Shock, rage, increasing unease: UK’s Jewish community wrestles with response to war

People attending the vigil outside Downing Street for victims and hostages of Hamas attacks, on 9 October 2023. Photograph: Lucy North/PA

Two days after Hamas unleashed a terrorist attack on Israeli civilians in southern Israel, hundreds of British Jews waved Israeli flags and sang the Israeli national anthem, Hatikvah, at a vigil outside Downing Street.

The event, organised by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council, and attended by the chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, was a powerful show of communal solidarity as the enormity of Hamas’s atrocities was still becoming clear.