Steelman · slot A
The permission-structure case
A British Jewish community leader would argue —What happened in Golders Green did not arrive out of nowhere. For two years, the people who govern this country have told the public that the world's only Jewish state is uniquely criminal, that those who march through London chanting for its destruction are conscientious protestors, and that policing the resulting harassment of visible Jews is somehow a free-speech problem. The Green Party has built an electoral revival on it; Labour ministers have winked at it; the police, as in Birmingham, have at times absorbed the worldview of the mob. Iran did not invent this atmosphere — it shopped in it. When you spend two years signaling that Jewish life is morally suspect, you should not be surprised when someone walks up to a Jew at a bus stop and puts a knife in his throat.