Gideon Falter is Chief Executive of Campaign Against Antisemitism and a frequent GB News contributor
In just the past year, British Jews have been murdered at a synagogue in Manchester, ambulances belonging to a Jewish charity have been burnt down in London, and Jews have been stabbed in the street in Golders Green.
A mass shooting of Jews by men who had already acquired assault rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition was narrowly thwarted.
For twelve years, Campaign Against Antisemitism has been calling for focused policing targeting growing extremism here in Britain.
In that time, the authorities have manifestly failed to meet the threats from Islamist terrorism, along with the extremism of the far-left and far-right.
We have been warning that the longer police and politicians appease these dangerous radicals, the worse the situation will become – and we have been proved right again and again.
Today, the Government has finally made two announcements that we have long called for: the proscription of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and the announcement of additional funding for policing to protect the Jewish community.
Both announcements are hugely necessary and welcome, but nothing will come of them on their own.
The fact that the cost to keep Jews safe is now over a quarter of a billion pounds over three years is evidence of how successive governments have failed to bring radicalism and Jew hatred under control. The situation is now dire.
We have been here before. After each attack, instead of bearing down on antisemitism, an explosion of attacks followed.
The response? The same refrain of “antisemitism has no place in our society”.
This time it must be different. This funding will only help if it is accompanied by a change in government and law enforcement attitudes.
They need to tackle the extremists proactively at source, not just build ever-higher walls around Jewish communities and put ever-increasing numbers of police outside synagogues.
The ‘Britifada’ is disfiguring our country beyond all recognition, and Jews have now paid with their lives.
Existing laws need to be brought to bear on those fomenting the danger on our doorstep – including those linked to the IRGC, who must now be sought out and shut down.
And the Government needs to recognise that political grandstanding abroad feeds the danger here at home.
If police and politicians do not act forcefully now, this funding will have been wasted, the IRGC will continue to spread its poison in our country, the problem will grow to even more unmanageable proportions, more Jews will lose their safety and even their lives, and our country will slide ever further into the abyss of sectarian and extremist violence.
