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Grief Disbelief

‘My sweet boy, we tried desperately to save you’

The family of the 23-year-old hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin were joined by thousands of mourners this week at his funeral at the Har Hamenuchot cemetery in Jerusalem, writes Jenni Frazer

The American-Israeli had been captured by Hamas terrorists at the Nova music festival on 7 October. He and more than 250 other hostages had been held in Gaza for nearly 11 months, although some captives were released in November.

But on Sunday the tragic news broke that Goldberg-Polin and ﬁve other captives had been murdered as IDF forces sought to rescue them in the city of Rafah. Forensic tests carried out on the six showed that they had been shot in the head, within a couple of hours of the Israeli army’s presence becoming known.

As nearly 8,000 people worldwide watched the funeral online, the comments boxes ﬁlled with broken-heart

Continued on page 3

Minister ‘regrets’ timing of arms ban; Chief says it ‘beggars belief’

by Lee Harpin lee@jewishnews.co.uk

@lmharpin

Keir Starmer yesterday defended the suspension of certain arms export licences to Israel, after Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis said the decision “beggars belief”.

On the same day, in an interview with Jewish News, the Middle East minister Hamish Falconer expressed his “regret” that the announcement of the ban had been made on the same afternoon as the funerals of the six hostages murdered last weekend by Hamas in Gaza.

after being elected MP for Lincoln in July, added: “I acknowledge how painful the timing was and recognise that timing will have been evocative to the British Jewish community. I really regret the timing overlapped so closely as it did, but the right thing to do was proceed in a legal way.”

Speaking exclusively to Jewish News from the Foreign O ce, Falconer said: “I want to acknowledge the pain it caused. The timing was set by a legal process and we had to stick to it.”

Falconer, handed the senior role by Starmer

He added: “I have tried to be in regular contact with as many di erent Jewish community groups as I possibly can. I heard on Monday and Tuesday directly from them. I want to reassure your readers that this government is keen to be in regular conversation, to be listening to the Jewish community, right into the Foreign O ce, into No 10. We hear the Jewish voice. I have heard the pain from the Board, from the JLC, and from several rabbis.”

On Monday, Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis had said it

Continued on page 2

Rachel Goldberg and Jon Polin at their son’s funeral on Monday

Foreign Secretary David Lammy, pictured with the prime minister, announced the partial ban on Monday

Chief Rabbi Mirvis

Hersh Goldberg-Polin was 23

Minister admits ‘painful’ timing of arms sales ban

Continued from page 1

“beggars belief” that Labour has announced a partial arms ban to Israel “at a time when Israel is fighting a war for its very survival on seven fronts forced upon it on the 7 October”.

The Board of Deputies, Jewish Leadership Council and Labour Friends of Israel groups all criticised Labour’s decision.

Rabbi Mirvis said the announcement was made “at the very moment when six hostages murdered in cold blood by cruel terrorists were being buried by their families”.

He added: “As Israel faces down the threat of Iran and its proxies, not just to its own people, but to all of us in the democratic west; this announcement feeds the falsehood that Israel is in breach of International Humanitarian Law, when in fact it is going to extraordinary lengths to uphold it.”

LFI said in a statement: “Since 7 October, Israel has come under repeated, unprovoked and indiscriminate attack by Iran and its proxies Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.

“We do not believe that restrictions on UK arms sales will help bring the tragic conflict in Gaza to a close or help ensure the release of the hostages, six of whom Hamas brutally murdered just days ago.”

The Board also said it had expressed “deep concern” to the government.

Progressive Judaism co-leaders Rabbi Charley Baginsky and Rabbi Josh Levy said

Tory leadership hopeful James Cleverly has accused David Lammy of damaging the UK’s relationship with both the United States and Israel.

Posting on X in response to the arms sales suspension, he said: “The foreign secretary has damaged two of our most important relationships at a crucial time – and it won’t have the impact he wants.”

Cleverly used a post on X from ITV political editor Robert Peston, which claimed the White House had been shocked by the UK’s annoucement on Monday of a partial arms licence ba.

many in their communities were angry but called for “calm” responses, adding that it recognised the government’s “ongoing support for the Jewish community and Israel”.

