Foreign Secretary David Lammy described October 7 anniversary as ‘a day of deep reflection and pain’ at a gathering on Monday to mark the first anniversary of the Hamas pogrom.
He told his local Jewish community that the government was doing everything it can to help secure the release of British-born hostage Emily Damari who was seized from her kibbutz in southern Israel and taken to Gaza a year ago.
Lammy, who is also MP for Tottenham – home to a large number of British Jews – spoke at South Tottenham United Synagogue in a meeting chaired by US president Michael Goldstein and hosted by Rabbi Shmuel Davidsohn, the synagogue’s chair, and its minister, Rabbi Chaim Michoel Biberfeld.
The JC understands that around 25 people, including representatives from CST, UJIA, JLC, Interlink and the Board of Deputies attended the meeting with the Foreign Secretary, who told those present that he wanted to be with his local Jewish community on the anniversary of the Hamas atrocities.
One of those present said that Lammy faced “robust” questions over the “hate” on display at pro-Palestine protests and the government’s critical approach to Israel in the face of nearly a year of rockets from Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah.
Rabbi Nicky Liss, the rabbi of Highgate Synagogue, challenged the foreign secretary to say what he was doing to secure the release of 28-year-old British hostage Emily Damari.
Liss told the JC that Highgate Synagogue had “adopted” Damari, as part of the Board of Deputies’ “adopt a hostage” scheme to share their plight.
Emily’s mother, Mandy, who spoke at the communal rally in central London on Sunday to mourn the victims of October 7, had also spend the second day of Rosh Hashanah with the Highgate community in north London and had movingly addressed them.
The Foreign Secretary told those assembled that although there were things that he could not reveal in public, the government was doing “everything” to help secure her and other hostages’ release.
Lammy later said in a television interview from outside the synagogue that October 7 was “the worst attack on the Jewish community since the Holocaust” and that he was “thinking about the many hostages that are still held in Gaza and their loved ones and the pain”.
He added, “Particularly we think of Emily Damari, the British hostage, and her family have no word of her fate or how she is doing” and described the anniversary of Hamas’s killings in southern Israel as “a painful day for the Jewish community across this country and across the diaspora”.
In a column for the JC, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said that he has urged world leaders to do all they can to help secure the release of hostages and said that the government wouldn’t shy away from tackling antisemitism that has emerged since October 7: “We will not look the other way when children are afraid to wear their school uniforms, Jewish shops are defaced, or Jews targeted on the streets. We will never allow the virus of antisemitism to take root in our country and our communities.”
