I concluded: it was open season on the Jews. I went on patrol with police and the Jewish community’s own security teams and was astonished to find the precautions being taken to protect potential targets.
Jewish cemeteries had been repeatedly vandalised and gravestones daubed with swastikas. An old people’s home in Manchester was protected with barbed wire. A nearby school had high fences, surveillance cameras and full-time guards.
It was the same story in London. I even discovered prominent Jewish organisations were being fitted with bomb-proof windows. Was this all really necessary, or pure paranoia? The late Mike Todd, then Chief Constable of Manchester, assured me it was not an over-reaction. ‘We know there are people carrying out hostile surveillance on Jewish targets.’
John Mann’s inquiry reported: ‘It is clear that violence, desecration and intimidation directed towards Jews is on the rise. Jews have become more anxious and more vulnerable to attack than at any time for a generation or longer.’
And that was eight years ago. Since then the threat level has increased. As we have seen in Europe, Islamist maniacs have got the Jews in their sights.
Yet Theresa May gives the impression of only just having woken up to the problem. I am sure her ‘Je suis Juif’ solidarity is appreciated, but it will soon be seen as an empty gesture, as meaningless as Call Me Dave’s absurd hokey-cokey in Paris, unless it is followed up with firm action.
To her credit Theresa did manage to kick out Abu Qatada, and Captain Hook was finally extradited and is beginning a life sentence in an America jail. But other preachers of hate are allowed to flourish, radicalising a new generation of terrorist recruits, who are exposed to vile anti-Jewish propaganda in mosques and online.
Directly beneath the photo of Theresa in yesterday’s Mail was a story about a convicted Al Qaeda terrorist with links to the Paris shootings, who we can’t deport because of the Human Rights Act — despite the Home Office branding him ‘a danger to the community’.
I repeat what I wrote in the aftermath of the Paris massacre. ‘Britain is a soft touch. It’s all very well MI5 wanting more powers to intercept communications, but isn’t it about time the authorities used existing laws to smash the terrorists?
‘We’ve got conspiracy laws, as well as legislation against “hate crimes” and incitement. The Government should repeal the appalling Human Rights Act; instruct the police and security services to close down Islamist websites; stop our prisons being used as Al Qaeda recruiting offices; shut down mosques and religious schools which foment terrorism; prosecute and deport foreign hate preachers; and lock up those fanatics with British passports.’
Unless Theresa May is willing to do each and every one of those to protect not just our fellow citizens in Britain’s Jewish community but all of us, then waving a placard reading ‘Je suis Juif’ is just another worthless piece of political posturing.