Responding to criticism by Rishi Sunak at PMQs yesterday, Starmer said: “He asks how we arrived at this decision. He knows very well, because the legal framework is clear – the latest guidance was issued in 2021, under his government, and that means that licences have to be kept under review, as they were by his govern-

But Downing Street and the Foreign Office insisted in a briefing with political journalists on Tuesday that Washington had been informed of the UK decision in advance.

Meanwhile, left-wing MPs including Jeremy Corbyn called for an “immediate and

Kemi Badenoch this week said she is “far more worried” about independent MPs elected on “sectarian Islamist politics” than about those from Reform UK who were successful on 4 July.

Launching her campaign to be Tory leader she said the four pro-Gaza MPs held “alien ideas that have no place here” as she condemned “malign and destructive identity politics”.

“When everyone was talking about the five new MPs from [Nigel Farage’s] Reform, I was far more worried about the five new MPs elected on the back of sectarian Islamist politics, alien ideas that have no place here.”

total arms embargo to Israel”. He shared a letter signed by the five MPs who are part of the newly-formed Independent Alliance group.

The other members are Shockat Adam, who defeated Labour frontbencher Jonathan Ashworth in Leicester South, alongside Ayoub Khan, Adnan Hussain and Iqbal Mohamed, who all also stood on pro-Gaza platforms in the general election.

Other left-wing MPs including Zarah Sultana also called for the arms exports implemented by the government on Monday to go further.

The right-wing candidate also touched on foreign affairs saying: “When Taiwan is under threat from China, when Israel is under threat from Iran, when Ukraine is under threat from Russia, we need to ask ourselves if we are ready for this dangerous new world.”

Badenoch is one of five candidates seeking to become party leader, alongside former home

secretary James Cleverly, former home office

minister Robert Jenrick, former work and pensions secretary Mel Stride and former security

minister Tom Tugendhat. Former home secretary Priti Patel dropped out on Wednesday.

ment. We’ve carried out the review in the same way, and come to a clear legal conclusion, and shared that conclusion with parliament.”

Falconer said he recognised the arms licence decision had come at “an incredibly emotional time” for Jews in the UK and Israel.

“I’m a former hostage negotiator myself, I was agonised to see what happened in Israel this week over the death of the hostages, and I recognise this is an incredibly emotional time,” he said. “But I want to also say that Keir Starmer’s

commitment to fight antisemitism remains as ardent as it has ever been.

“He is the only political party leader in my knowledge who used his first speech as leader to talk about antisemitism and his commitment remains absolutely steadfast. ”

The former civil servant who negotiated the release of British hostages from the Taliban was also at pains to dispute claims that the government wanted to win back lost support among pro-Palestine campaigners, and silence proGaza MPs with its surprise move against Israel.

“If we were going to do this to try and win votes in this way as you described, why would we have not announced that we were going to do it before [the election]?” Falconer said. • Editorial comment, page 24

HUMANITARIAN CONCERNS

Humanitarian concerns and the treatment of detainees were among the reasons the UK suspended some arms sales to Israel, the government has said.

The UK is suspending about 30 arms export licences to Israel amid concerns that a “clear risk” exists that they could be used to breach international humanitarian law.

Foreign secretary David Lammy said a review by the government could not “arbitrate on whether or not Israel has breached international humanitarian law” in Gaza, but ministers have a legal duty to review export licences.

Factors key the decision include “insufficient” humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza,

Benjamin Netanyahu has “created a situation in which Israel is “increasingly isolated not only within the court of international opinion, but from its own citizens”, communal group Yachad has warned.

In a statement after the group’s director Hannah Weisfeld attended a meeting with David Lammy along with other community representatives, Yachad said the UK’s arms

and reports of the mistreatment of detainees, a summary of the process undertaken by ministers revealed.

Senior Israeli officials were among those who criticised the UK’s decision, with defence minister Yoav Gallant claiming he was “deeply disheartened” by what he described as “sanctions placed by the UK government on export licenses to Israel’s defence establishment”.

In the Commons, Lammy said there was a “clear risk that the items might be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian law” based on an assessment he had received, adding there was no choice but to halt some arms exports.

licence suspension announcement was “yet one more example” of Israel’s isolation.

