My son got anti-semitic abuse on a train. Why did nobody stand up for him?

In a climate of rising extremism, anti-semitism is an attack on all of us – and all of us must take responsibility for stopping it in its tracks

Messages prefaced with the words “nothing to worry about” are almost always guaranteed to have the opposite effect.

And so it was the other day, when a text from my eldest son, Sam, began with this classic prologue.

In this case, it read “nothing to worry about, but.... just been verbally abused by a stranger calling me a ‘f***ing Jew’ on the Tube.”

I didn’t even have time to appreciate his deferential asterisks before dialling his number in frantic panic.

It turns out that as Sam and his girlfriend travelled the Northern Line on a lunchtime train, a complete stranger who appeared to be Muslim, began screaming at him for being Jewish. He also called Sam and his “people” murderers for killing “my people”.

(Sam, though dressed in typical student jeans and sweatshirt combo, was clearly picked out since he happened to be wearing a skullcap – something, as a proud Jew, he insists on doing.)

As the rant continued, the rest of the carriage buried their heads in their free newspapers or peered in fascination at their laps. Even though the stranger alighted at the same stop as Sam and persisted with his poisonous invective.

Fortunately my 23 year old son had the good sense to deprive his attacker of the oxygen of confrontation and walked away (although the incident has been reported to the police).

Your default position on reading this may well be, well, what were the other passengers supposed to do?

Ever since the unthinkable happened and Cpl Lee Rigby was murdered in broad daylight outside the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, we have become terrified by the prospect of random extremist violence. Who could afford to challenge such a man? Especially since it was recently revealed that police are currently monitoring more than 3000 Islamist extremists who are willing to carry out attacks on the UK.

Of course it isn’t only radicalised Muslims who are capable of such manifest abuse; bigots and racists come in all shapes and colours. But in the current climate, anti-semitism is particularly concerning – especially just weeks after we marked Holocaust Memorial Day.

At the very least, a pull of the communicating cord might have been a gesture of solidarity. Look no further than attacks at both satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and at a kosher supermarket in Paris and remember that the gunmen linked to Islamic state militants came for the cartoonists and for the Jews. These atrocities were an assault on freedom of expression – political, personal or religious. It seems jihadists don’t split hairs – and that’s why neither should we.

According to the Metropolitan Police, 2015 was the worst on record for anti-Semitism in London alone.

Little wonder that as pupils at a Jewish school, my younger children have to pass through high wire fences and security checks to get as far as the playground. Or that guards and CCTV now offer a palpable presence outside every Jewish organisation and whenever we hold communal events.

Is this how we want people to have to live?

Historically, Britain has been regarded as a place of refuge – especially for the Jews – which is why we cannot regard anti-Semitism in a vacuum.

Indeed many have recently drawn comparisons between the acceptance of young Syrian refugees to Britain and the children who arrived on the Kinder transport, as they fled Nazi hatred in war torn Europe. (Although Britain’s offer of sanctuary in 1939 came at a price: Jewish and non-Jewish agencies had to promise to fund the operation and to ensure that none of the refugees would become a financial burden on the public. Every child also had to have a guarantee of £50 to finance his or her eventual re-emigration.)

Children are doubtless the innocent victims of war. But so too are British children – yours and mine – potential victims of a war being waged on the streets of this country.

This is why anti-Semitism is a problem for all of us.

So please, if you hear someone being yelled at for being Jewish, don’t believe this is not in your name. Otherwise, who knows? Next time it might be you getting the “nothing to worry about” text, when you should have been worrying long before...

See more on this Topic