Shortly after showing me the step where her husband Saar was killed by terrorists on October 7 at Kibbutz Kissufim, Yasmin Margolis asked me about life in London as a Jew.
“I hear it’s been invaded?” she asked. “Not quite,” I smiled ruefully. We hugged tightly, tearfully. I couldn’t possibly imagine her pain, that awful day recreated every time she took journalists around the kibbutz she once loved, but we both knew we were fighting a war together. A war on Jews. A war that required us to be articulate and speak with facts.
October 7 turned all of our lives upside down. I don’t know a single person who hasn’t lost friends. I’ve spoken to bereft, bullied students, parents of schoolchildren who have had fellow pupils screaming “Hitler was right” at them, religious Jews attacked in the street and on the Tube, office workers suddenly discovering among their colleagues a thirst for Jewish blood.
We’ve seen our friends be silent or even turn on us. It turned out antisemitism was always lurking. Artists have been boycotted, comics aren’t being booked. I know people who have moved house to escape antisemitism. And everyone I know has been subject to some form of online hatred. It doesn’t matter whether you are a Zionist or not; we all felt something change after Israelis were murdered and we saw some of our fellow countrymen dance with joy. We fell backwards into a nightmare we are still in. Some of us have retreated inwards. Covered kippahs with a cap. Hidden Magen Davids when out. Taken down mezuzahs. We’ve formed WhatsApp shtetls where we wring our hands and kvetch, comfort each other and discuss writing letters to the BBC, to Sky, to our MPs, to art galleries and theatres.
But I think many of us have found a pride, too. We’ve formed new communities, found new friends. I know more people wearing Magen Davids than I did before; often they jingle with dog tags and yellow ribbons.
The message is that we are here whether you accept us with our ethnic identity or not. The fact that we are still here as Jews – that ancient quarrelsome tribe of the Bible – still quarrelling, still fighting those who want to hurt us, is a reminder of the miracle of our existence as well as the historic burden of our ethnicity. It doesn’t matter whether you are religious or not, hate Netanyahu or not, have visited Israel or have a flat there.
Only together do we find understanding of the delicate balance of our Britishness, our Judaism, our Zionism and our complicated feelings about the war.
Us British Jews are normally a head-down lot. For generations the attitude was if we keep shtum, don’t do anything to make them notice us, then maybe we won’t be attacked. Won’t be thrown out.
But just as other minorities have fought for their rights to be heard, so, increasingly, have we. The Labour antisemitism crisis meant we shouted louder than we have since Cable Street. We demanded our rights. We are still demanding our rights.
The Israeli and American Jews among us have given us strength, a bolshiness that sometimes feels distinctly un-British to some of us. On the counter demonstrations they dance to trance and Israeli songs.
But perhaps we all feel a little less British. I think I do: a rope that tethered us to our home country feels jagged, like it might be ready to snap. The streets may be the same London streets I’ve shopped in, I’ve drunk in, I’ve snogged in all my life, but I walk them in a different way.
Now they are filled with hate marches and vandalised with swastikas. But we are there, too, demonstrating against what is happening. We are demanding action from the BBC and we will keep demanding it, even as it strives to brush us off. Our lawyers are fighting some of the worst cases of workplace discrimination and fighting our own government with some of its decisions on Israel.
It is hard to know where this will end. Where any of this will end? Jewish life in Britain has entered a new cycle; it is one our grandparents will recognise. We can only go forward and do it with our heads held high, our pride intact.
