As the first anniversary of the conflict nears, communities in Britain reveal their internal divisions ... and a horrifying increase in overt antisemitism
Graffiti on a railway bridge last year in Golders Green which has a significant Jewish population.
Harriet Sherwood writes in the Guardian Sat 28 Sep 2024
The young couple getting on the 310 bus at Golders Green were unquestionably Jewish. He wore a black hat over his peyot, or sidelocks, and a heavy black coat despite the warmth of the day. Her hair was covered, her clothes modest, her shoes plain. On the 45-minute journey to Stamford Hill, they conversed quietly in Yiddish.
Until a few weeks ago, the journey on public transport between two areas of north London with significant Jewish populations required a change of bus midway. Jewish passengers had reported antisemitic abuse while waiting for the connection.
The new 310 direct route between Golders Green and Stamford Hill would help Jewish Londoners to feel safe while travelling on public transport, said the city’s mayor Sadiq Khan. “We’ve got to recognise the tremors of hate that are felt by Jewish people across the country,” he told the BBC.
The bus is a fragment in a complicated mosaic of life for British Jews over the past year. Since Hamas’s murderous attack on Jews in Israel on 7 October triggered a massive onslaught of death and destruction in Gaza, British Jews have felt overwhelming shock and grief for the victims of that fateful day. Many have also felt growing unease at the ongoing war and humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza; some feel revulsion and shame. Almost all have felt more vulnerable as antisemitic abuse and attacks have rocketed.
“It’s been an extraordinarily cruel and painful year, and it’s still very raw,” said Jonathan Wittenberg, the senior rabbi of Masorti Judaism, a traditional branch of the Jewish faith. “The trauma of 7 October and what has followed is very present in the UK Jewish community.”
Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg says the community has to listen to all views on Gaza. Photograph: Sophia Evans/The Observer
Rabbi Charley Baginsky, who co-leads Progressive Judaism, said: “In many ways, we still haven’t processed what happened on 7 October because everything has been in constant motion. Every day is shaped by those events.”
Raymond Simonson, chief executive of JW3, a Jewish community and cultural centre in north London, said 7 October was a “punch in the stomach. Everyone was shocked, scared and confused. And then we were plunged into a war that has gone on and on. The feeling is one of exhaustion”.
In the days following the Hamas attack, the response of British Jews was overwhelmingly one of solidarity and shared trauma. The visceral connection that most have to the only Jewish state is powerful. Nine in 10 have visited Israel and eight in 10 have close friends or family living there.
But a new study has also found a growing distrust of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the actions of the Israeli government. The Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR) will soon publish the results of a survey of 4,600 British Jews, ranging from ultra-orthodox to secular, conducted earlier this summer. “We found high levels of concern about Netanyahu and his motives,” said Jonathan Boyd, the JPR’s executive director.
“About three-quarters of those we questioned think he is serving his own interests over and above those of the state of Israel as a whole. There’s also a sense that the Israeli government could have done more towards the release of the hostages, and to provide humanitarian aid [to Gaza] – not overwhelmingly so, but leaning in those directions. “People are more forgiving of the Israeli army. Most Jews are likely to think that the army has operated within the bounds of international law than think they haven’t. There’s more criticism of the government than there is of the military.”
