A group of Jewish and Muslim women have come together to mark the first anniversary of October 7 and “to claw things back from extremists”, said organisers.

Taking place on the eve of the first anniversary of the Hamas attack in southern Israel, the women, from Nisa -Nashim, the Jewish Muslim Women’s Network, shared how the terrorist atrocities, the war in Gaza and the increase in antisemitism and Islamophobia had impacted them during the past year.

Asked to describe how they were feeling in a few words, many of the seven Jewish and six Muslim women sitting together in the crypt of St John’s Church in Waterloo described themselves as feeling “emotionally exhausted”, “lost”, “battered” and “suffering immense grief”.

Others told the group that they felt “a sense of relief and peace” at being able to come together in a shared space after the organisation had felt compelled to move the majority of their meetings online after October 7.

Making friendship bracelets for one another and lighting a memorial candle, the women were asked to name their loss.

Ahmereen Reza OBE, a trustee of Nisa-Nashim, said: “There is darkness where humanity used to sit. I am worried about humanity.”

Participant Gilda Levy said that since October, she had been “shocked at how quickly social cohesion had broken down…[People] have lost the ability to see the suffering of others, but we all cry the same tears. If we can’t come together, what hope is there?”

Sami Berkoff, president of the Union of Jewish Students, told the group that many Jewish students had either known or known of someone who had been killed on October 7. “To find out that a friend you grew up with was killed while having to do your degree and deal with antisemitism on campus was a lot.”

She said that she hoped that, going forward, Jewish Society leaders would reach out to the heads of other societies, including the Islamic Societies on campus and “make connections”.

Muslim and Jewish participants at the Nisa-Nashim event light a candle to mark the first anniversary of October 7 (Photo: Yakir Zur)

Joint Nisa-Nashim founder Julie Siddiqi MBE, who is Muslim, broke down in tears when she described hearing about the Nova Festival massacre. She said: “My children go to festivals like that. I don’t see [the victims of Nova] as any different to my children. Some of them even look like my children.

“For me, Hersh Goldberg’s mum is so relatable. The idea that I can’t grieve for her son doesn’t work for me.”

Amanda Bowman, the co-chair of the London Jewish Forum, said that she was concerned about the “schism at a strategic level” in interfaith relationships she had witnessed since October 7, adding: “I am hopeful that more authentic connections can rebuild that trust. There is a huge amount of work to do, but that is how some of us cope with it. That’s how I cope.”

Jewish participant Dr Lindsay Simmonds, who works in peacebuilding with Israelis and Palestinians, said she had often been called “’naïve’ in the work that I do”.

“But if you look at history and the use of military and wars as solutions, that, to me, seems profoundly naïve. The faces on the news [about the Middle East] are almost exclusively men, whereas women are much better at this”.

Between September 2023 and August 2024, the Metropolitan Police recorded a 286 per cent rise in antisemitic hate crime compared with the same period last year, and a 67 per cent increase in anti-Muslim hate crime in the same period.

Laura Marks (left) and Julie Siddiqi, joint founders of Nisa-Nashim, make one another a friendship bracelet (Photo: Yakir Zur)

Dr Zaza Johnson Elsheikh, who said that she hadn’t told her family or friends she was coming to the event due to fear of “demonisation”, told the group that she had decided to attend “because of my God conscience. I abhor the violence and the loss of life, both Jewish and Muslim…In the Middle East, there has been a loss of humanity. I am here to find humanity and spread it.”

Samina Hussain from the charity Sakoon through Cancer, told the JC afterwards: “Spaces like toady’s event allow us to make peace with our own grief and connect and sympathise with others and understand other people’s perspectives.

“I am so grateful that I have my children and grandchildren, but I mourn and cry for every mother who has lost a child through this war. Cancer doesn’t discriminate and war doesn’t discriminate either.”

Siddiqi said she felt it was “really important to sit and speak about this in a shared space, rather than [in] binary [spaces], again and again”.

Inviting TV crews into the room, she said that it had been a conscious decision to hold the event publicly “as we need to model what can be done”.

Since October 7, members of Nisa-Nashim, which has groups across the UK, had stayed connected, although Siddiqi admitted that “some of the friendships have broken down… It’s so important that some of us keep on trying.”

Joint Nisa-Nashim founder Laura Marks CBE said: “Events in the Middle East have exacerbated that feeling that we need to be on one side or another, and we have been watching this play out on the streets of Britain. Both Jews and Muslims are feeling targeted.

“The powerful connections we have built between Jewish and Muslim women over many years demonstrate that we share a commitment to our communities, families and children, and the divisions we see on our streets are not the Britain we are building together. We will not let hatred and distrust win.”

Organised in conjunction with the charity /Together, which works to bridge divides. Emeka Forbes, its head of cohesion, told the JC: “At such a difficult time, when there is so much tension and there are societal divides, seeing women from different backgrounds showing strong leadership, grieving together and standing together in solidarity is a lesson to us all.”