The Prime Minister vowed to stand with the Jewish community after the Golders Green attack, and that the fight against antisemitism was an issue for ‘everyone in this country’
Keir Starmer has claimed the fight against antisemitism is a battle over what sort of country we want to live in.
The Prime Minister vowed to stand with the Jewish community after the Golders Green attack, and that the fight against antisemitism was an issue for “everyone in this country”.
He made the comments shortly after the Home Secretary unveiled £25million for security to boost police patrols and protections around synagogues, schools and community centres.
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Mr Starmer was speaking at an event in Downing Street to discuss how to respond to the incident, which is the latest in a series of attacks against the Jewish community.
He said: “An attack on our Jewish community is an attack on all of us, and we have to approach it in that way. We are fast tracking legislation to deal with malign state actors and of course, we must absolutely deal with the root causes of both anti-semitism, and extremism. I do think there’s a wider duty on all of us in terms of the confidence in the criminal justice system to be able to deal with appalling attacks like this, to show that it can act in a swift, agile and visible way.
“It is often said that we stand with our Jewish community, but we do stand with our Jewish community, of course we do, but it’s our fight as well. It’s the fight of everyone in this country, because it’s about what sort of a country that we want to live in.
“We’ve got to make this a bigger fight, it is a fight for what we believe is the kind of country that we ought to and want to live in.”
Two Jewish men, aged 76 and 34, were stabbed in a terrorist attack in the area on Wednesday. They are in a stable condition in hospital. Jewish leaders called for tougher action on anti-semitic violence after the double stabbing at around 11.15am which has been declared a terrorist attack.
Mr Starmer added: “What we saw last night was people being targeted because they are Jewish, I’m absolutely clear about that. There’s no getting away from the fact that this was not a one-off.
“This has been a series of attacks on our . community, particularly in recent weeks, and there is a very deep sense of anxiety, of concern about security, about safety, about identity frankly.”