Jews are devastated and scared – even nursery children have had to rehearse for the worst. Please speak up for us
MY heart sank when I heard a London Jewish school told its pupils this week that they did not have to wear their blazers to travel there.
It wasn’t advance notice for Dress Down Friday but that going through the streets in their blazers would identify them as Jewish.
And, in 2023 in a nation built on democracy and the rule of law, that can put them in danger.
The threat is real.
A Jewish friend called me last night saying her little boy had been punched in the face in a London street.
I’m worried for my young relatives who attend Jewish state schools as tensions ratchet up following the Hamas atrocity on Saturday.
When there is bloodshed and conflict in the Middle East, the flames of anti-Semitism are fanned here.
It’s why the Jewish Free School in Kenton, North London, has asked a security firm to help its pupils reach school safely.
And it’s why some Jewish schools have practised drills in case of terrorist attack.
Nursery age children — so young they were told they were playing Sleeping Lions — rehearsed what to do in case the worst should occur.
That is a desperately sad state of affairs for a land of freedom and decency.
Right now Britain’s Jewish community — just 271,000 people, according to the 2021 census — is in deep mourning.
All of them have friends or relatives caught up in the terror attack or know someone who has.
Saturday’s massacre has been called the worst atrocity inflicted on Jews since the Nazi Holocaust.
It left me and my community devastated — but also fearful.
It’s why extra guards are now protecting Jewish schools and synagogues.
Has there been a wave of public sympathy?
Words of comfort and solidarity?
Both the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer have been quick to lambast Hamas and underline that Israel has a right to defend itself.
In deep mourning
But out there in the bear pit of the social media platforms, where many now get their news and opinion, there has also been a chorus of whataboutery.
That is, many don’t simply decry Hamas as rapists and murderers who dragged Holocaust survivors and children to Gaza as hostages.
They add caveats that, by its deeds, Israel — the only majority Jewish nation on Earth — was to blame for this terrorist outrage.
Some news channels have also allowed contributors to spout the same views at length.
There has been victim-blaming, suggesting the Jewish people brought it on themselves.
In what other terrorist outrage have the victims been blamed?
I have friends who knew young people at the desert rave where Hamas butchered some 260 partygoers and carted others off to the Gaza Strip.
Many of those youngsters were the same people who have been out on the streets of Israel protesting against hardline Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Hamas butchered partygoers
And many dancing through the night would have been from the sizable section of Israeli society who want to live in peace alongside their Palestinian neighbours.
Many would have been in peace movements and sought to make life better for Palestinians.
But Hamas saw them simply as another tally on their grim death count of dead Jews.
I have colleagues who work with victims of the Manchester bombing.
Imagine the day after that atrocity if people had gone on the news or social media to say: “Your child died because of British foreign policy.”
Now imagine you are a parent of one of those peace-loving ravers who loathed Netanyahu’s policies.
How absolutely soul-crushing would it be to hear Hamas excused for murdering their child because of something the Israeli state has done?
And Hamas aren’t militants.
That makes them sound like hardline trade unionists.
They’re terrorists, just as the 9/11 perpetrators and the London Tube bombers were.
Hamas’s onslaught wasn’t designed to take on the Israeli military but to butcher innocent civilians.
This year I made a documentary series called The Holy Land And Us, with co-presenter Sarah Agha.
That is heartbreaking
It explored the stories of Jewish and Palestinian families following the birth of Israel in 1948.
The point being that if we could hear each other’s experiences and pain, that could be a starting to point for us to move forward.
I implore people: yes, stand by the innocent people of Gaza who aren’t represented by Hamas, but the Jewish community needs you right now.
Jews are devastated and scared.
And I, and others, are upset about the silence from some who would normally speak out for minorities.
I can’t rid myself of the devastating sense that those I assumed would be there for me and my community believe that the Jews had it coming.
That is heartbreaking.
Martin Luther King famously said: “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.”
So please don’t be silent. Speak up for us.
Right now, as the Jewish community send their children to school where guards patrol, we need your support more than ever.