The South Tottenham United Synagogue, in Crowland Road, Haringey, was set on fire in broad daylight on June 24. The fire was spotted by construction workers who were working on a house opposite the synagogue. The workers called the fire fighters. The attack was publicly condemned by Keith Flett, chair of Haringey Trades Union Council, and by Haringey mayor Sheila Peacock.

A day later the Aish HaTorah, a Jewish community building in Hendon, was set on fire just after the Jewish Sabbath began on Friday evening.

No one has claimed responsibility for either of the anti-Semitic attacks.

The assaults come in the wake of reports in the media here of a rise in anti-Semitic violence in recent years. Reported assaults rose from 236 in 1998, to 310 in 2001 and to 350 in 2002, the Community Security Trust reports.

More than 100 synagogues in Britain have been desecrated since September 2000, according to a study by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia.

Anti-Semitic remarks by leading capitalist politicians have also become more prominent in the news. In February, the chairman of the ruling Labour Party, Ian McCartney, referred to the opposition Tory shadow chancellor, Oliver Letwin, as a “21st century Fagin,” who would “pick the pockets of Scotland’s pensioners.” Fagin is a Jewish villain in the Charles Dickens novel Oliver Twist. Letwin, who is Jewish, was until recently a director of the British branch of NM Rothschild bank. Ultrarightists often scapegoat bankers with Jewish names for the effects of the social crisis, seeking to divert the attention of working people and middle-class layers away from the source of the crisis—capitalism. Social-democratic and other politicians have recently adopted this method as well.

Left-wing Labour politicians have directed anti-Semitic jibes at opponents in the party’s leadership. During the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq last year, for example, Labour Member of Parliament Tam Dalyell claimed that the “Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs” was driving the U.S.-UK policy towards Iraq. Dalyell added that British prime minister Anthony Blair was too strongly influenced by Downing Street’s Middle Eastern envoy, Michael Abraham Levy. Levy, who is Jewish, raises funds from wealthy donors for the Labour Party.  
 
 
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