Jews 'contemplating leaving Scotland as they no longer feel welcome'

Moshe Rubin, the Senior Rabbi of Scotland, spoke out after 15 people, including a 10-year-old girl and a British-born rabbi, were killed in the Bondi Beach attack.

Two gunmen, a father and son, opened fire on more than 1,000 people attending a Jewish festival in the Archer Park area of Australia’s most famous beach on Sunday.

Rabbi Rubin said there was "definitely a fear" among Jewish communities, including in Scotland.

READ MORE: Police Scotland patrols at Scottish synagogues in wake of Sydney shooting

"No one knows what is going to happen next, where it's going to happen next," he told BBC Radio Scotland. "Everyone feels it's going to happen again, and there's a sense of not feeling welcomed any more in Scotland.

"So therefore people are contemplating leaving Scotland and going to Israel - going anywhere, but Israel feels the safest place for us."

Rabbi Rubin said he had "definitely" noticed a rise in antisemitism since the start of the Israel-Gaza war.

"I walked into a service station and I got abuse a few months ago that was associated with Israel, but I didn't have an Israeli flag with me, it was just because I was Jewish, therefore I got abuse," he said. "There has definitely been a rise in antisemitism.

"I grew up in New York. I grew up with antisemitism, physical antisemitism, abuse from car windows and eggs being thrown at us, so I've experienced it all my life.

"But I feel what's changed now is at the heart of all this antisemitism is sort of an institutionalised kind of antisemitism."

Dave Rich, director of policy at the Community Security Trust (CST), a Jewish security charity, said violent chants at protests “if they are left unchecked” can lead to deadly atrocities like the Bondi Beach attack.

He said it is “not a difficult connection to make” between hatred directed at Israel during marches and “this kind of violent terrorism”.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We’ve had these huge protests that have been ongoing in our city centres and university campuses with language like calls for intifada, for calls for resistance, all sorts of violent rhetoric, calls for the state of Israel to be destroyed, the phrase ‘river to the sea’, which is taken by a lot of Jewish people to imply that.

“And none of this language has been challenged or really addressed properly, either through law enforcement or by the organisers of these demos or by wider society. And Jewish people see a connection.

“I think people see a connection between violent words, if they are left unchecked, and violent actions. And so when you get terrorist attacks like the one we had at Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester, or the appalling atrocity we’ve just seen on Bondi Beach in Sydney, Jewish people make the connections.”