We Don’t Need Taller Walls. We Need to Put Out the Fire.

There comes a point when “security” stops feeling like protection and starts feeling like surrender.

Another attack on Jews. Another emergency statement. Another politician standing solemnly outside a synagogue saying all the correct things in the correct voice. Another promise of extra funding, extra patrols, extra guards, extra cameras, extra barriers, extra “reassurance”.

And now, after the Golders Green terror attack, we are told there will be another £25 million to protect Jewish communities, synagogues, schools and communal buildings. Sir Mark Rowley, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, has reportedly asked for 300 additional officers to protect Jewish communities in London.

And yes, of course, we need protection.

Of course we are grateful to the police officers who run towards danger while most people instinctively run away from it. Of course Jewish schools, synagogues, nurseries, care homes, community centres and kosher shops need to be protected while people are actively threatening them.

But let’s not confuse a barricade with a solution.

It is not victory when Jewish children need armed police outside their school gates. It is not tolerance when synagogues require security checks that feel like airport departures. It is not British decency when Jews can only gather, pray, celebrate or walk home safely because the state has built a ring of steel around them.

That is not safety. That is managed fear. And we have had enough of it.

Because we do not need bigger, taller walls. We need to stop the fire.

And part of stopping the fire means finally naming the people who have stood there, year after year, pretending the smoke was incense.

Keir Starmer has been weak on this. Painfully weak. Not because he never says the right thing. He often does. His speeches are polished. His words are measured. His face is arranged into the required expression of concern.

But British Jews do not need another carefully ironed statement.

We need action.

Since 7 October 2023, Jewish communities in Britain have watched, again and again, as so-called protests have crossed the line from political demonstration into open intimidation. Chants against Zionists. Calls for intifada. “Death to the IDF.” Praise for Hamas. Praise for Hezbollah. Praise for Hassan Nasrallah. Praise for Yahya Sinwar. Placards with swastikas. Posters and slogans that would have caused a national emergency had they targeted any other minority. Police investigated “death to the IDF” chants at an Al-Quds Day demonstration in March 2026, and previous London marches have seen arrests over swastika placards and racist public order offences.

And for too long the response has been a dead-eyed little carousel of cowardice:

“They don’t really mean it.”

“It has to be seen in context.”

“It is political speech.”

“It is about Israel, not Jews.”

“It is emotional.”

“It is anger.”

“It is free expression.”

No.

If someone chants for the death of Zionists in Britain, they are not making a sophisticated contribution to Middle East policy. Around 90% of British Jews support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. So when people scream hatred at “Zionists”, Jews hear it exactly as it is intended: a threat aimed at the overwhelming centre of Jewish life.

And Mark Rowley’s Met has also failed this test far too often.

Yes, he is now saying that Jews face an unprecedented threat. Yes, he is now calling antisemitism an epidemic. Yes, he is now asking for hundreds more officers. Yes, he now says the problem needs tackling “upstream”.

Fine. Welcome to the conclusion.

But where was this urgency when Jewish Londoners were being told to avoid parts of their own city because another march was coming through?

Where was this clarity when “context” became the most obscene word in British policing?

Where was this courage when Jewish counter-protesters were treated as the problem because their very presence apparently risked provoking the people marching past them?

Where was this spine when week after week, month after month, the same hatred was allowed to parade itself through the capital dressed in keffiyehs, slogans and revolutionary fancy dress?

We do not want ghettos. We did ghettos. That story did not end well.

We do not want more walls, more barriers, more guards, more razor wire, more fortified schools, more reinforced shul doors, more nervous parents, more children asking why there are police with guns outside their cheder. We want to live freely.

That should not be a radical Jewish demand in Britain in 2026.

And no other group in any civilised country would be expected to endure this level of hatred while being told, with a straight face, that the people screaming it have “freedom of speech” and probably “don’t actually mean it”.

Try it with any other minority. Try marching through London calling for the death of Black activists. Try praising a terror group that murdered Muslims. Try carrying swastikas through a Polish neighbourhood. Try chanting for the destruction of any other people’s national homeland and then telling them not to be so sensitive.

The police would not call it nuance. Politicians would not call it context. The commentariat would not stroke its chin and wonder whether the victims had brought it on themselves.

But Jews?

Jews get sympathy. Jews get thoughts. Jews get “deep concern”. Jews get funding for fences. Jews get a few extra patrols on holy days. Jews get told to be grateful that the state will protect us from the hatred it has allowed to grow in the open.

And frankly, we are tired of it.

We do not want your bloody empty words. We do not want your polished little condolence paragraphs. We do not want another ministerial statement that says “antisemitism has no place in our society” while antisemitism is quite visibly booking Trafalgar Square, printing placards, arranging coaches and getting police escorts.

We want action. We want the law enforced. We want terror glorification prosecuted. We want support for proscribed organisations treated as support for proscribed organisations, not as an unfortunate styling choice. Hamas and Hizballah are listed by the UK government as proscribed terrorist organisations, and the law makes it an offence to invite support for, express support for, or display articles in a way that arouses reasonable suspicion of support for a proscribed group.

We want extremist rhetoric confronted before it becomes extremist violence. We want marches stopped when they become mobile intimidation theatres. We want Jewish neighbourhoods protected from mobs, not Jewish residents protected from the consequences of the mobs being indulged. We want the grown-ups in the room to stop hiding behind the curtains.

And we want the truth spoken plainly.

Not all Muslims are the problem. Not even close. The peaceful majority of Muslims want what every decent family wants: safety, dignity, work, faith, family, peace and a future for their children.

But radical Islamism is a problem. Violent political Islamism is a problem. Jew-hating extremism dressed up as liberation is a problem. Far-left revolutionary cosplay that finds Jews terribly inconvenient is a problem. Far-right Nazism is a problem. Iranian regime influence is a problem.

And a state that cannot say these things clearly cannot solve them.

This is the fire.

Not the synagogue door. Not the school gate. Not the Jewish family walking home from Friday night dinner.

The fire is the ideology. The fire is the incitement. The fire is the mob that learned it could wrap hatred in the language of justice and be applauded for it. The fire is the journalist who says “yes, but”. The fire is the academic who calls terrorism “resistance”. The fire is the activist who cries for every civilian except the Jewish ones. The fire is the politician who waits until the flames are licking the windows before discovering moral clarity.

So yes, protect us while the danger exists.

Fund CST. Support Shomrim. Guard the schools. Secure the synagogues. Put officers where they are needed.

But do not insult us by pretending this is the answer.

The answer is not more razor wire.

The answer is courage. The courage to say that antisemitism is not “complicated” when Jews are bleeding. The courage to say that terrorism is not “resistance”. The courage to say that hatred does not become righteous because it learnt the language of human rights. We do not need to be hidden better.

We need the hatred confronted properly. Not tomorrow. Not after the next attack. Not after the next emergency funding announcement.

Now.

Because the fire is already raging. And walls do not put out fires.

They only decide who gets trapped inside.