Tommy Robinson is no friend to Jews

He was invited by the country’s diaspora minister Amichai Chikli. Mainstream Jewish organisations in the UK, like the Board of Deputies and Jewish Leadership Council, issued a statement strongly condemning it, saying the majority of the Jewish community “utterly and consistently reject Robinson and everything he stands for”.

The invitation was announced the day after the Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester was attacked by a terrorist with an extreme Islamist ideology. In a post on X, Chikli directly linked the horrific attack with Robinson’s invitation. It set off an explosion of outrage in the British Jewish community. Jewish journalists were the first to respond as the news broke. Daily Mail journalist Sabrina Miller called it a “hideous decision” and Nicole Lampert wrote that “British Jews don’t want this”.

Robinson then recorded a ranting video aimed at Sabrina Miller, accusing her of hanging around with antisemites and jihadists. The Daily Mail is hardly a den of ‘jihadists’. The accusation would be laughable if it weren’t so sinister.

When the largest Jewish communal organisation - the Board of Deputies of British Jews - spoke out against the visit, Robinson railed against the “elitist Jews” at the Board and called them “woke liberals” who betrayed their community. He blamed them for open borders and mass immigration and said they were the reason “all these problems are happening”. There is absolutely no evidence of the Board calling for any of those things, but this lie is straight out of the far right playbook.

The attacker at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh who murdered 11 Jewish people in 2018 wrote in the days leading up to the massacre that ”It’s the filthy evil jews Bringing the Filthy evil Muslims into the Country!!”

This is connected to the White Supremacist conspiracy myth ‘Great Replacement Theory’ that Jews utilise mass immigration to subjugate white people and “pollute” the racial ‘purity’ of the population. The accusation that Jews hold supernatural levels of power in order to control the world is an age-old trope that has preceded pogroms and the Holocaust.

So when Jewish people saw “elite Jews” being bandied around, they recognised it for what it was. After the murders in Manchester, it felt like victim-blaming. As though Jews were being told it was their fault for their attackers being in the country. It was sickening.

What prompted me to intervene was when Robinson targeted this vitriol at the Board where my husband Adam Ma’anit works. It triggered a visceral reflex to protect him, especially after everything he has been through. His cousin Tsachi was kidnapped and killed and Tsachi’s daughter Ma’ayan was murdered on October 7.

He has been valiantly fighting for the hostages and speaking up for Israel since that terrible day. He has had death threats that we’ve had to go to the police about. He’s lost friends, sleep, and health as he dedicated himself entirely to this battle. To see a so-called ‘friend of Israel’ spew these lies and make him more of a target was chilling.

So I responded to Robinson’s posts and declared him not to be a friend. Then all hell broke loose. Robinson called me a “swine” and a “scumbag”. He eventually deleted it and semi-apologised, but his instinct to attack rather than reflect revealed much. Underneath it all is this base programming. The default is an antisemitic worldview. And that is why he’s no friend to Jews or to Israel.

Yet Robinson fills a space left empty by sensible people. There are issues this country has left to fester for decades that have come to a boil as of late. Antisemitism and extremism have exploded. Jews have been murdered in their place of worship. Institutions across the board have failed.

It’s time to address these urgent threats to the Jewish community and to us as a whole. If we don’t, then we cede the ground to those who will. I call for a grown-up discussion about far left, far right and Islamist antisemitism and more than that, I demand action.

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Heidi Bachram works to counter antisemitism and extremism and campaigns for the release of the hostages in Gaza and remembrance for the victims of the October 7 massacre.

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