There's a long and depressing read from George Chesterton in the Telegraph today on the Jewish experience here since the Hamas pogrom – ‘Friends no longer speak to me’: How it feels to be a British Jew after October 7:
It wasn’t just the world that changed the day Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 last year. The world of British Jews did too, as mutating strains of anti-Semitism worked their way beyond smashed shopfronts and violent protests and into the domestic and everyday. And each witness uses the same expression. The silence was deafening.
“My whole life has changed since October 7,” says Barbara Smith*, 49, from London. “I’ve lost half my friends. I’ve lost my best friend. I don’t know how the situation will ever right itself.”
There are only 287,000 Jews in Britain, the same number as Buddhists but a tiny minority compared to the four million Muslims. There is a new political climate in which – willingly or otherwise – British Jews have become inextricably linked to the state of Israel. Across a scale of opinion that ranges from wishing Israel to be destroyed to opposing Israel’s actions in Gaza, Jewish people are an enemy – supportive of and complicit in the appropriated words “genocide” and “Zionism”.
Stemming from this, some Jews say, is hostility and suspicion that has seeped into every area of their lives, fuelling uncertainty about where it will flare up next, never being sure of the intentions of those with whom they interact daily….
“Jewish people’s sense of who they are is different after October 7,” says [Dave] Rich, the author of Everyday Hate: How Antisemitism Is Built Into Our World – And How You Can Change It.
“It was such a shattering blow and the reaction to it – either disinterest or denial – and the wave of anti-Semitism that came straight away was shocking. It has left a lot of Jewish people thinking ‘Is this still the same country we thought it was?’
“Those incidental, day-to-day, very personal interactions have been chilling – within workplaces, schools, WhatsApp groups. The space for Jewish people to live a happy, comfortable life without being affected by all this is getting squeezed.”
In February the CST reported a 147 per cent rise in anti-Semitic attacks and abuse over the same period last year. In the first six months of this year it recorded 1,978 incidents in the UK, the highest ever total in the first six months of any year. It’s vital to understand that the sea change came immediately after Hamas attacked on October 7, 20 days before Israeli forces entered Gaza.
Collecting stories of these day-to-day interactions feels a bit like Dr Johnson collecting words for his dictionary. There is always another one just waiting to be discovered. That explains why the majority of people I spoke to did not wish to use their real names. You cannot underestimate how deeply cultural memory processes these acts of personal and public discrimination. Adult Jews today are only three generations from the Holocaust and five from the Russian pogroms. What is happening is a kind of silent, slow-moving Kristallnacht. This is everyday anti-Semitism.
Jeremy Ginges, Professor in Behavioural Science at the LSE explains how Gaza has become, uniquely, a dividing line at the most intimate level of social interaction. “This is a moral litmus test where you have to pick one side or the other. Opinions on Israel’s actions in Gaza and Hamas’ attack on Israel have become the essence of who people are or want to be. It’s almost as if for some in the UK it defines what it means to be a ‘good person’.”
Where that positions Jews in this very public conflict is obvious. Each testimony replays an uncannily similar pattern in which social media and messaging apps are used as the facilitator for mistrust and division.
“After October 7 people I had known for years deleted me from their friends groups,” says Smith. “When I told my best friend about the Hamas attack her response was ‘for every Israeli death there are 100 Palestinian deaths”. I asked her to understand how upsetting it was for me but she just wanted to tell me claims of anti-Semitism were propaganda. We’ve never spoken again.”
Tale after tale of British Jews suddenly cut off by their "nice, decent, progressive" friends….
Everyone who contributed to this article said they’d had “the conversation” about leaving the UK. “I’m a very British Jew and I always saw my home being here,” says [Marc] Phillipson. “Now I’m not convinced it will be. More for my children’s generation, I’m worried about being such a tiny minority. Even after October 7, Israel might be the safest place to live.”
“When I go to Israel I feel like I can breathe,” says [Steven] Steyn. “I was in a war zone the last time but it felt safer than London.”
In the film Chariots Of Fire, the sprinter Harold M Abrahams says something about anti-Semitism in 1924 that applies to 2024. “Sometimes I say to myself, ‘Hey, steady on, you’re imagining all this.’ And then I catch that look again. Catch it on the edge of a remark, feel a cold reluctance in a handshake.”
“Sometimes in the Jewish community we miss the fact that most people in Britain are horrified by anti-Semitism,” says Rich. “We need the help of public organisations who are rightly quick to address other forms of racism but have rarely thought about anti-Semitism before. And from liberal educated people who would not say prejudiced things about other minorities but think this is the one hatred you’re allowed to have. People need to speak up about it and recognise the impact it’s having.”
The representative "nice, decent, progressive" British institution would be the BBC. I wonder how much their coverage – every Hamas claim featured as main headline news, every Hamas death statistic religiously repeated – has contributed to this antisemitic surge.
Mick Hartley 