The Hatzola attack has exposed the conspiratorial rot of ‘anti-Zionism’

Nothing better illustrates the obsessive hatred of ‘anti-Zionists’ than how they react when Jews are attacked.

In north London on Monday morning, three masked individuals attacked four empty ambulances belonging to Hatzola, an emergency service that operates in Jewish areas but which serves all the members of the local community. An Iran-backed group, the Islamic Movement of the People of the Right Hand (Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya), a group with Islamist symbols similar to those of Hezbollah, quickly claimed responsibility. The group has already been associated with other violent incidents in Europe, including recent attacks on synagogues in Liège and Rotterdam. Two suspects have now been arrested, although no links to People of the Right Hand have yet been confirmed.

It is genuinely harder to imagine a more blatant violation of civic norms and humane values. This was a pure anti-Semitic crime, designed to intimidate and wound the local Jewish community at a time of rising Jew hatred. To its credit, the UK government offered swift condemnation and paid for new ambulances, and there was an outpouring of sympathy from many quarters.

But there was also a hysterical meltdown from every deranged anti-Israel hater, desperate to plumb new depths of irrationality, stupidity and disgrace. On X, the belief that this was a ‘false flag’ attack by Zionists, or the Israeli government, went viral.

These conspiracy theorists come in all shapes and sizes, arriving from various fringes of the political spectrum to meet on the common ground of ‘anti-Zionism’. A tweet rubbishing any possible Iranian motive for the Hatzola attack – and heavily hinting Israeli involvement – garnered tens of thousands of likes. Another claiming that People of the Right Hand is a front group for Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, was also gleefully retweeted by anti-Israel zealots on the left and the right.

On her X account, Jayda Fransen, former deputy leader of the far-right Britain First movement, claimed that British Jews have ‘their own Hatzola ambulances’, as well as ‘their own police force’, meaning that ‘Jews run parallel emergency services for their own people in Britain’. She also shared a post that stated:

‘It is interesting that the torched ambulances were in the process of being replaced and no longer needed. That means they will get all the insurance money now as well plus the outpouring of sympathy. Wonder who would come up with such a scheme?’

It seems like you just can’t stop those devious, manipulative and downright avaricious Jews, can you? If they aren’t manufacturing stories of rape and murder on 7 October, then surely they must be busy setting fire to their own ambulances?

It is interesting how such a claim, though blatantly false, is designed to mitigate our horror and weaken our condemnation. A Jewish-only ambulance service, Fransen suggests, doesn’t belong in London. It is distinctly un-British, an alien intrusion in white Britain, rather like the Jews themselves. Hence, destroying these ambulances isn’t so bad after all because they are an affront to white, British values.

The pattern of responding to murderous attacks against Jews with conspiracy theories, deflections, evasions and denial is typical of everything we have seen since 7 October 2023. First, there were those who denied Hamas’s crimes, arguing that the savage pogrom was an Israeli assault on its own people – despite the fact Hamas had recorded the attacks themselves, and broadcast them to the world at the earliest opportunity. Then there were the rape deniers. The UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, was among many who denied Hamas’s mass sexual assault on that dark day. And we all know about the volunteer army of poster-destroyers and ribbon-cutters who sought to remove any trace of Israeli victims and hostages from Western city centres.

Just as odious as those who seek to deny anti-Semitic attacks are those who try to dilute them with misleading comparisons. Increasingly, anti-Semitism is seen as ‘the other side of the coin’ to Palestinian suffering. Four burnt ambulances compared to a ‘genocide’ is barely a contest, is it? It is impossible to imagine this kind of relativism being used to diminish the suffering of any other minority group. If a crazed extremist desecrated a mosque and then a Jew suggested that this was nothing compared to 7 October, the outrage would be palpable. And rightly so.

Admitting that Jews could ever be victims of an attack sits uneasily with a ‘progressive’ narrative in which they are white oppressors guilty of backing apartheid, racism and colonialism. In this cartoonish view of the world, Jews are permanently on the wrong side of history until they renounce their parochial attachment to Israel (and their own faith) and embrace the religion of ‘anti-Zionism’.

Unless these warped conspiracy theories are called out, the scourge of poisonous anti-Semitism will continue to seep through the arteries of modern Britain. Indeed, if the response to Monday’s attack is anything to go by, we are already dangerously ill.

Jeremy Havardi is a journalist and historian.