Islamism, not the cost-of-living, is the root of this anti-Semitic violence

On Thursday night, the day after the stabbing of two Jewish men in north London, Green Party deputy leader Rachel Millward was asked a simple question on the BBC’s Question Time. ‘You’ve stated you’ve seen racial hatred in this country’, said a member of the audience. ‘Could you please specify where that hatred is coming from?’

Most politicians would be grateful to receive such a soft under-arm on live television. The answer couldn’t be more obvious. The ‘racial hatred’ Britain is experiencing is anti-Semitism – and most of it is coming from Islamists, especially when it takes the form of terrorist violence targeted against Jews.

There is much we don’t yet know about the Golders Green terror suspect, Somali-born Essa Suleiman. But we do know he was referred to the Prevent counter-radicalisation scheme in 2020 and that Iranian Islamist group, Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia, has claimed responsibility for the attack – the same Islamist group that may have been behind the attack on Hatzola ambulances in March, also in Golders Green. Similarly, the man who murdered Jews at the Heaton Park synagogue and the three men who plotted a mass-casualty terror attack against Jews in Manchester were Islamist extremists (Walid Saadaoui, Bilel Saadaoui and Amar Hussain were described as ‘fervent supporters of ISIS’ by their sentencing judge). The ‘hatred’ that is now regularly manifesting in anti-Semitic violence invariably comes from Islamists.

Millward, blinking in confusion, looked as if she had just been addressed in Swahili. It must be said that her obvious desire to avoid the question was helped by the Question Time host, Fiona Bruce, who seemed to be just as keen on moving the conversation on as her guest. ‘Er, I’m not quite too sure what you mean’, Bruce said. ‘Do you mean the general public?’

‘[Millward] said there was racial hatred in the country’, the man in the audience repeated. ‘I’d just like to know where she thinks it’s coming from.’

Eventually, Millward was left to stand on her own two feet. ‘I mean, I was talking about there is a rise in, um, racially motivated crime – that kind of thing’, she said. ‘There’s more and more hate crimes, more reports of people feeling unsafe, there’s more division.’

But the man in the audience was having none of these prevarications. He repeated the question again. Millward, like she had finally had it with this irritating pedant, burst out with the following:

‘We live in rip-off Britain. And people are having a really, really tough time. They’re struggling because their bills are going up. They’re struggling because they can’t afford their rent. I actually think this is the reality. They’re struggling because food is now so expensive it’s eye-watering… What that means is that there’s a tendency to find someone to blame.’

And what luck for Millward. Because sitting on her left was none other than Reform UK chairman Zia Yusuf. Turning to him, she went on to state: ‘I think there have been narratives, Zia’s party is definitely one of these narratives – like the people propagating the narratives – that will point the finger at certain communities to blame them, when it is not the fault of those communities.’

Basically, Millward’s response can be summarised as: supermarket prices and Nigel Farage are the reasons why Jews are being stabbed in London.

It isn’t hard to understand why Millward gave such a tortured and dishonest answer. Just hours before Question Time went to air, two Green Party candidates standing in next week’s council elections were arrested by Metropolitan Police officers on suspicion of stirring up racial hatred. It probably goes without saying that Saiqa Ali (a Muslim woman) and Sabine Mairey were not charged under Section 19 of the Public Order Act because they had posted inflammatory pictures of their latest receipt from Sainsbury’s. They were arrested for allegedly sharing anti-Semitic content.

Of course, Millward would have been in a bind even without these untimely arrests. Since the Green Party’s Islamo-leftist turn, there was never any chance that someone from the leadership would say anything critical of Islam, or even Islamic extremism.

Everyone with a pulse knows where the ‘racial hatred’ against Jews is coming from. A party awash with Islamist-inspired Jew hatred is never going to acknowledge this.

Hugo Timms is a staff writer at spiked.