London Under Attack

This afternoon I went to the site where four Hatzola ambulances were attacked and burned just a few hours earlier, in London’s Golders Green neighborhood. There was a heavy presence from the London Metropolitan Police, forensics experts were still scouring the area of the attack, and shattered glass was still on the floor nearby.

A Christian pastor and his wife approached me and said how their community was standing with us, and held a sign that said “Christian Friends of the Jewish People Say No To Antisemitism.” A Hindu lady came up to me and said that she supported the Jewish people. The youth movement Ezra had a table with drinks (including tea, obviously) and snacks for everybody.

It felt safe, but the situation is shocking.

I visited the site with an ex-pat English friend called Jeremy. “Coming from Australia,” he said, “which has seen synagogue firebombings and the Bondi massacre, it’s devastating to see that even in this vibrant community in London, cowards are attacking defenceless Jewish institutions.”

His sentiments are shared by many. British Jews were already fed up. Our state-funded BBC often shares biased, anti-Israel news stories. Meanwhile, it’s five months since the Yom Kippur synagogue attack in Manchester that led to two shulgoers being killed. Pro-Palestinian protests have taken place in central London every Saturday since October 7th, with some protesters regularly calling to “globalise the intifada,” the rally-cry for the death of Jews everywhere.

My friends are concerned. Eliot Kaye, a Finance Director, wrote “I woke up this morning to read this terrifying news of an anti-Semitic terrorist attack minutes from my home. How do I explain this to my children? What is happening to our country? [I’m] very sad and somewhat scared this morning of what the future may bring.”

Ashley Hirst, an Insurance Executive, shared a letter for his children. He reflected on growing up in a Britain that was socially integrated, where Jews took on “Britishness” in all its aspects, whilst maintaining a positive Jewish identity;

“You are British. Born here. Speak the language. Know the culture. You know the correct response to any crisis is to put the kettle on, and that there’s no problem in life that can’t be made marginally more bearable by a properly made cup of tea. You’re as British as Marmite, as the Shipping Forecast, as a Bank Holiday Monday spent indoors complaining about the weather. As British as anyone who has ever lived.”

Without naming the rise of radical Islam, he said that “behaviours and cultural standards that would have been considered unacceptable a generation earlier – attitudes towards women, towards homosexuality, towards free expression, towards the separation of religious and civic authority – were now not merely tolerated but respected.”

We regularly hear the justification where people say “I’m not antisemitic, I am just anti-zionist,” but that is the latest incarnation of cancerous Jew-hatred. Martin Luther King Jr foresaw this; “when people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking anti-Semitism.”

Despite the UK government’s frequent ambivalence to the Jewish community, which the more cynical citizens believe is the result of their desire to retain power and thus win the far-larger Muslim vote, the government was quick to respond. The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Wes Streeting, visited Golders Green just hours after the attack.

“We have to confront and beat the evil ideas that are permeating our society,” said Streeting. “Antisemitism is an old hatred, but it is alive and kicking in our country. All of us, particularly those who are not jewish, have to wake up, stand up and work with our Jewish friends and neighbours in confronting and defeating this despicable hatred.” He promised that the government would fund the replacement of the four Hatzola ambulances.

British antisemitism is nothing new. Some are surprised by the rise of Jew-hatred in the UK since October 7th, but it has always been there in a dormant state. To misquote Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, “the antisemitism hath not been dead, but it hath slept.”

Nevertheless, a lot of British Jews are increasingly scared, particularly the older generation who were born in the 1940s, are entering their 80s, and grew up in an England that was seemingly welcoming towards Jews. “It’s time to leave Britain” is a regular refrain, but the question becomes; if you are fleeing because of antisemitism and trying to find a place of safety, where would you go?

Israel is the usual answer, but right now our friends and family in Israel are spending many hours in bomb shelters. Europe is problematic, and the USA isn’t immune. This year alone has seen attacks on synagogues and Jews in Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, and Spain, whilst American attacks took place in Brooklyn, Jackson and San Jose, California, along with the recent shocking incident in Detroit.

Despite all of this, I am optimistic. We can choose despair or determination. There may be vast amounts of openly-expressed and publicly-accepted antisemitism, but the strongest army on the planet is backing the Jewish state against the Iranian threat, and President Trump repeatedly shows his commitment to peace in the Middle East. However bad things might seem, this is not 1939, and we are not weak.

Jewish communities have become stronger since October 7th, with increased resilience, greater unity, more religious observance, and growing engagement across the world.

Many talk of pouring more resources into fighting antisemitism, but my personal experience working with Jewish creative communities across the USA, UK, Europe, Israel and Latin America has been that despite sharing excellent creative media that dismantles the logic of antisemitism and reveals the fallacies and hypocrisy, fighting antisemitism does not work. I feel it is the same spiritual battle we have faced for 3000 years, just as we will recount in a few days’ time during our Passover celebrations.

“In every generation, they rise up to destroy us,” we read in the Haggadah. They try, but they do not succeed. The way to fight antisemitism is to live an authentic Jewish lifestyle. Judaism ultimately comes down to one choice: to believe in God. We are lost if we believe that our survival rests on an election, an army, or any human factor.

The Book of Psalms says this in many ways – “some call on chariots, and some on horses, but we call in the name of Hashem, our God” (Psalms 20:7), or “do not trust in Princes, in the son of man, who has no salvation..[but] the God of Jacob” (Psalm 146).

There is much to be optimistic about. We can choose fear or faith. I choose the latter.

Marcus J Freed is an actor, writer and founder of the Jewish Filmmakers Network. @marcusjfreed, www.marcusisalive.com.