This Shabbat, during the last days of Passover, an anti-Israel march was inexplicably allowed through Westcliff’s quiet Jewish neighbourhood. Amid chants of “globalise the intifada”, one woman in vaguely Christian garb lugged a big cross. It was Easter weekend – in past centuries a dangerous period for Jews in Europe. Whether that symbolism was intentional or accidental – the effect was chilling.
The police had rebuffed earlier requests to divert the protest route away from the tiny community. Instead, they escorted the protesters through the Jewish neighbourhood. Rather than preventing the harassment of Jews, the officers facilitated it.
We’re told by those close to the community that many Westcliff Jews – particularly women and children from the strictly Orthodox community – stayed away from synagogues for fear of harassment. Some families left the area altogether that weekend. Deeply religious Jews felt so unsafe that they didn’t dare to attend Shabbat service in their own synagogues. Do Essex Police even know how much they failed their community?
This wasn’t an isolated failure. For the past 18 months, a relentless wave of so-called pro-Palestine marches often turned into hate and threats. We’ve heard calls for jihad and the destruction of Israel. We’ve seen Hamas and Hezbollah flags and marches routed close to synagogues and Jewish schools. This isn’t peaceful protest. It’s intimidation. What is being sold to the public as the mere exercise of free speech is the immoral, if not illegal, restriction of our freedom to live and worship in peace and without fear.
Last month, at the CST annual gala dinner, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper promised new legislation to protect houses of worship from this kind of intimidation. That promise is welcome.
But we do not need to wait for new laws to prevent the intimidation of a religious community. We need the police to use the powers they already have.
The police green-lit an anti-Israel march right through a Jewish community on the final days of Passover. What possible justification exists for that? Why could the protesters express their “free speech” only by marching through a remote Jewish neighbourhood?
Don’t blame inexperience. Essex Police had 18 months to watch how across the country these “peace marches” descended into hate rallies.
They could have particularly consulted the Met’s decision earlier this year to finally re-route a march on a Shabbat. Moreover, Essex Chief Constable Ben-Julian Harrington is not just some provincial officer – he is the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for public order.
It’s difficult to imagine the police approving white-hooded “protesters” carrying crosses to march through black neighbourhoods or neo-Nazis to parade through a Muslim neighbourhood on Eid al-Fitr (or any other day for that matter). And rightly so.
We are glad these communities are protected from such “free speech” but why not ours? Perhaps the police have simply concluded that it is easier to limit the rights of law-abiding Jews than to limit the intimidation by often law-breaking protesters.
And yet, amid the bleakness – amid the hate marchers and the police going the path of least resistance (and responsibility) – something remarkable happened.
Videos shared online showed locals, ordinary Brits, standing up for the Jewish community.
In one memorable clip, a local man – pint in hand – shouts down the hate marchers, his outrage palpable. He didn’t need any authorisation from the Home Office. He didn’t need new legislation. Just moral clarity.
British Jews do not ask for special treatment, but the equal enforcement of our rights: to worship without fear. To walk to our schools and synagogues without abuse. To live in peace.
The man with the pint understood that. When will those in charge?