Yachad said it noted that Israel continues to fight a war “which has killed thousands of Palestinian civilians and catastrophically destroyed Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, failed to secure the safe return of the remaining hostages, and which has brought the entire region to the brink of wider conflict”.

The group said the war no longer commands the support of the Israeli public.

“The announcement by the UK government today is yet one more example of the extent to which Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government has created a situation in which Israel finds itself increasingly isolated, not only within the court of international opinion, but from its own citizens.”

Prime Minister Keir Starmer with Middle East Minister Hamish Falconer

Campaigners outside parliament express concerns that the UK has abandoned Israel

Cleverly with Netanyahu

David Lammy with Isaac Herzog

Hostages mourned / Hersh Goldberg-Polin / General strike

Israel needs hostage deal now, say protesters at London vigil

by Michelle Rosenberg michelle@jewishnews.co.uk

Hundreds of people have gathered across London to call for the Israeli government to make a deal for the release of the 101 hostages still held by Hamas, following the murder of six captives in Gaza.

The bodies of Ori Danino, 25, Eden Yerushalmi, 24, Hersh GoldbergPolin, 23, Alex Lobanov, 32, Carmel Gat, 40, and Almog Sarusi, 27, were recovered by the IDF on Saturday.

Abducted by Hamas on 7 October, their remains were discovered in a tunnel in southern Gaza. Autopsies found that they had been shot at close range multiple times by Hamas guards, between 48 and 72 hours before they could have been rescued.

At Parliament Square, Israeli and British protesters held placards with images of the murdered six, mourning their loss and demanding the brokerage of a hostage deal by Benjamin Netanyahu.

The protest was organised by We Democracy, a grassroots Israeli/ British movement, which said: “The ongoing bloodshed is intolerable, and the suffering on both sides –Israeli and Palestinian – must be brought to an end. A deal must be signed immediately, the war must end, and the remaining hostages must be brought home alive. PM Netanyahu has failed the hostages, their families and the people in Israel.”

The group added that Netan-

yahu “must be held accountable for his reckless actions – prioritising his political survival and personal interests over human lives. While Hamas and Sinwar were the ones who murdered the hostages, it was Netanyahu and the Israeli government who abandoned them, leaving them to die.

“Time is running out, and every moment of delay is a moment wasted in this escalating tragedy, we cannot afford another day of inaction. This is a pivotal moment – action is needed

now to prevent further loss of life.”

Similar events were held in Cambridge and Oxford.

In north London, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum UK organised a candle lighting ceremony at Hendon Park to honour the memory of the six hostages.

The vigil was co-led by Nivi Feldman, co-chair of the Forum, and forum member Haya Langerman. Participants placed flowers and wore yellow ribbons or “Bring Them Home” t-shirts, symbolising

their enduring hope and solidarity with the affected families.

Social media activist Jonny Daniels delivered a supporting message, with speecehes by Rabbi Raphy Garson of Tiferes Eyal, Rabbi Shneor Glitsenstein of Israeli Chabad Golders Green and Rev. Hayley Ace.

Rabbi Kurzer, from Golders Green Synagogue, led prayers of remembrance and mourning, with singing from Yoni Shine.

Nivi Feldman said: “I am deeply moved by the overwhelming sup-

port and solidarity shown by our community. With just a few hours’ notice, hundreds of people came together to honour the memory of Hersh, Eden, Ori, Carmel, Alexander and Almog, who were brutally murdered after surviving more than 320 days in captivity.

“May their memory be a blessing, may their families know that we grieve with them. Am Yisrael is one family and we feel their pain.

“This incredible turnout reflects not only the deep sorrow we all feel but also our unwavering commitment to bringing home the remaining 101 hostages. I am praying we will have happier days with all of their return.”

‘HERSH, YOU ARE OUR BLESSING’ ISRAELIS ON STRIKE

Continued from page 1 emoji symbols, while at the cemetery the blue and white Israeli flags were accompanied by the red and black banners of the Hapoel Jerusalem football and basketball clubs, where Goldberg-Polin had been a supporter.

The crowd watched in tearful silence as Jon Polin, Hersh’s father, addressed his son: “For 330 days, mama and I have searched for the proverbial stone that would bring you home. Maybe your death will be the stone that will bring the other hostages home.”

