Today the disgrace makes the front page. Tomorrow, everything carries on as if nothing happened.
Two Jews are stabbed in broad daylight in Golders Green, one of the beating hearts of Jewish life in London. Then come the official phrases: “shocking”, “unacceptable”, “antisemitism has no place here”. The political grief machine performs flawlessly.
The curtain rises, the actors deliver their lines, the press gives it a headline, and then everyone returns to the same comfortable lie that helped produce this moment.
Because this did not come out of nowhere. It was not some mysterious malfunction in one of the supposed capitals of Western civilisation. It is the fruit of a climate in which crowds chanting for intifada have become normal street scenery; in which calls for Israel’s destruction are repackaged as activism; in which Jewish self-determination is demonised as colonialism; and Islamist terror is wrapped in context, grievance and academic perfume.
The BBC and its respectable cousins still treat terrorist organisations as if they were simply one morally equivalent side in a difficult conflict. A little radical, perhaps. A little emotional. Occasionally beheading people, breaking limbs in public, dragging bodies through the streets, but do try to understand them. They are frustrated. Let us not be so rigid.
Hamas, Hezbollah, “armed groups”, “militants”, “resistance fighters”: BBC’s language politely irons the blood out of the story. Even in their recent Gaza “documentary” became a scandal after it emerged that the narrator was the son of a Hamas official, a detail they somehow forgot to disclose to viewers. A tiny oversight, naturally. These things happen when propaganda wears a press badge.
And while language launders terror, the street learns the lesson.
If you call a terrorist a “desperate actor” for long enough, if you describe mass rallies of Israel-hatred as “pro-Palestinian demonstrations” for long enough, if you downgrade threats against Jews into “community tensions” for long enough, sooner or later someone picks up a knife and knows exactly whom to look for.
The police protect demonstrations where people chant for intifada and fantasise about Israel’s erasure. Then, when Jews say they no longer feel safe, the solution is often simple: send the Jews home.
The threat stays on the street; the victim is advised not to look too Jewish and to lock the door quietly behind him.
Yesterday’s knife appeared in the hand of a fanatic. But it had been sharpened in words long before: in studios, newsrooms, lecture halls, marches and political statements.
Every time Jewish fear was dismissed as oversensitivity. Every time hatred of Israel’s existence was dressed up as human rights. Every time, after October 7, people looked first not at the victims, but for an explanation for the killers.
So today the shame is on the front page. There will be solemn faces, strong statements, carefully staged compassion in front of cameras. And tomorrow the familiar show resumes: terror is relativised, Israel is demonised, Jewish fear is minimised, and after the next attack we will be treated to another round of “deeply shocked” press releases.
British Jews do not need more condolences. They need a country that notices antisemitism before there is blood on the pavement.