Current policing efforts to protect British Jews are significant
It would be wrong to suggest, as some in the community have, that the police do not care and the Government has done nothing
The Sun is setting on Erev Shabbat.
Staring out the window, I see women pushing baby strollers along the uneven pavement and men wearing furry shtreimels, dashing to Shul.
Dotted between the worshippers are Jewish and non-Jewish men and women, roaming the high street, wearing high-viz jackets emblazoned with the Community Security Trust logo.
Young children, who are carefully crossing the road, wave excitedly at the counter terror policing van I am sitting in. I wave back.
There are likely dozens of uniformed and plain clothes security officials operating in this modest strip of north west London, home to a significant percentage of Britain’s approximately 300,000 Jewish residents.
It may seem excessive.
But six days after my ride-along with one of the police’s newly launched hate crime patrols, Essa Suleiman would rampage through these same streets trying to murder Jewish locals.
This attack did not come out of nowhere.
It followed the firebombing of four hatzola ambulances and a spate of further attempted arson attacks on synagogues and Jewish charities.
A previously unknown group – Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia (HAYI) – claimed responsibility for many of these and British police are now investigating the group’s links to the IRGC.
Against this backdrop, police launched Operation Compertum on April 18, a colossal, multi-pronged campaign to keep British Jews safe and catch the would-be arsonists and terrorists.
To understand the full extent of the Met’s latest policing operation, I joined officers on part of their 13 hour shift in north west London.
Sitting with the two officers, I was surprised by their tireless dedication to their mission statement: protect British Jews.
For hours they meandered through the streets of Hendon, Barnet and Golders Green, watching over the Jewish community like silent guardian angels.
When we were called to a possible incidence of “hostile reconnaissance” outside a Jewish primary school, early on in the day, we drove to the scene at breakneck speed while sirens whirred and blue lights flashed.
Outside the school, a non Jewish security guard and two non Jewish police officers worked together to better safeguard the site.
“The idea of hating someone because of the God they choose to worship is just baffling” one of the officers tells me earnestly, during a short break at a gas station.
From my time on the patrol it became clear that a huge number of policing resources are being dedicated to protect the Jewish community from this Iran-sponsored “intifada” every single day.
“Our response will always match the threat and will be based on the tactics we feel at that time are most appropriate to both reassure but also mitigate and disrupt the threat” Commander James Conway, who is leading Operation Compertum, tells me.
His comments come as police announce a new dedicated team of 100 additional officers who will be deployed throughout north west London to keep British Jews safe from attack.
It is news which fills me with an enormous amount of reassurance. Everywhere I look I see politicians, journalists and policemen talking about and standing up to antisemitism.
But for many in my community, this has still not cut through.
Questions that have lingered for years – Is Britain safe? Why don’t the police do more? Has the Government abandoned us? – are now being asked with an intensified ferocity.
It is deeply saddening
So too were the videos of Jewish onlookers booing, and heckling politicians in Golders Green.
It is wretched that British Jews have been made to feel so frightened and alone. In our helpless despair and palpable fear, it is easy to scapegoat the Government and angrily blame them for this foul situation.
And of course it is true that the Government could have taken a firmer stand. They should have banned the IRGC long ago, taken calls to “globalise the intifada” at face value, and injected Jewish security services like CST and Shomrim with much needed funding.
But it would be wrong to suggest the police do not care and the Government has done nothing. This is not an experience I have ever had with parliamentarians in Westminster in my role as Whitehall Correspondent for the Sunday Telegraph, or during my several hours with the ordinary bobbies on the beat. Britain has a long tradition of being good to its Jews and I believe in my heart this will continue.
Evil actors are trying to harm us and scare us out of our homes, but this hatred is not coming from our Government, our police or our people. It does us no good to turn on those who are genuinely trying to help us.
My time with the police on their hate crime patrol tells a complicated story.
The threat against British Jews is real. But so is the policing response.
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