He added: “Hersh, you have become a global symbol for bringing good to the world. The 23 years we had with you were a blessing. We will work to make your memory a blessing.”

But, both Jon Polin and President Isaac Herzog, who gave the main eulogy at the graveside, spoke of failure, saying that despite best efforts, “we all failed you”.

The president went further, in an emotional address buttressed by

the close relationship that he and his wife Michal and had developed with Jon Polin and and Rachel Goldberg and their daughters Libby and Orli. Herzog addressed Goldberg-Polin as “beloved” and said he was speaking with “a torn and broken heart… as a human being and a father”.

Speaking in both Hebrew and English, he asked for GoldbergPolin’s forgiveness, saying: “I apologise on behalf of the state of Israel, that we failed to protect you in the terrible disaster of 7 October, that we failed to bring you home safely.

“I apologise that the country you immigrated to at the age of seven, wrapped in the Israeli flag, could not keep you safe.

“Rachel, Jon, dear Libby, and Orly, grandparents, and the whole family, I ask for your forgiveness, forgiveness that we could not bring Hersh back home alive.”

Those who had kept him and others captive were “cursed, monstrous murderers”, the president said, adding that “there is no door in the world on which your beloved family did not knock for you, for your rescue and well-being. There is no stone they left unturned, no prayer or plea they did not cry out – from one end of the world to the other – in the ears of God and man.”

In a message to the government, Herzog said: “Now the state of Israel has an urgent and immediate task. Decision makers must do everything possible, with determination and courage, to save those who can still be saved, and to bring back all our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters.”

Israel’s Histadrut labour union held a general strike this week in an attempt to pressure the government into agreeing a deal to return Israeli hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza.

Arnon Bar-David, whose union represents hundreds of thousands of workers, called on all civilian workers to join the strike.

With anger rising across Israel over the failure to release the remaining captives, Bar-David said a deal was “more important than anything else”.

Bar-David told a press conference in Tel Aviv: “Jews are being murdered in the tunnels of Gaza. It is impossible to grasp and has to stop. We are getting body bags instead of a deal. I have come to the conclusion that only our intervention might move those who need to be moved.”

He said a hostage deal was being put off “because of political considerations” and that the deadlock now meant “we are no longer one people; we are camp against camp” and “we need to bring back the State of Israel”.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid

had earlier called for a strike to shut down the economy to pressure Benjamin Netanyahu’s government into reaching a deal to release the hostages.

Lapid, a former prime minister, called on every Israeli “whose heart was broken this morning [Sunday, when news of the six hostage deaths was revealed]” to join a protest in Tel Aviv later in the day.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum also called on the public “to join a massive demonstration, demanding a complete shutdown of the country”.

Israelis protesting in Tel Aviv

Mourners at the funeral on Monday

The dead hostages: Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23; Eden Yerushalmi, 24; Ori Danino, 25; Alex Lubnov, 32; Carmel Gat, 40; and Almog Sarusi, 27. Insets: Crowds in Parliament Square speak up for the remaining captives

Minister claims vote for ceaseﬁre improved her NHS hospital care

Home Office minister Jess Phillips claims she received preferential A&E treatment in a Birmingham hospital because a Palestinian doctor appreciated that she had voted for a ceasefire in Gaza, writes Lee Harpin.

The MP for Birmingham Yardley recalled a recent incident in which she turned up at a packed hospital seeking help for breathing difﬁculties.

The 42-year-old said she received preferential treatment “undoubtedly” because she was recognised, but also because “the doctor who saw me was Palestinian… almost all the doctors in Birmingham seemed to be”.

She then reportedly added: “He was sort of like, ‘I like you. You voted for a ceaseﬁre.’ [Because of that] I got through quicker.”

Phillips was speaking an event billed as An Evening with Jess Phillips, held at Kiln Theatre in north London.

She described the state of the Birmingham hospital as dire, adding that she had “genuinely seen better facilities, health facilities, in war zones, in developing countries around the world”.

The minister had recently apologised for comments made in response to a video showing masked men confronting a reporter during the far-right riots that broke out across the country last month.

The footage showed a Sky News live broadcast from her constituency having to be cut short after men in masks surrounded a journalist.

