Sackman said there was an outpouring of local support, including from Christians and Muslims, after the attacks. Photograph: Lucy North/PAView image in fullscreenSackman said there was an outpouring of local support, including from Christians and Muslims, after the attacks. Photograph: Lucy North/PAGolders Green MP decries ‘lack of vocal solidarity’ from liberal left for Jewish communitySarah Sackman says response to rising antisemitic violence in UK has been ‘muted’ after stabbings in her constituency
There has been a “lack of vocal solidarity” from parts of the liberal left in the face of rising antisemitism against the Jewish community, the Labour MP for Golders Green has said.
Sarah Sackman said the response to antisemitic violence across the UK from parts of the “moderate majority”, including some anti-racist organisations, had been “muted”. Her comments follow a terrorist attack against the Jewish community in her constituency last week.
Essa Suleiman, 45, has been charged with the attempted murders of Shloime Rand, 34, and Moshe Shine, 76, in Golders Green on Wednesday, and of Ishmail Hussein earlier the same day in Southwark.
The stabbings have intensified calls for action on antisemitism, coming within weeks of other incidents in the same area, including an attempted arson attack on a nearby memorial wall and a fire in March that destroyed four Jewish community ambulances. The police are investigating whether these incidents involved criminal proxies acting for Iran.
Sackman, the courts and legal services minister, said there has been an outpouring of support since last week’s knife attack in her constituency, with messages from Christian and Muslim faith leaders, adding the incident had “clearly resonated” with people.
“For a minority community to come under this sort of sustained level of threat and attack purely for our identity, you would expect in the normal run of things for anti-racist organisations, for trade unions, for cultural leaders to speak out,” she told the Times.
“I think what has been notable is, for some time now, a lack of vocal solidarity from the moderate majority. You would expect our anti-racist movement, who quite rightly come out vocally, regularly for other minoritised communities to have responded in kind.”
Last week, she wrote an opinion piece for the Guardian saying Jewish people wanted to go about their daily lives – working, taking their children to school and practising their faith – free from fear. Sackman wrote that she now finds herself gripping her daughters’ hands more tightly, adding that many British Jews feel both exhausted and afraid.
“Where are the marches in solidarity and support of our Jewish community? Where is the response of the liberal-left? Where are the anti-racists, the trade unions, civil society, our friends and neighbours?” she wrote.
“Where are the leaders of the powerful tech platforms who have allowed hate to proliferate via their algorithms? Where are the university chancellors, the leaders of our cultural sector and the NHS managers who must urgently root out hate in their institutions?”
Read moreIn 2013, after a Muslim centre in Barnet, north London, was destroyed in an arson attack claimed by the English Defence League, Finchley Reform Synagoguehosted the Somali Bravanese community during Ramadan. Last month, when the synagogue itself was targeted in an attempted petrol bombing, members of that same community returned to offer support in a show of solidarity.
Sackman pointed to the episode as a powerful example of mutual support, and a model for how communities can respond to rising antisemitism. She urged “tangible action” from moderate voices, saying they should show the same public backing for Jewish communities as they would for other minorities.
She added that institutions such as the NHS and universities needed to examine their own cultures to better understand how Jewish people in the UK are feeling.
Sackman stressed that the issue was not about curbing criticism of the Israeli government or weakening support for Palestinian rights, but “asking whether the way in which you behave or allow others to behave within your organisation is causing a whole population to feel intimidated”.
