The rise in antisemitic attacks is racism. It isn't complicated

I grew up with what I thought were pretty left-wing values. I was raised in a council house by a single mum on benefits. I was born in an NHS hospital and educated by the state. Without left-wing policies, I would have enjoyed none of those privileges. The left wasn’t just a political position for me, it was personal. I saw it as a form of Britishness rooted in compassion.

I still feel that way. But I’m starting to look at some of the people I thought were part of the same tribe and wonder if they are who I thought they were. The moment things crystallised for me came in a conversation with an old friend, someone who had been a political influence on me when I was younger.

We were talking about the 7 October attacks on Israel. The friend shrugged and said, “It’s horrible, of course, but they should have stayed away from Palestine in the first place.” When I told him antisemitic attacks in the UK had risen, he shrugged again. “Risen from where? There was probably none to begin with.”

Get the latest news and insight into how the Big Issue magazine is made by signing up for the Inside Big Issue newsletter

That was it. That one exchange brought into focus every suspicion I had been quietly accumulating for years. I had been surrounded, for much of my life, by people whose politics seemed bound up with identity and social signalling as much as principle. It allowed them to present as anti-establishment, morally certain and a bit cool. But when the real test came, something uglier showed through.

After the antisemitic attacks in London, I saw a pattern among people I had thought politically and morally aligned with me. Some said nothing. Others loaded their support with caveats. “Yes, it’s bad,” they said. “But of course, it’s complicated, because of the actions of the Israeli government.”

Read more:

• Antisemitism is something you get used to – but we shouldn’t have to
• Kneecap speak out: ‘Against our will, we were sucked into this carnival’
• When speaking out about racism costs you everything

But it isn’t complicated. People being attacked because of their ethnicity is racism. The victims deserve society’s full and unequivocal support. Not only if they speak out against the bombing of Gaza. Our sympathies do not need to be means-tested. This is Britain. Freedom of speech is permitted. Racist violence is not.

I’m not Jewish. I grew up in London, in a multicultural environment, and was proud to be from a place where it wasn’t a big deal to live alongside people who looked or spoke differently. Yes, there was racism, but it was the knuckle-dragging kind fuelled by ignorance. 

There is something that disturbs me just as much as the racism of extremists. It is the moral evasiveness of educated people who consider themselves anti-racist. Many of those waving flags alongside rhetoric that Jewish people experience as threatening are educated, politically engaged people.

Some have bought into an intellectual framework that allows them to rationalise racism when the targets are Jews. They have done so because they are fuelled by moral certainty, reinforced by the fact that everyone in their social circle thinks the same way. 

Racism is not complicated. It is the practice of hating people on the basis of their race. Whether you are doing it explicitly, turning a blind eye while others do it, or using sophisticated language to explain it away, it is still racism. It springs from the same moral failure driving mobs who attack asylum seeker hotels. 

So what should decent people do? Stand up. Condemn what is happening. Do it loudly, visibly, and without any ifs or buts. Reach out to the Jewish friends in your life and tell them you have their backs. Do exactly what you would do if your black neighbour was attacked because of his skin colour. You wouldn’t weigh that up.

And you wouldn’t use the moment as an opportunity to slip in a point about all the other communities that have been attacked. Because that would be disgustingly ill-judged and cheap. You wouldn’t reach for context. You wouldn’t wonder whether their politics were acceptable before deciding whether to support them. 

When a Jewish person is attacked because they are Jewish, just be there. And if you find that you cannot be – if you discover there is always a caveat forming in your mind; a clause attaching itself to your sympathy – then at least have the honesty to acknowledge what that means. You are no longer part of the solution. You are part of the problem you once marched to solve.

Sam Delaney’s book Stop Sh**ting Yourself: 15 Life Lessons That Might Help You Calm the F*ck Down is out now (Little, Brown, £12.99) and is available from the Big Issue shop on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. 

Change a vendor’s life.

Buy from your local Big Issue vendor every week – and always take the magazine. It’s how vendors earn with dignity and move forward.

You can also support online:
Subscribe to the magazine or support our work with a monthly gift. Your support helps vendors earn, learn and thrive while strengthening our frontline services.

Thank you for standing with Big Issue vendors.