I want people to know how hard it is being a British Jew since October 7
The scary truth is that I can’t just assume that I’m safe in this country.
On October 7 last year, the lives of Jewish people, in Israel and beyond, changed forever.
It was the festival of Simchat Torah, a day I spent with family and it was also the usually peaceful day of Sabbath.
As I was sitting in my mum’s house relaxing , news began to filter down to us on that dark day that the terrorist organisation Hamas had committed their latest (and unexpected) attack on Israel.
Hamas terrorists broke through the fence and parachuted into border towns in Israel from Gaza, killing 1,139 people, and taking 251 hostages (from babies to the elderly) back to Gaza.
Reports, videos and images shown from Hamas body cameras show extreme violence – homes being burnt to the ground, parents killed in front of their children, bodies being violated and mutilated, Israeli families being shot, and grenades thrown into safe rooms
The UN has also confirmed its belief that Israeli women were raped and assaulted.
This was a planned and targeted massacre, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.
Eight months on, it still hurts. And what also hurts is that, from days after the massacre, people emerged who sought to downplay or even deny it. It hurts that Jews are now forced to prove to increasingly loud voices online that the horrors inflicted by Hamas were real.
The violence by Hamas should have been universally condemned, but instead, as Israel launched its response, Jewish people were targeted by hatred.
We now live in fear and anger amid an ongoing antisemitism crisis in the UK that has some of us considering leaving the country that has been our home.
Ever since the attacks I have been frightened to talk too much online about the tinderbox that is the Israel-Palestine conflict.
But I can’t be silent on how swathes of Jewish people in the UK are presently feeling.
British Jews and Jews worldwide must not be held responsible for the actions of Netanyahu’s government, Hamas terrorists and the war in Gaza.
I thought this would be common sense.
But levels of antisemitism in the UK have risen dramatically. In 2023, the Community Security Trust recorded more than 4,000 anti-Jewish hate incidents, with two thirds of them happening after 7 October. In late October last year, the Met Police confirmed antisemitic hate crimes were up 1,350% in London.
Every week, we see protests in major cities, which have resulted in people being arrested for alleged hate, with one man holding a sign sporting a swastika, and another being racist to counter protesters.
As Michael Gove said: ‘Many of those on these marches are thoughtful, gentle, compassionate people – driven by a desire for peace and an end to suffering. But they are side by side with those who are promoting hate’.
And this is not being called out loudly enough by people on the marches.
It says a lot that during one of these regular protests, Hyde Park officials covered up the Holocaust Memorial as a precautionary measure, and stationed police in front of it.
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As a result, many Jews, including me, now feel like central London is a no-go zone for us on Saturdays (Sabbath). We don’t know who we will encounter as we walk the capital’s streets and were shocked to see protests like the one outside a cinema in a more Jewish area of North London that was showing a film about the attacks of October 7.
In February this year, Rabbi Zecharia Deutsch, Jewish chaplain at the University of Leeds reported death threats made to the safety of him and his family because he had previously served in the military (Israel has conscription), and ‘Free Palestine’ was scrawled on a building for Jewish students, who are most likely to be British Jews.
Students at many universities have expressed their fear after protests and comments from their peers have led to them experiencing social isolation and feeling like they have to hide their Jewishness, with one Oxford student writing in the Guardian that some of their peers have hidden their Stars of David.
The fear of violence has crept into our daily life. My husband Rob and I are proud British Jews. He wears a kippah (skullcap) on his way to work on the Tube in London every day. Most of the time, he can travel safely.
However, recently, he got on a carriage and a man sat opposite him scowling and wearing a badge that said: ‘Intifada until victory’.
Intifada is an Arabic word meaning ‘uprising’, but it has also been co-opted by Hamas and their supporters and applied to terror attacks against Israel. During the past eight months, we’ve heard more and more calls to ‘globalise the intifada’, which asks for worldwide armed resistance against Israel and its supporters.
As a result, it’s taken on a wider meaning of anti-Jewishness, antisemitism.
The scary truth is that I can’t just assume that I’m safe when I see or hear someone sporting or saying the phrase.
It’s for that reason that Rob stepped off the train and told the police that this man was wearing a badge that incited violence. The police said they couldn’t do anything about it and didn’t know what Intifada meant.
This made us not only angry but sadly accepting of the fact that fears for our safety aren’t taken as seriously as other forms of hatred. It left us feeling angry that the UK isn’t doing more.
This is the climate that Jews are facing in the UK and worldwide.
But it’s not just in person that I have felt upset and angry. This feeling has prevented me from sharing some aspects of my Jewishness and Israeli links online.
Many feel sad about the loss of Palestinian civilians, including innocent children, and want peace in the region, with Israeli hostages home.
I want to advocate for the Israeli hostages and for peace despite opening myself up to the possibility of hatred.
Almost every British Jew I speak to feels similarly to me.
Sadly, we all know what it is like to be on the receiving end of antisemitism as a result of the conflict.
It is concerning that now we are in the eighth month of the conflict that antisemitism in the UK is still high. CST guards synagogues, Jewish schools and events at a higher level than before.
I was shown a video on social media of a non-Jewish woman in my local area, filmed by Jewish residents, spray painting the faces of the innocent hostages on posters. When confronted, she continued doing it.
In November last year, one of the activists responsible for putting up these posters said that half were ripped down within 48 hours, with even more being defaced.
To have that level of hatred for innocent kidnapped civilians including children is so disturbing.
The hatred, violence and antisemitic language often used to equate Israel to the Jewish people as a whole is genuinely scary.
Such is our state of unease, that my husband and I have even considered leaving the UK as, although we are British, we don’t feel as safe here anymore.
The ‘othering’ of Jews in society must stop.
I am the granddaughter of a Holocaust refugee who fled Nazi Germany to the UK, with relatives who were murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz camp and Kishinev.
I’m thankful that my grandpa is no longer alive to see that antisemitism is alive and well here now, and although this isn’t Nazi Germany, I can relate now more to his fear in 1939 than ever before.
Thankfully, the UK government has been very supportive financially, providing more funding of security guards via CST to Jewish organisations.
But I believe that the police need to be better informed about what some of the signs and slogans we are seeing on the streets mean, as well as speaking with the Jewish community regularly to see what we need.
We need the message to spread that antisemitism, like all forms of hatred, is never justified.
It is painful to know over 100 hostages are still in Gaza and we don’t know if they are still alive or dead as they have been in captivity for over 200 days, including baby Kfir Bibas, his 4-year-old brother Ariel and their mother Shiri.
I am disgusted, shocked, saddened and grieving after these terror attacks. I wish more people were vocal about the need to return the hostages.
In my Jewish community in London, it seems like everyone knew someone who knew someone who was affected by October 7, as Israel is a small country.
Personally, I know of a friend’s cousin who was taken hostage, but thankfully freed.
And I, along with the majority of the Jewish community, should be allowed to express my grief and frustration openly without feeling like I might receive antisemitism as a result.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk.
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