The UK Descends Into Confected Antisemitism Hysteria

The UK has descended into confected hysteria over antisemitism to protect Keir Starmer and Labour from being wiped out by the Greens in local elections this week.

The British establishment is well-practiced in manufacturing antisemitism hysteria, of course, having used it to destroy Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party when it got too close to power.

Now the UK’s political and media establishment is trying to pull the same trick, but this time on the Green Party and its Jewish leader, Zack Polanski.

This fresh round of hysteria really ramped up after a man with a history of mental illness (and of stabbings) stabbed two Jews in north London last week. Neither died and both will live. Omitted from almost all state-corporate media coverage was the fact that he also stabbed a third man, a Muslim. Also omitted was his history of stabbings (he previously stabbed his own dog, a Somali man, and two police officers), and his history of psychotic breaks.

Despite the circumstances clearly pointing to random attacks by a person suffering an acute mental episode, the police treated it not just as a planned antisemitic attack, but as terrorism.

The terrorism threat level in the UK was raised to severe.

I remember when terrorism used to mean car bombs, political goals, manifestos and scores of dead people, not a mentally disabled man with a butter knife scratching a few people.

But the attack was perfect fodder for the British media and political establishment, who blamed support for Palestine and opposition to genocide for enabling antisemitism, and instantly began demanding pro-Palestine protests were fully outlawed.

The environment of hysteria that ensued is hard to describe if you don’t follow British media or politics closely, but it has been extraordinary.

Keir Starmer gave a primetime televised address to the nation.

His speech was a complete misrepresentation of the facts of the case, completely omitting the Muslim victim, completely omitting the man’s history of illness and random stabbing attacks. But they were deliberate lies of omission critical to constructing an antisemitism narrative.

And it worked.

Every headline, every news broadcast for a week led with the story about ‘the antisemitism crisis in Britain.’

I remember when terrorism used to mean something. I also remember when antisemitism used to mean something. And implying all Jews support the actions of Israel used to be considered antisemitic.

But now that’s all anyone with political or media power does.

Starmer said that anti-genocide, pro-Palestine protests have created the environment for antisemitic attacks. The Green Party’s opposition to Israel’s genocide, the media said, has fuelled antisemitism. The Guardian had a story on the Green Party’s ‘struggle against antisemitism,’ a story which presumably included how just eight months ago the entire Green Party membership antisemitically elected a Jewish leader.

And when you deconstruct the logical conclusions behind the implication that Jews are being attacked because of what Israel has done, it will break your brain.

Firstly the implication that Jews are attacked because of Israel, not because of their religion, means Israel represents all Jewish sentiment.

But if you say Israel’s actions are inherently Jewish, is that antisemitism or not? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Israel is all Jews but not all Jews are Israel depends cynically on the argument being advanced.

Israel’s genocide? Not all Jews!

Pro-Palestine marches against Israel’s genocide? An attack on all Jews!

Secondly, if Jews are being attacked because of Israel, does that mean Israel has done something bad? Because the media and political class have spent years telling us it hasn’t.

We’ve reached the point where everything is antisemitism apart from the thing that is actually antisemitism.

And this is because the Zionists have lost the propaganda war. Genocide is not going back in the bottle. Everyone sees what Israel has done. Everyone can now see what Israel is: a genocidal settler-colony apartheid state run by ethno-supremacists.

The deliberate conflation of antisemitism and anti-Zionism then is intended to silence criticism of Israel, and erase the truth about what Israel is and has done.

It’s also intended to stop the Green Party inflicting a humiliating defeat on Keir Starmer and his Labour Party in local elections this week.

The establishment calculation is that if you can establish in the mind of progressives the idea that a vote for the Greens is actually a vote for hate, not a vote against genocide or apartheid, you can stop Labour bleeding leftist votes to the Greens.

If the Zionist establishment can reestablish that black is white, they think they have a chance.

But it goes even deeper than that.

The UK establishment aren’t just using the attack for rhetorical purposes, they are using it to actually get Green Party election candidates arrested.

Andrew Gilligan, a former adviser to Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, and now a right-wing journalist, wrote a story about two Green Party candidates Saiqa Ali and Sabine Mairey who he said had made ‘antisemitic’ posts. Last week, he gloated that following his stories, they’d both been arrested.

The posts in question? In September 2024, Ali posted Free Palestine! and Long Live The Resistance! on her Instagram account. Mairey posted that an attack on a synagogue in Michigan, in March, was revenge, not antisemitism. Which it was. Ten days before he attacked the synagogue, Ayman Ghazali’s family in Lebanon had been murdered in an Israeli airstrike. His attack against an open and proudly Zionist synagogue was revenge.

Neither of these posts, one made two months ago, and one made 18 months ago, were antisemitic. But in an environment of hysteria, Zionists took their shot. And now Ali and Mairey have been arrested. For online posts. For Israel. For Zionism. And to try and confect a fake narrative about antisemitism to stop the rise of the Greens.

Three people are stabbed every day in London. Over one thousand people a year, of all religions and none.

None of these ever warrant a national prime ministerial TV address.

Twenty-seven mosques in the UK were set on fire between July and October last year.

No extra security funding (Starmer has promised an extra £25 million for Jewish areas). No discourse about Islamophobia. Just tumbleweed.

But a random attack on two Jews gets the full national psychodrama treatment because it can be so usefully weaponised to serve the interests of Zionism.

Are people going to fall for this?

I don’t think so.

Is Zack Polanski going to fall for this after seeing what happened to Corbyn?

Hopefully not.

We have more than enough evidence by now to know that you can never appease Zionists.

There is no middle-ground, no strategy of accommodation.

Any concession is intercepted as a sign of weakness. As Corbyn showed us, once they’ve drawn blood, they’ll bleed you dry.

The only anti-Zionist strategy that makes any sense is one of full confrontation.

The only route to victory is their full defeat.

(Thanks to all my financial supporters. You make this newsletter possible. I’ll never paywall my writing but if you appreciate my work you can donate here.)