic hate crime. Here's my conversation with Gideon. Hi Gideon, thank you so much for joining me on The Standard Podcast. Thank you for having me on. So Gideon, you've actually visited the site of the arson attack. Can you tell us a bit about what you've seen?

5:57It's pretty heartbreaking and disturbing stuff. As soon as I got there, I could see that a lot of people from the Jewish community, and actually from the wider community as well, were all standing around the scene. Everyone was so upset. The whole community was out there in the street asking what on earth is going on and how many more incidents like this we're going to see before the government finally actually does something about it. There has been a lot of support from the Jewish community, but the responses to the attack have been quite mixed, to say the least. It seems that the attacks are now coming from the left and the right.

6:44Which responses or accusations are you most surprised by? To be honest, I'm not that surprised by any of them, sadly. We've got people from the far left who are saying that this was done by Israeli secret agents to try and garner sympathy for Israel. How burning down ambulances belonging to the Jewish community does that? I don't know. Then we've got idiots from the far right who are saying how disgusting it is that the Jews have their own ambulances. But this particular ambulance service, Hatzalah, is just like St. John Ambulance. It's not like St. John Ambulance has just run for the Christian community.

7:20has solar serves everybody and it works really closely with London Ambulance Service and the NHS to make sure that all of the people in its area can get really fast medical treatment and it's all run by volunteers this is the Jewish community I would have thought being an exact model of what you want a community to look like it's contributing to the country it's trying to help out public services. It's doing it by funding it themselves. It's doing it with their own volunteers. And then you've got these people from the far left and the far right with all these conspiracy theories. And that's just become the norm now.

8:00You know, after the Yom Kippur terrorist attack, where Jews were killed in a terrorist attack in our country on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, we immediately had people coming out onto social media, including people, members of professions, barristers even, saying this was a false flag attack run by Mossad. It's absolutely disgusting, and it makes Jewish people feel more alone than ever. And you mentioned the Yom Kippur attack that took place last autumn. This was an incredibly grave day for the entire British jury, really. What are your thoughts on the recent Galesgate and also the Al-Quds Day rally in London being allowed to take place, although not a march, still a rally?

8:53In terms of the conversation of the tolerance of Britain, do you think it's sort of swung just too far and that anyone can say anything and not actually have to suffer any of the repercussions. I think it's the suffering, the repercussions that are important here, because if you look at some of the things that have been going on, yes, the terrorist attacks have been thwarted, or in the process of the terrorist attacks happening, the perpetrator has been shot and killed. You see the conviction now recently of people in the north of England who'd acquired assault rifles and hundreds of bullets to conduct a mass shooting of Jewish people.

9:39Those people all suffer the consequences of their actions. But then you've got a much more extensive undercurrent of antisemitism, which is rising up and where there are no consequences. So you will remember that in 2021, people drove through central London, shouting with megaphones, calling for the death of Jews and for the rape of Jewish women and girls. Nothing happened to them. No one was ever convicted of that offence. It happened in broad daylight. You see how Gales is being, the people are trying to drive it out of the neighbourhood because it once had a Jewish owner. It doesn't anymore.

10:21It's just some kind of loose connection to being Jewish is enough people to go and smash up bakeries. And what happens is we get this constant drumbeat where the worst offences, the terrorism offences, usually end up getting punished. But everything else doesn't, and it emboldens people. And we're now in an environment where Britain cuts an increasingly solitary figure. Because in France and Germany, they banned the hate marches. They wouldn't let the Palestine marches monopolise their streets week after week, month after month, they wouldn't have it. In other countries, including, by the way, a lot of the Arab countries of the world, the Muslim Brotherhood is banned.

11:07Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is banned. And yet Britain won't do it. And so on the one hand, we are not enforcing existing law against these perpetrators, and they're becoming bolder. On the other hand, we're not taking the measures that everybody else across the West seems to recognise are necessary and frankly the bare minimum. And our kids in Britain are becoming radicalised, not just to hate Jews, but to hate this country and to espouse all kinds of anti-Semitic and extreme and anti-British conspiracy theories that mean that the country that we have in 20 or 30 years' time is going to be utterly unrecognisable because of the mad things that people believe.

11:59And the end of the road is not going to be the burning down of ambulances. The end of the road is going to be far, far worse than that. We have not yet sunk as low as we can get, believe it or not. Yeah, it's very worrying.

12:19We'll take a quick break. Coming up, I ask Gideon if the government has done enough to support the well-being of British Jews. We'll be back in just a moment.

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13:07Welcome back. Let's head back to my chat with Gideon. This morning you described the arson attack as a wake-up call for Britain. Gideon, what is the message that you believe Brits need to hear? I don't think people have really been paying attention to this creeping extremism and radicalisation that is taking grip on our country. There was a poll last week that found that one in five students at universities, these are supposed to be our brightest, our future leaders, one in five students at British universities wouldn't feel comfortable sharing accommodation with a Jew. now these are british kids who are being radicalized into some really disturbing warped ways of thinking and yes there is a burden on our politicians and our police to finally take action which has been much lacking but there's actually something that everybody can do which is that everybody knows someone in their circle of friends at their workplace or just in their social media timeline who is consistently obsessively spousing conspiracy theories about Jews, Zionists, Israelis.

