There are moments in politics when silence is not neutrality, it is complicity. As Honorary Chair of the Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel, and as a Jew, I know what those moments look like. We have just witnessed one.
In north London, Jewish ambulances – volunteer-run, life-saving services – were burned outside a synagogue. Not vandalised. Not graffitied. Burned. Deliberately. Because they were Jewish.
This does not sit in isolation.
We have seen attacks in Bondi. We have seen the murder of Jews at synagogues in Manchester. We are seeing a pattern – one that crosses borders and contexts but is united by a single, undeniable thread: Jews being targeted because they are Jews.
We can debate policy in the Middle East. We can – and should – disagree, robustly and respectfully. But this is not that. This is not protest. This is not “context”.This is antisemitism, plain and simple, expressed through intimidation, violence and murder.
And here is the uncomfortable truth: our response, as a Party and as a movement, matters just as much as the acts themselves.
Because words have consequences.
When we soften our language, when we hedge, when we reach for “on all sides” statements in moments that require moral clarity, we create space. Space that is filled by those who do not share our liberal values. Space that is exploited by Islamist ideologies that do not begin with Jews, but so often start there.
If we are blind to that – if we tell ourselves this is isolated, or complicated, or someone else’s problem – then we are on a very slippery slope.
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