The smallish British Jewish community has been traumatised by the Hamas massacres of Israeli citizens last weekend. The “never again” happened again. Jewish people I know have close relatives called up into the Israeli military and some will die. Others have lost family members directly. The hurt and the fear are palpable.
And are accompanied by a strong feeling of isolation. This was captured by the Sunday Times’s Hadley Freeman this weekend. She wrote about the lack of Israeli flags flying in windows (compared with, say, Ukrainian flags) and reported the following: “‘Well, now we know who would have helped us, and who would have pushed us on to the trains,’ a friend texted me.”
This friend’s sentiment falls into the category of the entirely understandable and absolutely wrong.
Four problems. The first is that in an atmosphere when people are talking about anti-Semitic attacks it may seem to many people unnecessarily risky to put an Israeli flag in their window. You can’t read a lack of solidarity into that. The second could be that though wanting to express solidarity with ordinary Israelis, there may be some reluctance to express it with the far-Right government of Benjamin Netanyahu — in a way that there wasn’t with Volodymyr Zelensky. This could be particularly true as Israel prepares for the ground invasion of Gaza and the horrors that must inevitably accompany it.
The ‘never again’ happened again — the hurt and the fear are palpable and come with a feeling of isolation
Third, for myself, although I knew there would be a large pro-Palestinian demonstration on Saturday, I had no inkling of the Jewish solidarity gatherings that Freeman complains non-Jews did not attend. I can’t account for this.
And fourth, this is where recent history kicks in. And here we need to look at the survey evidence.
A recent poll of Americans showed the sympathy gap (at plus 23 per cent for Israel) was its lowest recorded. And most of the change had happened in the past five years — ie between 2018 and 2023.
If we take the Southern Israel massacres out of the equation — ie go back a fortnight — you have to ask just how surprising it is that younger and more liberal Americans (and, one intuits, Britons) have edged away from support for Israel (as opposed to the Palestinians, or a “balanced” view)?
The Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu has been a catastrophe for Israel’s support abroad. It has effectively licensed murderous attacks by settlers on established Palestinian communities. It is one of those appalling ironies that many of those slaughtered by Hamas last week were liberal anti-Netanyahu Israelis living in kibbutzes known for their attachment to the peace movement.
It is true that on Saturday’s large pro-Palestinian protests in the UK there were some callous or ignorant demonstrators who had taped paraglider pictures to their backpacks, in apparent homage to the murderers of Jews. Others chanted the favourite slogan of the hard of thinking “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free”, which if literally interpreted would involve destroying the state of Israel.
One result of all this demonstrating has been a form of intense anger and paranoia in sections of the community, fuelled by some highly exploitative rhetoric on the New Right. Their principal figures have been keen to locate the conflict right here in the UK (where it really isn’t) and attach to it its favourite targets. So the problem is “multiculturalism” (ie Muslims), “what they teach in schools and universities” (ie leftie academics) and the BBC.
Myself, much though I deprecate these symbols, there are genuinely violent young men around who may target Jews with harassment and worse. Let’s concentrate on them.
What worries me more though even than the here-today-gone-tomorrow demonstrators is the sense of isolation felt by a Jewish community which, in some important ways, may have given up arguing and increasingly — as in education — separates itself from wider society. Gentile children need to meet and mix with Jewish kids. It’s the key to mutual understanding. Yet as of 2025 the number of Jewish children attending Jewish faith schools is nearly eight times the enrolment of 1953.
Still I am reasonably sure that most people in Britain by a wide margin do indeed sympathise with the Jewish population and its pain over the Hamas murders. I haven’t seen polling evidence on it yet, but I am confident. They are not about to put us on those trains.