Responding to the clip on social media at the time, Phillips claimed that the incident involving a group young Muslims waving

SICKENING CLAIM SHEDS LIGHT ON DISCRIMINATION

As a British citizen and a devoted NHS doctor who has worked in this country for decades, I have always been committed to the principles enshrined in the health service of equality, diversity and inclusion.

Yet, despite assuming that my colleagues shared this commitment, I, along with countless healthcare professionals, have been horriﬁed to see the tsunami of overt antisemitism unashamedly perpetrated against both sta and patients, particularly since the atrocities of 7 October, by many healthcare and allied professionals across the UK.

Remarkably, not all these professionals have been penalised by the system. Indeed, a signiﬁcant number appear to be continuing to work in settings unfettered by the regulations designed to crack down on racism.

Notwithstanding the growing tide of hate against Jews and Israelis which we are witnessing in all sectors of society, including worryingly in healthcare, I was shocked to read the story about Jess Phillips.

The MP’s disclosure refers to jumping the queue at an A&E department in a Birmingham hospital because of, as she put it, ‘who I am. Also the doctor who saw me was Palestinian”.

She continued, “He was sort of like, “I like you. You voted for a ceaseﬁre.” [Because of that] I got through quicker.”

If the doctor did in fact speed up Phillips’

access to emergency care, this raises worrying questions about this doctor’s conduct, but also about the fact that the doctor had felt at ease to allegedly openly share their motivation for precipitating her care with the MP.

This incident, and many similar in the last few months in particular, present serious concerns about key UK institutions and agencies, including professional regulatory bodies, the health service, the law and government, whose functions include maintaining the public’s trust in healthcare professionals by enforcing the central principle of equal access to healthcare for all.

As Jewish and/or Israeli healthcare and allied sta and as patients, including those who are particularly vulnerable, we have much to fear if our stance on geopolitical issues, speciﬁcally the current Israel–Gaza war, determine the speed of our access to emergency or indeed any healthcare.

We need to see more action on the part of the main medical bodies, the law and the government to enforce equality for patients, rather than their inaction risking the potential enablement of institutionalised hate against a minority group.

Palestinian flags had been due to “misinformation” spread in the area.

Her comments have been criticised by political opponents, including the Conservative leadership candidates Tom Tugendhat and James Cleverly.

Cleverly accused her of “making excuses for masked men shouting, abusing and

intimidating members of the media”, after gangs of men in balaclavas turned out on the streets.

Phillips later conceded that she “would choose my words more carefully” in the future.

The MP’s majority at the last election plummeted from 10,659 to just 693, as proPalestine activists sought to defeat her of Labour’s stance on Gaza.

Becoming increasingly outspoken against Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza in order to win back support, Phillips later complained of the harassment she suffered during the election campaign.

Phillips, who has represented Birmingham Yardley since 2015, has one of the biggest followings on X (Twitter) among Labour MPs.

She resigned as a shadow minister to call for a ceaseﬁre in Gaza during a vote in parliament last November.

But she returned to the Labour frontbench after the party’s landslide election victory in July, when she was appointed minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls at the Home Office.

Jewish News contacted Labour for comment. The Daily Mail said in its report that Phillips had declined the opportunity to comment further.

FIRST-TEMPLE STAMP FOUND

A 2,700-year-old First Temple period stone seal featuring ancient Hebrew script and an image of a genie has been discovered in Jerusalem, the Israel Antiquities Authority has confirmed. Dr Yuval Baruch and Navot Rom, directors at the IAA excavation company, said the small, black stone seal is ‘one of the most beautiful ever discovered in excavations in ancient Jerusalem, and is executed at the highest artistic level’

WORRY OVER WEST BANK

The government is “deeply worried” by the methods used by Israel in the West Bank, the Foreign O ce has said.

In a statement it condemned “settler violence”, which has surged since the 7 October Hamas attacks ignited Israel’s war against Gaza.

At least 652 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed by Israeli ﬁre since the war began, according to the Palestinian health ministry. Most have died during Israeli raids, which often trigger gun battles with militants.

Israel says the operations are required to dismantle Hamas and other militant groups and to prevent attacks on Israelis, which have also risen since the start of the war.

This week Israel’s national security minister Itamar BenGvir said he would build a synagogue at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound – a holy site for Muslims – in East Jerusalem.

