Two years ago on Tuesday, Hamas terrorists carried out the deadliest massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust. Over a thousand men, women and children brutally murdered and hostages still held all for one reason: because they were Jewish. We will not stop working with our international partners until all the hostages are home and there is lasting peace in the region.
When I visited Auschwitz earlier this year I was struck by a photograph that haunts me to this day. It showed a Nazi guard standing with Jewish prisoners, staring directly into the camera and smiling. I felt such sickness and desolation trying to comprehend the sheer barbarity of what happened in that place.
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Yet this photograph showed a complete indifference to such evil. This was not someone reluctantly following orders from on high. It was an ordinary guard who had become so utterly consumed by poisonous words and by the hatred of difference that he had become a willing participant in the darkest crime against humanity.
The Holocaust itself is unique in history but that indifference to hatred is not. Neither is that dehumanisation of others and that journey from poisonous words to appalling acts of violence. It’s how a terrorist with a warped ideology can decide to attack and kill Jewish people he may never even have met, simply because they were Jewish. And it presents a profound threat to what we stand for as a nation, a threat to the very fabric of our proud multi-faith democracy.
The truth is this: for too long, our country has been too indifferent to antisemitism. This is not a recent phenomenon but it is a hatred that has been rising, especially since the atrocities of October 7.
This day-to-day acceptance of antisemitism has permeated our whole society. Today in Britain, many Jewish schoolchildren feel compelled to hide their school uniforms. In primary schools they practise bomb drills: small children hiding beneath their desks in fear of an attack. Synagogues have had to be protected by brave volunteers prepared to risk their lives, just like those I spoke to in Manchester last week whose extraordinary courage to barricade the doors clearly averted an even worse atrocity. Jewish students have been targeted on our campuses. Jewish patients often conceal their identity when accessing our NHS.
On our streets, week after week, as some have exercised their freedom to protest against the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza, others have used this as a despicable excuse to attack British Jews for something over which they have absolutely no responsibility. Let me just spell that out for a moment: people on our streets calling for the murder of Jewish people they have never even met, for something they are not responsible for. A total loss of empathy and humanity not in some faraway land but right here in the heart of our country.
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On the anniversary of the atrocities of October 7, students are once again planning protests. This is not who we are as a country. It’s un-British to have so little respect for others. And that’s before some of them decide to start chanting hatred towards Jewish people all over again.
Driving antisemitism out of our society is a challenge for our whole country. Everyone must play their part. It will not be solved with quick fixes but with painstaking partnership work across communities, faiths, in schools, hospitals and workplaces, in every part of our country and every part of our society. That is the national effort that I am determined to lead. Rooting out antisemitism in my political party was the single most important task when I became Labour leader. And I am just as determined to root it out of our country.
This weekend the home secretary confirmed that we will legislate to give the police new powers to act against repeat protests, considering their cumulative impact. We will not stop people’s right to protest but we must ensure that they do not keep breeding hate and division. Those who call for violence against Jews must face the full force of the law. University lecturers who spout antisemitism must be barred from campuses. Jews must feel safe seeking treatment and care in the NHS. We will continue to fund the security of Jewish schools and synagogues and take every possible step to stand up to this hatred wherever it is found.
We must also be clear and unambiguous in calling out hateful ideologies that seek to divide us. That doesn’t just include Islamist ideologies of hatred towards Jews, a political ideology that is distinct from Islam and is abhorrent to the vast majority of Muslims. We must be just as resolute in fighting hatred against Muslims, as we have seen this weekend with the appalling arson attack on the mosque in East Sussex.
We do not defend our values by failing to stand up for them when they come under attack. Nor can we unite against those who seek to divide us by answering with silence or indifference. I profoundly believe we are still that same great country that welcomes all people, no matter their faith, to stand under the same flag together as neighbours and friends. We will not be silent or indifferent to hatred aimed at anyone in our society. We will bring our whole country together and defeat this division so that once again in this great country of ours, we show that hatred and violence will never win.
Sir Keir Starmer is the prime minister