WE ENTER the May Day weekend, which should be about celebrating working-class unity across all lands and cultures, with fear and division stalking the country.

The knifing of two Jewish men on Golders Green is part of a picture. Antisemitic attacks are on the increase, and appear to be increasing in severity. If the torching of community ambulances in March held a horrific symbolism intended to make Jews feel unsafe in their neighbourhoods, there was no direct threat to life.

There was this week.

Swift police action to apprehend and overpower the attacker was clearly necessary. An online row over whether this involved excessive use of force has, at times, exposed a worrying indifference to the fact that the suspect had just seriously injured two people and was still armed, with a disturbing implication that the attempted killing of two Jewish men was not after all that serious.

We need a zero-tolerance approach to antisemitism wherever it is expressed. That means confronting double standards on racist attacks, expressing solidarity with the victims and the Jewish community, and working to root out conspiracy theories that tie the crimes of capitalist and imperialist states like Israel, the US and Britain to Jews.

On the left, Marxists have a responsibility to win a correct understanding of the dynamics of imperialism and the nature of the US-led alliance of which both Britain and Israel are a part. Narratives that paint bigger imperialist powers as puppets of Israel or dupes of “zionists” can prove fertile breeding grounds for antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Leading organisers in Britain’s peace movement do have that understanding, and howls from the right and hints from Keir Starmer that crimes like this will be used to suppress protests in solidarity with Palestine must be confronted too.

The 30-plus marches in protest against Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the British state’s complicity in the occupation of Palestine have been consistently peaceful, well-ordered demonstrations of public opposition to mass murder. They reflect majority opinion in the country. March after march has included a sizeable Jewish contingent.

Blaming the marches for antisemitic attacks is slander, and the government’s legislation giving police power to ban demonstrations based on their alleged “cumulative impact” is an anti-democratic affront.

Politicians and media outlets determined to misrepresent peace marches as hate marches have an impact within the Jewish community and elsewhere.

The influence on the left of variants of identity politics which blur the distinction between people’s feelings and objective facts make it harder to counter voices who say the marches make them feel unsafe and should therefore be banned, but that is not an argument we can accept without surrendering freedom of speech and assembly in general.

None of the Palestine Coalition marches has threatened Jews or disrupted worship at a synagogue. We must oppose their suppression based on unevidenced claims. Indeed, the disciplined mass movement in solidarity with Palestine is itself key to marginalising the conspiracy theorists.

It is also relevant that the peace movement — and its key demand now for the withdrawal of US troops from British bases — is the strongest opposition to a rising far right sponsored by the Trump regime in Washington, whose footsoldiers in Britain spread the hatred and division that fuel racist crimes.

The context of an increasingly suspicious, fearful and intolerant Britain is created by a moribund neoliberal system that only the left can challenge.

That the Golders Green attacker had a history of violence and mental ill health points to failings in properly resourcing the services we need as a society to keep us all safe.

This does not detract from the fact that the attacks were antisemitic. It points to the interrelating factors that leave people vulnerable to outrages like this week’s, and the need to tie uncompromising anti-racist work with a wider project of societal revolution.