Jewish schools and synagogues will get £10million a year for guards to protect against anti-Semitic attacks, David Cameron announced last night.
In a hard-hitting speech to Jewish leaders last night, he promised not turn ‘a blind eye’ both to physical attacks and to ‘non-violent extremism’.
The Prime Minister said new money had been found in the Budget to protect the community following the terrorist attacks in Paris and at a synagogue in Denmark.
He said he had been ‘sickened beyond belief’ by the attacks in Paris in which journalists were killed at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, and more people died at a kosher grocery store.
‘At a time when once again the Jewish communities of Europe feel vulnerable, and when anti-Semitism is at record levels here in Britain, I will not stand by, I will not turn a blind eye’, Mr Cameron said.
“I will not stand by, I will not turn a blind eye” Prime Minister David Cameron
And he hit out at the ‘poisonous ideology’ of Islamic extremism, which he said involved not just terrorist attacks but ‘incitement’ on the internet and by radical preachers.
He said this involved the peddling of ‘the idea that Muslims all over the world are being persecuted as a deliberate act of Western policy… that 9/11 was a Jewish plot or that the 7/7 London attacks were staged.’
He told the Community Security Trust, a Jewish charity which protects the community against anti-Semitism, that their 3,000 volunteers represent the ‘best of Britain’.
Currently around £2billion a year is provided in security to Jewish state schools. But the Prime Minister said he had been asked what would happen if there was a terrorist attack at a private school.
‘How would we feel if we know we could have done more?’, he said. ‘That’s not a thought I am prepared to entertain’.
He announced £7million a year of new money to fund guards for all Jewish private schools and colleges across the country.
He added that MPs from all parties had highlighted the threat to synagogues and community buildings, which would get £3million.
“How would we feel if we know we could have done more? That’s not a thought I am prepared to entertain” Prime Minister David Cameron
‘That’s over £10million of new money for security – this year and every year – for as long as necessary’, Mr Cameron said.
There will also be a one-off £1.5million payment to the Trust to fund state of the art CCTV cameras.
Mr Cameron said the Jewish community feels ‘safe to live and flourish’ in Britain, at a time when thousands of Jews are fleeing France every year to live in Israel.
He added: ‘For as long as I am Prime Minister, you will never be alone. When people talk of trying to boycott Israel, you will never be alone. With me you will always have a British Prime Minister whose belief in Israel is unbreakable.’
Source: Daily Mail
