We abhor the murderous antisemitism we witnessed on Thursday and extend our solidarity to all those Jewish communities directly and indirectly impacted by the horrific violence.

We are also hugely concerned by the arson attack on the mosque in East Sussex over the weekend. 

This is a time for politicians to lead with intelligence and moral clarity, not with statements that exploit and politicise the situation.

Using the horrific racist violence in Manchester, to call for restrictions on the Palestine protests and to thereby frame those who campaign for a ceasefire in Palestine, as being antisemitic is a dangerous and unhelpful intervention.

It undermines Jewish safety by encouraging the false link between Israel’s actions in Gaza and our Jewish communities here in the UK and is in itself, antisemitic.

The intensification of racism in the UK in recent years has been enabled by mainstream politicians and media who have behaved irresponsibly, exploited racist narratives and encouraged polarisation, whilst simultaneously failing to deal with growing inequality. This failure and deliberate scapegoating has led to growing online and street racism targeting religious minorities and people of colour generally.

More than ever, we need to renew our commitment to anti-racist coalition work. Working class, multi-racial and multi-religious communities have fought off campaigns to divide them before, we must do it again.

‘The struggle against racism needs to be holistic and indivisible’, our report on antisemitism with the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, from earlier this year.

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