Those fighting on behalf of the hostages deserve a Nobel Prize - The Jewish Chronicle

On my way to the West London Synagogue on recent Friday night, I passed a demonstration outside Swiss Cottage station. I assumed it was the ubiquitous anti-Zionists on their concerned pilgrimage, but I was wrong. “Jews against the genocide,” it screamed. I wanted to get out of the car on a roundabout and scream back: “Jew against misuse of definition!” Not for the first time, my daughter refused to deliver me into enemy hands, turned up The Archers and drove on.

“Oh, of course,” I chuntered “on the day the bodies of two baby hostages, strangled to death by thugs with their bare hands, were handed back to Israel by cartoon gangsters – on that same day, these Kapos, these Jew-ish apologists, are teaching north west London the illiterate use of the word genocide.”

“An act committed to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.

That is the EU definition. The EU and the US define Hamas as a terrorist organisation.

Nowhere does that include the intent to eradicate murderers. Brutal killers of 1400 youngsters and abductors of hundreds of civilians, perpetrators of perhaps the most violent pogrom against the Jewish people since the Holocaust.

Jews against the war in Gaza I could accept. Many people, indeed many Jewish people, do find the Israeli military response in Gaza to the slaughter somewhat disproportionate. It is a word we often see bandied about with regards to Israel. The weekly marchers are so very certain, as is the UN, that Israel is so much more guilty than any other in current conflicts.

Perhaps these people don’t consider holding innocent civilians, starved babies, children, octogenarians and abused women, kept in darkness, chained to radiators, beaten, tortured and dismembered as enough of a crime to merit the final destruction of Hamas’s so called “freedom fighters.”? At least the ones they can find outside Qatar. They may not agree that the return of the hostages at any point would have ended the “disproportionate” war in Gaza instantly, but could they show me the proportionality of other current wars – like those in Syria. Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar,Yemen and Dafur – some might say prescribed genocides- or that of the seventy Christians beheaded recently in the Congo. Why are the supremely concerned not marching against these atrocities?

If they could show me the proportionality of other wars in Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar, Yemen and Darfur, or that of the seventy Christians beheaded last week in the Congo. Why are the supremely concerned not marching against these atrocities? Why are Christian students not marching for the Druze? Or Muslims for the Uyghurs - Or fellow Shiite Muslims for the slaughter of one thousand Alawites by the new Syrian government.

Could it be because they are not being groomed to care, by activists? Activists allowed to be planted in our universities because of generous funding from Middle Eastern benefactors.

There is one Jewish state in the world. There are, I believe, 57 Muslim ones. Why is defending Israel’s right to live in peace so very unfashionable and untenable and so very engaging to the hard left, jaded rock stars and self-regarding actors? Why do the marchers yell “from the river to the sea” every week, with no idea which river, which sea, or exactly what they are wishing for?

There are very few nights I do not wake up with the hostages in my mind. Thoughts of my own beloved family in a tunnel, being starved and abused haunt me. I sometimes shudder with a reoccurring thought. What if 9/11, Lockerbie, July 7, Amman bombings, Mumbai, Toulouse and Montauban, Boston Marathon, Yazidi genocide, Nice, Oslo, Salman Rushdie or any of the other myriad atrocities had been committed by Jews? We are a mere 16 million in the world and 245,000 in the UK but I can guarantee we would all be dead or in hiding. I fear David Baddiel was right. Jews don’t count.

Oh, but they count in Israel. I have just returned from a shiveringly cold trip there and I have seldom felt prouder. My partner David was there for a shiva, and at the end of a long, long day in Jerusalem with his wonderful, welcoming cousins and a gridlocked drive back to Tel Aviv, I was not in the mood for a visit to Hostages Square.

Thank God I relented. It was a scene which pierced me to the heart. I wanted to shout out to the world about the love and admiration I felt for the people of Israel. The day after October 7, as the world turned against the victims in favour of the perpetrators, they came together, legal and diplomacy experts, doctors, therapists, volunteers, PR experts and while the government dragged its heels they formed The Forum.

Other Israelis donated a building, a café was set up, a 24-hour helpline was created, and offices taught parents of the abducted how to deal with the press; practical help was given 24/7. Museum Square became Hostages Square, with 50,000 people, screens, information tents, and so much more. One meeting place for one suffering body of people.

These young people deserve a Nobel prize for just being there to help and advise for over a year whilst simultaneously running their own lives and jobs. They are exhausted but ferociously committed. If you want to support a charity, which needs your money and needs it now, support The Forum.

We met a man who has been volunteering before and since the release of his wife and daughter 50 days after October 7; “How could I stop coming just because my family is safe?” he asked.

“But are you able to go to your work?” I asked. He wasn’t able, he told me. I asked him what his work was, and he told me he wrote comedy. He had adapted Little Britain for Israeli television. He should be in this little Britain right now, making the hostage story as visceral to us as it became, that night, to me.

I read Mathew Syed’s two stunning articles in the Sunday Times. I listened to Jonathan Freedland’s Podcast from last week. They stole my thunder in the best possible way. They spoke of what Israelis have conjured from the ashes. It is a miracle. From a government paralyzed by Hamas expertise in death and disruption, the hastily assembled organisation Forum has achieved a miracle. A disparate group of concerned young Israelis, in deep trauma have achieved, in 500 plus traumatic days, an organisation which can be laid on an open wound to help heal it. I shared the square with road sweepers wearing kippot, and citizens of all colours, creeds, political opinions, and, in a language I do not speak, listened and heard their communal prayers for peace and safe return.

I shared the square with road sweepers wearing kippot, with the very young and the very old, and citizens of all colours, creeds, political opinions and, in a language I do not speak, I heard their communal prayers for peace and safe return.

Yes, I’ve marched against the anti-Zionists and antisemites in London. Yes, I’ve heard and even spoken at our rallies, but I have to admit the Pro-Palestinian faction have beaten us into a cocked hat as demonstrators. Years of keeping our heads down have bred a timidity the progressives have long abandoned. They demonstrate with passion and that dread word ‘certainty.’ We have a history of debate, study, seeing the other point of view, doubting and, above all, assimilating. We need to find our voice. We need a Forum.

The war in Gaza has served, as intended by Russia and Iran, to take the eyes of the world away from the brutal Putin attempted ‘ putsch’ in the Ukraine. The media frenzy has swung back now but for how long? Governments have created these problems and, one hopes that in the absence of good or non-compromised leadership, good people can resolve them.

Like Caesar’s wife Calpurnia, we Jews in the diaspora have to be above the law, but like Mark Anthony, we need to argue our case in the right tone, in one unified, dignified, factual, and above all proud voice.

We come to bury Hamas, not like some, to praise it.

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Israel