It’s too easy to underestimate anger and fear
I WAS stopped short last year. At the height of the extraordinary events around those at the heart of Corbyn’s Labour regime, when anti-Semitism seemingly found a place in a potential party of government for the first time in my lifetime, I fought to reassure those in my local community who were deeply concerned.
“In the final analysis,” I said to one elderly gentleman, “no UK Government would ever act to encourage this disgraceful anti-Semitism.” My constituent looked me in the eye and replied: “My family were told that once before and I alone am here to remember that.”
It’s too easy to underestimate the anger and fear of the Jewish community in Scotland in 2019. Some 50,000 strong after the war, it is now barely one-fifth of that and some 50% of t he community l i ve i n my Eastwood constituency.
Since the Jews arrived in numbers at the turn of the 19th century they have been a huge presence in Scotland in all walks of life, including community leaders. However, the community is in decline and increasingly feels isolated and undervalued.
Too often concerns over the policies of Israel are conflated with open hostility to Jews resident, visiting or studying in Scotland. Ignorance is the champion of much anti-Semitism and ever has it been.
Later this month, we will commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day. Too many in so doing absolve themselves of subsequent careless, hurtful and damaging rhetoric for the rest of the year. It’s the lessons of the Holocaust that must be remembered always and not just on this annual day of reflection.
In Eastwood, the Jewish community has always enjoyed the friendship, support, respect and engagement of its parliamentary representatives, Conservative, Labour and SNP respectively. That too is valued, as is our candour when circumstance demands.
However, incredibly to me, anti-Semitism has found a voice again across Europe and here in Scotland and the UK. It has to be tackled and defeated.
I see that as a duty and as strong a moral purpose as any in my own political life.
Scotland’s Jews are entitled to feel safe, to feel valued and to look forward with the same optimism as any of us, to life ahead in the communities in which they have lived and which they have helped shape.
Ephraim Borowski’s words are a challenge to all of us.