How dare Sally Rooney ‘admire' Palestine Action

Spectator

6 days ago

I'm old enough to remember when it was neo-Nazis who smashed up Jewish-owned businesses. Now it's so-called progressives. Not long ago, a Jewish business in Stamford Hill in London had its windows smashed and its doors kicked in and red paint sprayed all over its walls. Only it wasn't Combat 18 or the oafish dregs of the National Front that carried out this mini-Kristallnacht – it was Palestine Action.
Israelophobia is the safest, most celebrated political position in Britain
Yes, the lobby group that is gushed over by Sally Rooney in today's Guardian, and which is cheered by every bourgeois leftist with an X account, wielded its hammers against a Jewish-owned company. It was on 28 May. In the dead of night, three masked men laid waste to the offices of a landlord business in Stamford Hill, a part of London famous for its lively community of Orthodox Jews.
Palestine Action says it targeted the business not because it is Jewish but because it rents out premises to Elbit Systems UK, an Israeli arms manufacturer. But the business said this isn't true. Speaking anonymously – because he feared anti-Semitic blowback – a spokesman for the company insisted it had 'no connection with Elbit'.
To my mind, it's immaterial whether or not the business has connections with Elbit – Palestine Action's attack on it was disgusting regardless. You don't need a PhD in the horrors of the 20th century to understand how distressing it is for Jews in particular to see their businesses smashed to smithereens. Those shards of glass on the streets of Stamford Hill will have triggered the most traumatic memories among the local population.
'For Jewish people', this kind of destruction is 'very, very scary', said the business's spokesman. Shomrim, the Jewish neighbourhood security group, said it was horrifying to once again see 'the criminal harassment of Jewish-owned properties'. Whatever Palestine Action's political intentions might have been, the objective impact of its criminal assault on a business owned by Jews was to terrorise a Jewish population.
Jews whose families came to the UK precisely to escape those 'nights of broken glass' in Russia, Germany and other nations that turned on their Jewish populations found themselves surrounded by shattered glass in Stamford Hill in 2025. Unforgivably, even the business's mezuzah – the scroll box some Jewish families attach to their front doors to remind them of their faith – ended up stained with the blood-coloured paint that Palestine Action splashed around.
It's worth reminding ourselves of this woke Kristallnacht today as pompous leftists gather in Trafalgar Square to defend Palestine Action. The government has announced that it plans to proscribe the group under anti-terrorism laws following its trespassing and vandalism at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire last week. And the anti-Israel left is up in arms. Palestine Action are heroes, they say. Really?
It's a shame that it is Palestine Action's incursion into Brize Norton – serious as that was – that has hogged the headlines. Because for me, its incursion into Stamford Hill was far more indicative of what a morally dubious movement this is. That horrendous attack confirmed that when the self-righteous of England's radical middle classes become feverishly obsessed with the 'evil' of the world's only Jewish state, then there's likely to be blowback for Jews here in the UK.
All Palestine Action did was 'spray-paint a plane', says Sally Rooney in the Guardian. No it isn't. They also spray-painted a Jewish-owned business. They also got paint on a mezuzah. They also made Jews 'very, very scared' by smashing a shopfront in a Jewish suburb. Does she still 'admire Palestine Action wholeheartedly'? If so, then I humbly venture she is not on the right side of history in the way she seems to imagine.
Independent MP Zarah Sultana has also offered her solidarity to Palestine Action. Their direct action is not a big deal, she suggests, because 'you can repair a plane, you can replace a broken window'. I sincerely hope Ms Sultana is not minimising the broken windows of Stamford Hill. I hope she is not downplaying the moral injury caused to Jews when they see the shattered glass their ancestors also saw. Perhaps she can clarify what she meant. This is important, Ms Sultana.
Some are saying the clampdown on Palestine Action is an attempt to silence criticism of Israel. Get over yourselves. Hating Israel is the dinner-party prejudice du jour. It's the moral glue of the cultural establishment. You're no one in polite society unless you pull on a keffiyeh and defame the Jewish state as the most bloodthirsty state. Quit the faux-radicalism – Israelophobia is the safest, most celebrated political position in Britain right now.
What worries me is its consequences. It seems unquestionable to me that when the influential single out the Jewish nation as the wickedest nation, the most twisted, genocidal 'entity' on earth, then ordinary Jews will get some heat. It's already happening. Should Palestine Action be branded a terror threat? I don't know. But I do know that, wittingly or otherwise, they terrorised the Jews of Stamford Hill last month.