14:23And we all need to stand up to these people and just say, stop, you are obsessed. What you're saying makes no sense. And intervene in this, not just out of concern for the individuals who are doing it, but also out of concern for our country, because very soon, it's going to be very difficult to say that this country is a tolerant, decent place, not when ambulances are being burned down because they have a Star of David on the side of them. Gideon, I'd like to pivot back to the incident and towards the issue of Jewish people and medical care. So there have been incidents of Jewish patients being refused medical care reported in the UK.

15:11And this arson attack on Jewish ambulances clearly steps this up a notch. So Wes Streeting has said he'll designate four ambulances to the Jewish community to replace those that have been destroyed in the attack. But do you think more needs to be done to ensure that Jewish people have access to healthcare and feel safe accessing healthcare? I think that where streeting turning up in some ways was, it actually sparks a certain amount of fury within the crowd. The Jewish community are fed up of seeing politicians turn up, wring their hands, say that there is no place in society for anti-Semitism when very clearly there is a place for anti-Semitism in society.

16:02we saw it last night. They say that they will do everything in their power to tackle this extremism, and yet they've done practically nothing. They say that we all stand together, and yet as soon as the cameras depart, they're nowhere to be seen. So it's very nice of politicians. It's great for them to come along and say, yeah, we'll buy some new ambulances. We'll help you sweep up the glass. Terrific. But after years and years of this, people are now asking, what is the government actually going to do. And on that, they are painfully quiet. And Gideon, why do you think that Jewish hate and extremist kind of anti-Israel sentiment has slipped through the cracks?

16:43I think anti-Jewish hatred is quite remarkable in its adaptability. People will quite literally say that the worst people to walk the earth ever were the Nazis, and then go and promote propaganda without flinching, that the Nazis actually used themselves and were quite proud of. We're seeing a place where people are quite happy wittering on about Zionists and Israelis, and sometimes even about Jews, and no one questions why it is that they are obsessively focused on the world's only Jewish state or the movement to have Jewish self-determination. This is what Zionism is. This is what Israel is.

17:31And Jews are a people who almost all Jews in the UK describe themselves as Zionists. So it's extremely disturbing to see how blind people are to this. You're the CEO of Campaign Against Anti-Semitism. What does need to be done by the government to A, protect Jewish people and B, prevent attacks from becoming even more deadly? A lot of it is about protecting this country. You know, we've had in the last couple of weeks, Iranian spies, alleged Iranian spies arrested in the UK for targeting Jewish Jewish properties and Jewish institutions and Jewish individuals, places like this ambulance station.

18:20We now as a country have had to fund the provision of special security at Jewish schools, synagogues, and yes, it's still not enough. And the government needs to realise that dealing with the symptoms of this mad radicalisation that has been happening is not good enough. They need to go and tackle the causes as well. And that means some uncomfortable things. They can't tolerate hate marches and hate preachers anymore. We organize protests ourselves sometimes. I'm all for it. But I do not think there is any call or justification for people to be marching every single week, month after month. And the law should be changed.

19:04We've recommended it. The government have said they're looking into it. It is so painfully slow. On the proscription of terrorist organizations? Why is the Muslim Brotherhood not banned in this country? Why is Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which apparently is sending spies to the UK, which is firing on British bases, why is that not banned as a terrorist organization? And because of the failure to enact any kind of realistic policy on any of these issues, be it from that that I've just mentioned through to what you were talking about about anti-semicism within the nhs anti-semicism in our schools our universities is a publicly funded institutions the failure to deal with any of that means that not only does the british community the british jewish community feel in the majority of us according to our polling feel that there is no longer a future a long-term future for jews in this country not only that but a lot of british people are starting to wonder what on earth happened to this country and why it no longer resembles the country that they grew up in.

20:14And lastly, Gideon, I want to get your thoughts on this. What would you say to people who might say that the NHS shouldn't be responsible for replacing these destroyed ambulances, waiting times for NHS ambulances are up already, and that this is just going to increase pressure for quote-unquote the general population even though Hatsola serves the North London community. Yeah what would you say to those saying that perhaps that you know the Jews are getting special treatment? There is no way that the purchase of all of those ambulances which are expensive bits of kit is going to be afforded by the volunteers and their friends and family who fundraised for the first four ambulances.

21:05I just can't see it happening at any speed. And so, look, it's welcome if the government has got the money available to help buy more ambulances. Absolutely. But the question goes back to what we're doing as a country because there's only so often that you can compensate someone, buy something that was destroyed, help them repair something that has been burned before it just becomes too expensive and too impossible. Instead, we need to go after the source of this extremism. And it lies in the Islamist extremists. It lies in the far left and to an extent also the far right. And that needs to be tackled by this government, by our police forces and by the regulators, which are supposed to make sure that public institutions are places which counter radicalisation rather than catalyse it.

22:05Well, thank you so much for your time today, Gideon. Thank you very much.

22:15And that's The Standard. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. If you're new here, hit follow and give us a rating. If you'd like to get in touch, email us at podcasts at standard.co.uk. We'll be back here tomorrow morning. See you then.

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