A spokesperson for the Foreign O ce said: “The UK is deeply concerned by the ongoing IDF military operation in the occupied West

Bank. We recognise Israel’s need to defend itself against security threats, but we are deeply worried by the methods Israel has employed...

“ We continue to call on Israeli authorities to exercise restraint, adhere to international law, and clamp down on the actions of those who seek to inﬂame tensions. The UK strongly condemns settler violence and inciteful remarks such as those made by Israel’s national security minister, which threaten the status quo of the Holy Sites in Jerusalem.”

Labour’s Jess Phillips claims she received preferential A&E treatment in Birmingham

Ex-deputy mayor Nicky Gavron dies

Nicky Gavron, one of the most respected and inﬂuential Jewish political ﬁgures in London, has died, aged 82, writes Lee Harpin.

As deputy mayor of the city under Ken Livingstone, the Jewish Labour Movement member won acclaim for her campaigning, particularly on environmental issues.

During the problematic years under Livingstone Gavron, his deputy 2000-03 and 2004-08, was the go-to person for the Jewish community; during the antisemitism crisis she called for his expulsion from Labour.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan

and other politicians paid tribute as news of her death was conﬁrmed by her family. A post on her X (Twitter) account said she “passed away peacefully at home on 30 August”.

In 2006, Business Week Magazine cited Gavron as one of the 20 most important people in the world in the battle against greenhouse gas emissions, saying: “She aims to turn London into a model of a sustainable future for all the world’s great cities.”

Her mother was a Jewish refugee who ﬂed Germany in 1936. In 2008, she revealed that her mother had been due to dance before Hitler in the

opening ceremony of the 1936 Olympics until the authorities found out she was Jewish.

In 2012 Gavron spoke of her “complete exasperation” at Livingstone’s decision to depose her as deputy mayor and her concerns about the way he ran his administration.

In 2017 she was among the signatories of a letter from Jewish Labour members expressing “disgust” at Livingstone’s “history of inﬂammatory remarks against our community”.

Khan wrote on X: “Devastated to hear the news about my dear friend. Her service to our city was immeas-

urable. To me, she was not just a kind and generous friend, but also a teacher and a mentor.”

Board of Deputies vice-president Andrew Gilbert posted on X: “Nicky was a great friend to London Jewish Forum and the London Jewish community.” Adam Langleben, Progres-

sive Britain executive director wrote: “Nicky was a wonderful woman. May her memory be a blessing.”

Gavron married publishing the tycoon Robert Gavron in 1967. They divorced in 1987. She is survived by the couple’s daughters Jessica, a lawyer, and Sarah, a ﬁlm director.

MORE NON-CRIME HATE INCIDENTS TO BE NOTED

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper will honour a preelection pledge to make police record more noncriminal hate incidents in an e ort to combat anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim hate.

In a reversal of changes introduced by Suella Braver-man, the former home sec-

retary who issued guidance to police that downgraded the duty to monitor noncriminal hate incidents, Cooper is understood to support a strengthening of police recording of hate incidents.

It is part of what she has called a “zero tolerance” approach to antisemitism

and Islamophobic incidents. Cooper has described the Tory government’s response to threats as “too slow, too confused and at times completely counterproductive”.

Jewish News understands communal leaders have been among those to raise concerns that Braverman’s

measures are preventing police from monitoring and identifying tensions and threats to Jewish and Muslim communities that may escalate into violence.

Cooper believes noncriminal antisemitic and anti-Muslim hatred should still be recorded, including

taking perpetrators’ names. The Home O ce told the Times: “It is vital that the police can capture data relating to non-crime hate incidents when it is proportionate and necessary to do so in order to help prevent serious crimes which may later occur.”

Nicky Gavron was deputy to former London mayor Ken Livingstone

Yvette Cooper: honouring pledge

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Activist who praised 7 October arrested

Counter-terrorism police have arrested Palestine activist Sarah Wilkinson over online posts alleged to have shown support for proscribed groups, writes Lee Harpin.

Wilkinson praised the 7 October Hamas attacks in Israel as an “incredible inﬁltration”, and had tried to claim that a series of posts in her name casting doubts on the extent of the Holocaust were not written by her.

