Antisemitism has been “allowed to grow” by politicians and across wider society, the main Jewish security group has said in the aftermath of the attack on a Manchester synagogue, which left three people dead.
Speaking before planned pro-Palestine marches on Saturday, Dave Rich, head of policy at the Community Security Trust, said it was “remarkably self absorbed and insensitive” for people to attend a silent vigil for Gaza after Thursday’s attack.
One worshipper was stabbed to death at the Heaton Park synagogue, while another was accidentally shot dead by police in their efforts to stop the attacker, a local man named as Jihad al-Shamie, whom police also shot dead.
Speaking on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4, Rich said: “The levels of anti-Jewish hatred and extremism and incitement have been allowed to grow over the last few years. I think that’s where the outrage should be directed.”
He said some sermons in mosques had been “off the charts with the incitement” in recent years and that social media companies had increasingly failed to tackle the online hate levelled at Jewish people.
He said: “I think a lot of Jewish people will be saying": ‘OK, the sympathy is great, but where’s the action?’
“I think it’s phenomenally tone deaf, to say the least, for so many people who claim to care about human rights and care about freedoms, to be taking police resources away from protecting the rights and freedoms of Jewish people to live their lives and go to synagogue in safety, all to support a proscribed terrorist organisation, which is not the same thing as supporting the Palestinians. The two are not the same.”
The pre-planned vigil against the ban on Palestine Action is being held in Trafalgar Square in central London on Saturday by the human rights group Defend Our Juries, while a similar event is being held at Manchester cathedral.
On Friday, the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, joined calls for the protest to be cancelled, while the Metropolitan police commissioner, Mark Rowley, said it would “likely create further tensions and some might say lacks sensitivity”.
However, the human rights campaigner Sir Jonathon Porritt told the Today programme: “I have no doubt whatsoever that everyone taking part in the Defend Our Juries’s silent vigil today will demonstrate huge respect and real grief for those affected by the absolute atrocity at Heaton Park.
“But I don’t think that means that we should be asked to give up on our right to stand up for those who are being devastated by an ongoing, real-time genocide in Gaza.”
The event on Saturday comes as police pledged extra support for Jewish communities on Shabbat, the sabbath.
The protest is expected to set a record for the number of people arrested at a single event of civil disobedience, the organisers said before the killings on Thursday, though it is now unclear how many of the 1,500 people who pledged to attend will actually be at the event.
The record for the most arrests stands at 1,314, made by the Metropolitan police during an anti-nuclear demonstration in 1961, which was also in Trafalgar Square.
