From Churchill to Gail’s: A chilling rise in anti-Jewish hatred is taking place. How will Christians respond?

I like a cinnamon bun. Not too dry, not too doughy, with plenty of sugar and cinnamon. When Gail’s gets it right, it’s very moreish.

Not, it would appear to some people. They see it as a little bit too…Jewish. At least by association.

The bakery chain was started by an Israeli, you see, then grown by another, and then bought out by a venture capital company who have some investments in Israeli cybersecurity. The taint of association therefore hangs heavier than the dough.

It is for this reason that a swastika – sorry, a slew of red paint, my mistake – and some hateful words were used to deface the new Gail’s café in Archway. And the windows smashed. And protests took place outside. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign said, “This morning, Gail’s tried to quietly open up in Archway, and we made sure to give them the welcome they deserve.” The photo they posted shows protesters outside the café with a sign reading: “Boycott Israel for genocide and war crimes in Gaza”.

An ancient hatred

Whenever antisemitism rises there is a pattern familiar to anyone who knows their history, of vilification, libels, boycotts, and – attacks on Jewish businesses. And always with a bitter level of vitriol and a laser focus on the Jews, and only the Jews. This is what we see today.

It may be the state of Israel that is now, as Rabbi Sacks put it, the target for the mutating virus that is antisemitism, but the fact that this spills out into every single association any Jew, or anyone else, may have, with the only Jewish state, and the way that ultimately all Jews are swept up in the destructive wake of this wave, betrays the actual substance of what is happening. For the spectrum of targets grows ever wider. The merest whiff can trigger outrage. God forbid they discover Bagelman.

Just a few weeks ago we saw people with this same mindset knocking on doors in Brighton – cold calling no less – to urge residents to boycott the goods of Israel, and to take note of those who were willing or unwilling.

The way that this plays into antisemitism is not simply the actions themselves, but the laser focus and obsession with one and only one state and people. China imprisons a million Uighurs in camps, operates forced sterilization and intense oppression. The Iranians massacre tens of thousands of their own citizens for daring to peacefully protest. Tortures and executes them over decades. Yet barely a peep. But Israel, responding to a smorgasbord of terrorist organisations and radical Islamist governments hellbent on their destruction and constantly attacking? The only worthwhile protest, obviously.

You have to be unaware of the history of unhinged blood libels against Jewish people over the centuries, to not be repulsed, for instance, by Jeremy Corbyn reposting claims about the IDF harvesting organs and sending back boxes of skulls. If you do not recognise this pattern and have no thought to pause and ponder, then dress it up as you will, you have been sucked in to the abyss of antisemitism.

Why target Churchill?

Around the same time a Gail’s was being attacked, so was the statue of Churchill in Westminster. Its plinth was defaced with graffiti – ‘Zionist war criminal’, ‘Free Palestine’, ‘Globalise the Intifada’.

Like Gail’s, Churchill obviously has a terrible history. Whatever good he may have done in, err, helping defeat the most evil regime of the 20th century, and saving Britain and the West from Nazi rule, is subsumed into this one abhorrent fact – that he supported the return of the Jewish people to their homeland. He is therefore a Zionist war criminal. There were a plethora of countries created after the first and second world wars, and throughout history, but only this one is uniquely evil, obviously.

‘Globalise the intifada’ is a particularly worrying slogan. The intifadas in Israel were waves of suicide bombings, knifings, and terrorist attacks, killing thousands of ordinary citizens, Jews, Arabs, Druze, and others alike. We have already seen what globalising this looks like in Manchester and Bondi. The upside-down red triangle painted on Churchill indicates support of Hamas – a radical Islamist group aligned with ISIS, Al-Queda, and other Islamists who have been responsible for some of the most horrific acts of terrorism we’ve seen.

The CEO of Total Politics, Mark Wallace, asked a pertinent question regarding the defacing of the Churchill statue: “If you hate history’s greatest anti-Nazi because he helped the Jews to have a safe homeland, what might you be?”

The challenge for Christians

80-90% of Jewish people are Zionists. Partly because Israel has been the Jewish homeland for over 3,000 years. And partly because of people like the crazed Graffitists and the sliding scale of marchers, virtue signallers, and outright Islamists and activists who take the violent rhetoric to its logical conclusions and make life for Jewish people in the UK unsafe and unsustainable. Jews are literally the only minority in the UK (and elsewhere) warned to not wear outward symbols of – to be clear – their religious affiliation. Not their Israeli citizenship, just their Jewishness.

Zionism itself is simply the belief that the Jewish people should have a homeland. No more than this is contained in the word. A globalised intifada, along with the rise of antisemitism, is just more alarming evidence of the need for somewhere where Jewish people will be safe, or at least able to defend themselves.

As Christians we read a book written by Jews, follow the Jewish king and Messiah, and are grafted into the covenants made to the Jewish people, according to Paul. I defy anyone to read the Bible and to conclude that God is disinterested in the Jewish people, a nation called Israel, and is somehow opposed to the validity of either. There isn’t room to unpack the theology, or the countless biblical verses which speak to this, but Romans 9:4 and 11:25 alone should at least give some of us pause.

The current climate is causing Jewish people to wonder if we are frogs waiting to boil or citizens waiting to see liberal democracy and the values of a sane and humane society reassert themselves over anti semitic hatred.

I know which one I’m praying for. But I’m off for a cinnamon bun now.

From Gail’s.