Jewish schools and synagogues will be given £10 million a year to pay for guards to protect against the growing number of anti-Semitic attacks in the UK. The move has been initiated in the wake of the murders in Paris and the attack on a synagogue in Denmark.
The money was pledged by David Cameron in a speech to Jewish charity, the Community Security Trust. Mr Cameron said he would not “stand by” or “turn a blind eye” to the rising threats Jewish people face, spurred on by Islamic hate preachers, the Daily Mail reports.
The Prime Minister told the charity’s 3,000 volunteers, who protect the community against anti-Semitism, that they represented the “best of Britain” and an attack on a private Jewish school was “not a thought I am prepared to entertain.”
Currently around £2 billion a year is provided in security to Jewish state schools. Mr Cameron was asked how he would feel knowing that more could have been done. In reply he announced an additional £7 million a year in new money to fund guards to protect all Jewish private schools and colleges across the country.
“That’s over £10 million of new money for security – this year and every year – for as long as necessary”, the Prime Minister said.
There will also be a one-off £1.5 million payment to the charity to fund CCTV cameras to help secure premises.
Mr Cameron said the Jewish community in Britain feels “safe to live and flourish” in Britain while at the same time thousands of Jews are fleeing France every year to live in Israel, and even more so in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo murders.
‘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,” he said.
The Prime Minister hit out at the ‘poisonous ideology’ of Islamic extremism which didn’t just include terrorist attacks but also the use of the internet and hate preachers in Britain’s mosques who incite violent attacks.
He spoke out against the victim card being played amongst the community, saying that “‘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” was a nonsense.
Back in October, MPs voted overwhelmingly, by 274 votes to 12, in favour of a back bench motion to recognise the state of Palestine.
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