Jack Wilkinson, a family member, conﬁrmed the arrest at Wilkinson’s UK home, posting on X (Twitter): “The police came to her house just before 7.30am. There were 12 of them in total, some of them in plain clothes from the counter-terrorism police.

“They said she was under arrest for ‘content that she has posted online’. Her house is being raided, and they have seized all her electronic devices.”

Her arrest and police action against other pro-Palestine activists had led to claims that under Keir

Starmer police are taking tougher action against alleged breaches of terror laws. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is also planning to strenghen existing terror laws to ensure better monitoring of extremism.

On the day of the 7 October attacks, Wilkinson posted: “Hamas airforce publish their incredible inﬁltration by air into the illegal Israeli settlements in the Gaza envelope.” Wilkinson, who writes for the anti-Israel MENA Uncensored network, has since posted numerous pro-Hamas messages on X, including a tribute to “Hamas leader and hero Ismail Haniyeh” after he was assassinated.

In a statement last month, MENA praised Wilkinson for her support for the “Palestinian resistance and relaying what is really happening in Gaza and the West Bank to the world”.

After posts from 2016 and 2017 emerged in which Wilkinson appeared to say that events around the Holocaust had been “debunked” she claimed she was the victim of a smear campaign by someone using a fake account.

Wilkinson has also been involved with the group Palestine Action, and appears in one of its videos.

Last month Palestine Action disclosed that its co-founder Richard Barnard is facing three charges for two speeches he had given. He is accused of supporting a proscribed organisation and encouraging “criminal activity”.

Last week Jewish News told how Richard Medhurst, who is known for his anti-Israel activism, was detained at Heathrow and interrogated under the Terrorism Act.

MP WARNED ‘GET A GRIP’ OVER HOLOCAUST POEM

Conservative MP and former cabinet minister Esther McVey has been urged to “get a grip” after using a poem written about the failure to prevent the Holocaust to criticise plans by the government to ban outdoor smoking.

McVey, the MP for Tatton, posted on X the words of Martin Niemöller’s post-Holocaust poem First They Came including the lines “Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out…” She then wrote: “Pertinent words re Starmer’s smoking ban.”

The Board of Deputies described her post on X as “repugnant” and urged her to delete it.

McVey responded to calls for her to remove the post by claiming in a statement that “people are deliberately twisting the meaning of my words”. She hit out at what she said were “politically correct bullies”.

Her decision to link a failure to prevent the Holocaust and moves to restrict smoking at restaurants and pubs ﬁrst proposed by former PM Rishi Sunak was immediately criticised.

The Board said: “The use of Martin Niemöller’s poem about the horrors of the Nazis to describe a potential smoking ban is an ill-considered and

repugnant action. We would strongly encourage the MP for Tatton to delete her tweet and apologise for this breathtakingly thoughtless comparison.”

Health secretary Wes Streeting posted on X: “No, I do not think the post-war confessional of Martin Niemöller about the silent complicity of the German intelligentsia and clergy in the Nazi rise to power is pertinent to a Smoking Bill that was in your manifesto and ours to tackle one of the biggest killers. Get a grip.” Labour MP Josh Fenton-Glynn posted: “This poem is about the Holocaust. Esther McVey is comparing curbs on smoking outside pubs to the Holocaust.”

McVey has lent her support to Robert Jenrick’s bid to become the next Tory leader.

Aliyah: Building Dreams & Saving Tax

Sarah WIlkinson was detained in a dawn raid

Esther McVey’s post

UK donation helped rescued hostage

The Bedouin hostage rescued by the IDF was transferred to hospital in an ambulance bought with funds raised by Magen David Adom UK supporters, writes Michelle Rosenberg.

Twenty supporters raised £100,000 in 2018 by walking more than 70km across Israel to raise for the country’s medical emergency service, buying an MICU, or mobile intensive care unit.

It was this vehicle that transported Qaid Farhan Alkadi, 52 and a father of 11, to Soroka Medical Centre after his rescue from a tunnel in Khan Yunis following 326 days in captivity.

Daniel Burger, chief executive, MDA UK, told Jewish News: “I was immensely proud to see one of the MDA ambulances donated by the 2018 trekkers was used to transfer Qaid Farhan Alkadi to hospital. It’s amazing to see the positive news that another hostage was rescued.

