I’m old enough to remember times when there was a whole lot of anti-Americanism in British politics. We’ve had it over the Vietnam War, the Iraq War along with various protests against the policies of the Reagan, Bush I and Bush II administrations and protests about US citizens supporting Irish republican terrorism. Some of this anti-American agitation has been noisy and disruptive but I don’t ever recall a time when the US government had to warn American citizens about the need to be careful and cautious when visiting sites in the UK connected to America or to Jews.
According to Eyal Yakoby a former Israeli government spokesperson, the US government has issued the following warning to US citizens travelling to the UK:
Whilst some Britons might have had disagreements with US Government policies I don’t’ ever recall such a strongly worded warning being given about Americans visiting sites in the UK connected to the US or to Jews and Judaism. An American should be able to visit the UK and be left in peace whether they are visiting an American war grave site in the UK, or visiting the sites where the families of America’s Founding Fathers came from or St Mary’s Church in Battersea, London where American independence fighter and later traitor Benedict Arnold is buried. An American should be able to visit some of the major sites of British Jewry whether that be the Sephardic synagogue at Bevis Marks or some of the places, such as Whitechapel, that some Jews who later moved to the USA might have lived in before they moved to the USA. Britain and the USA have an interconnected history, some of it good and some of it not so good and Americans should be able to explore that history in Britain in peace.
It used to be the case that Americans would have been safe in the UK to visit sites of interest or sites connected to their forebears but that’s not the case now. What could possibly have happened politically and demographically that would make Americans in the UK more unsafe than they would have been thirty or so years ago? What has changed to make Americans and Jews more unsafe than they should be? It’s a big puzzler isn’t it?
Link
Eyal Yakoby’s post on X
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