If anyone knows about fighting racism, it’s Jews

Should I bring it up when I was running the mandatory British values course on religious diversity in the UK, when students would be presented with a quiz, asking what percentage of the population were Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, of another faith or of no faith at all? (Invariably, students would be surprised to find out that Jews in fact only make up 0.5 per cent of the population. And by the way, one of them is standing in front of you.)

Or should I do it during a lesson on the past simple?

“What did you do at the weekend, Miss Gaby? Did you go to church?” (the assumption being I was a pale-faced Christian).

“No, I went to synagogue.”

“Syna…what?”

The reaction would initially be one of blank-faced incomprehension. With its Greek etymology, the word “synagogue” was both strange-sounding and strange-looking to my students, at odds with any of the word patterns they were learning in their lower-intermediate English classes.

But once the learners – the majority of whom were Muslim refugees and asylum seekers - understood its meaning, I was only ever met with pleasant surprise and interest. Some of them would tell me that they lived close to a synagogue or that their children had visited one with their school. One Moroccan student even started waxing lyrical about his Israeli business colleagues.

At some point in the school year, I would “casually” throw in that my grandparents had escaped persecution to come to the UK. Although I could hardly compare my own charmed existence in the north-west London suburbs with growing up in war-torn Sudan or Afghanistan, I wanted to convey that despite being a couple of generations “ahead” of them in the generational journey, to some extent, I “got” them – our histories were not entirely dissimilar.

And by the end of the year, or depending on when Ramadan fell, I would be wishing them “Ramadan Kareem” and “Eid Mubarak” and eating the kabuli pulao they brought in like we were old friends.

So, the news that mosques are being attacked by far-right thugs, windows smashed and that prayer-goers, arming themselves with just mops and curtain rails, are having to find somewhere to hide, has made me anxious for my students and their families. Are they okay? Are they afraid to go to Friday prayers? Are the women fearful of walking around wearing a hijab?

My gut reaction would usually be to get onto the streets to stand up to the racism and bigotry that they are facing, but the sight of Palestinian flags at the anti-racism rallies and the flyers from “Finchley Against Fascism” which read “Get fascists, racists, Nazis, Zionists & Islamophobes out of Finchley!” just haven’t been giving me those “Jews are welcome here” vibes.

Which is a shame. It’s a shame because, you see, if anyone knows a thing or two about racism – not only being subject to it but fighting it - it’s Jews.

Take the Civil Rights movement. During what is known as the Mississippi Summer Project of 1964, about half of some 1,000 out-of-state activists who came to the southern state to fight segregation were Jews, two of whom - Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman - were tortured and murdered by the Klu Klux Klan, alongside black activist James Chaney.

And who can forget the image of theologian and civil rights activist Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who, in March 1965, walked alongside Martin Luther King as they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama – the infamous site of the Bloody Sunday attacks - to march for the voting rights of African Americans.

In apartheid South Africa, while Jews constituted just two percent of the white population, they made up at least half of the country’s white anti-apartheid activists, the most famous being Ruth First and Joe Slovo, who brought their anti-apartheid movement to their home in Camden when they moved to London 1964.

Since the current riots erupted in Southport, the town’s local rabbis have offered support to the local imams, and Jewish communal figures have taken to social media to express utter outrage at the attacks – so many in fact that the JC story had to be continually updated as more and more Jewish leaders came forward to add their voice to the condemnation.

So, rally organisers, when you raise your Palestinian flags, when you hand out flyers calling for the expulsion of “Zionists” (AKA Jews – or “the wrong type” of Jews) from Finchley, you do the opposite of what you set out to do. You alienate a race, and you ostracise us from a fight which is as much ours as it is yours.

Even worse, you risk pushing Jewish people over the parapet, to walk with the likes of Tommy Robinson. The sight of a smattering of Israeli flags at one of his marches earlier in July made me shudder as much as – if not more than – seeing Palestinian flags on the anti-racism marches.

So, lay down your flags. Stop conflating this fight for people of all religions and races to live freely on UK soil with a battle that is happening 3,000 miles away.

Zionism and anti-Zionism have nothing to do with these rallies. But - if the rules allowed - would be brilliant in a game of Scrabble.