Sir Keir Starmer refused to show his face to the furious crowd

How to describe the mood? Apprehension? Yes. Frustration? That too. Fear? You could sense that. But anger? Definitely anger. Outside the headquarters of Hatzola, the Jewish ambulance service in Golders Green, the banners and placards were being waved; the shouts and chants rising in the air. “Keir Starmer, Jew Hater… Keir Starmer’s a traitor … Coward! Show your face!”

No chance of that. His convoy of cars with blacked-out windows, flanked by police outriders, turned off the Finchley Road and iron gates closed behind them. It was impossible to see who was actually inside.

Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Mark Rowley, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, shadow home secretary Chris Philp and local MP Sarah Sackman, a Labour minister, had already appeared at the scene of the stabbings to make statements. The welcome from the crowd assembled there – the placards, the shouts and chants – had not been welcoming.

Perhaps that’s why Downing Street made the decision to confound everybody’s expectations by coming here, half a mile up the road, sparing Starmer the fury of the crowd.

“He’s a coward. No one wants him here,” said Moshe, 20. He didn’t want to give me his full name. “He’d be happier going to the mosque,” said someone else.

“Of course we’re frightened,” a woman says. “The Government bought new ambulances, they’ve pledged more money. But where’s the protection? What happened yesterday wasn’t an attack on a synagogue or on ambulances. It was on the street in broad daylight. No one is safe. It’s stabbings now.”

Her grandmother, she said, was a German Jew, a Holocaust survivor, and she was exploring the possibility of getting a German passport. “I’m applying because I want a bolt hole. My grandmother always said: ‘Be careful. They’ll tolerate you, but you will never be accepted.’ I don’t want to leave Britain. I’m a British citizen and proud of it. Why should I go?”

This is said with a note of sadness. Is this what Britain has become? Once a refuge for Jews from the oldest hatred in the world. And now a place where Jewish people speak openly of their fear, afraid even to say their name because it might endanger them. Where in some parts of the country a knock on the door from pro-Palestinian activists, taking names of “Zionists”, carried the echo of Nazi Germany, when people were instructed to boycott Jewish businesses. Is this what Britain has become?

In Golders Green, these are the streets, these are the houses, the people, who represent a community that itself represents something – the flight from intolerance. Jews began to settle here before the First World War and the community was bolstered by the Second, when Britain was a bulwark against anti-Semitism.

How terrible the irony, how awful the reversal of fortune, that now these Jewish people are seeking in some cases to retrace their steps. Can it be true that a German passport today offers greater sanctuary?

Is this the blasted reality of life for British Jews today? And if those same Jews feel anger, fear, frustration, what must the rest of us feel seeping from the streets of Golders Green? A creeping shame. What must we be forced to observe and record if not an elegy for the nation we thought we were, of tolerance and stoic resistance to extremism.

“We’re living in a modern ghetto,” says one man. Another says the BBC and figures such as Zack Polanski, the Green Party leader, share some of the blame for their characterisation of Israel.

“What Polanski says influences people’s views. The BBC also influences people’s views. It’s a chain reaction. That’s why we’re getting all this terrorism now. It’s been allowed to fester.”

The chants were getting louder. “Protect our children”. “Enough is Enough”. And a new one, “Keir Starmer’s a w--ker”, chanted with particular gusto.

Yet another woman preferred not to give me her name. “The Government should be proscribing the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], and stopping the pro-Palestine marches. They are hate marches. The stabbings, the attacks on synagogues, burning of the ambulances – this is what ‘Globalise the intifada’ means.”

There were Union flags, one entwined with the flag of Israel.

Then a burly man with a shaved head and a loud voice arrived, waving the Sun and Lion flag of the former Iranian monarchy, and chanting “UK put them on the list, IRGC terrorists”. His name was Arash, and he described himself as a “tattooist and activist”.

There is a sizeable Iranian community in Golders Green. On the corner is a restaurant, the Savastano shisha lounge, where a poster in the window read “Stop the massacre by the Iranian regime. Stand with the Iranian people.”

“We stand with the Jewish people, we have the same enemy,” Arash says. “They have the right to live peacefully.”

A man came over as we talked, wearing a sign on his back reading “Stop the Jew Hunt”, with a yellow star with the word Jude, and tapped Arash on the shoulder. “We need to respect what happened yesterday,” he said, and pointed to a placard, “Keir Starmer, Jew harmer”.

Arash nodded and obligingly picked up the chant. “Keir Starmer, Jew harmer.”

Jack Miller, an activist for the Stop the Hate group, set up in response to the anti-Semitic rhetoric of the pro-Palestine marches, has a shop on the road selling clothes and accessories where the two stabbings happened. He said: “The attacker ran past our business while I was in there.

“It’s very scary. Nice calm words and throwing money around aren’t enough. We don’t want the aftercare any more. We want the cancer sorted.”

Starmer had been in the Hatzola offices for almost two hours. The balmy spring morning was turning decidedly hot. And so were the chants, the anger as palpable as it had been when he arrived – and the sense of bewilderment, sadness and betrayal. Is this what Britain has become?

Now the iron gates opened and suddenly the convoy of cars was speeding past and away, as the chant went up. “Keir Starmer, show your face.” He hadn’t.

[Source: Daily Telegraph]