“Unfortunately there are still too many hostages remaining in captivity in Gaza and we call as ever for the unequivocal release of all hostages. Our thoughts and prayers

are with all of the families and loved ones during this still di cult time as we demand their release and an end to their su ering.”

The MDA ambulance fundraised by British trekkers bringing Qaid Farhan Alkadi to Soroka hospital.

Video screenshot: Israel Hayom

Robert Ordever from Hertfordshire said: “When we raised money for the intensive care ambulance, we knew that it would be vital in saving lives. To see it being used to evacuate a hostage and provide him medical

care, is extremely rewarding. To see that hostage being an Israeli Muslim, speaks volumes.

“I’m sure every trekker is extremely proud this morning and we all hope and pray for all of the hostages to be returned to safety.”

Fellow trekker James Ansher, from north-west London, said: “Being part of raising the money for the MICU was special in itself but knowing that ‘our’ ambulance played even this small part on getting Qaid Farhan Alkadi back to his family really hits home how we are connected to Israel and all of its people.

“We all hope that the remaining hostages come home soon.”

Two-time MDA trekker Emma Brown told Jewish News: “I was always incredibly proud of what we achieved on our trek. Knowing that there is an ambulance in Israel that was funded by our e orts and donations and receiving the news yesterday that our ambulance transported Qaid Farhan Alkadi to hospital after his rescue takes that

feeling of pride to another level. Am Yisrael Chai.”

Lindsey Habib, another trekker, added: “I was overjoyed to hear that not only Farhan Al Qadi, who had been held hostage by Hamas for so long, was rescued by the incredible IDF, but also that the MDA MICU Team, Negev 179, was involved in transporting him and ensuring his

safe arrival. He was transferred in the ambulance that was bought with the money that we raised on our trek (you can see our group name on the side of the ambulance). It may have been a few years ago, but well done to all the MDA Trekkies 2018 – am so proud. Hoping and praying for the safe return of all the hostages as soon as possible.”

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MDA UK chief executive Daniel Burger (left) with British trekkers Gary Harman, Susie Segal and Robert Ordever and the donated ambulance

Qaid Farhan Alkadi, 52, at Soroka Medical Centre

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Within the grand, historic surroundings at Signature at Hendon Hall you will experience outstanding hospitality, ne dining and engaging resident-led activities alongside exceptional person-centred care.

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UK’s 7 October memorial event will be about grief, not politics

Plans have been announced for the UK communal commemoration of the victims of the Hamas attacks last year, which will run from Shabbat on 5 October to Monday 7 October, writes Jenni Frazer.

Henry Grunwald KC, who chairs the organising committee running the three-day event, told Jewish News: “7 October 7 was a traumatic event, not only for those in Israel but for our own community and Jews all over the world. That date will be with us for ever.”

In planning how to mark the ﬁrst anniversary, Grunwald said, “we felt it was appropriate to bring the British Jewish community together”.

He emphasised that the three days were not envisioned as a protest. There would be no political dimension — in fact no politicians, of any stripe, have been invited to participate.

“What we wanted to do was to have a memorial event, to share our grief and pain with those directly a ected in Israel and all over the world.”

There are four main organisers involved: the Board of Deputies, the Jewish Leadership Council, UJIA and the 7/10 Human Chain Project, the latter of which was begun by Israeli nationals living in the UK.

On Shabbat, 5 October, it is planned that synagogues across the

religious spectrum will commemorate in their congregations, with probably special prayers recited in every denomination. “We will provide material and people can use that, adapt it, or do something independently.”

The following day, Sunday 6 October, there will be a memorial meeting, due to take place at an as

yet undisclosed central London outdoor venue.

To date, Grunwald said, the commemorations are partnered and supported by organisations across the community, ranging from Jewish media, the Israeli Embassy, the National Jewish Assembly, Yachad, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, to the Union of Jewish Stu-

NOW A NEW FEELING: NUMBNESS

BY EDWARD MISRAHI FORMER CHAIR, BICOM

Over the 11 months since 7 October, most of us have gone though a series of emotions. It has been a rollercoaster, including shock, sorrow, sadness, anger, frustration, inspiration, incredulity, pride, amazement, more inspiration and so many more.

But as we heard of the news that the IDF had recovered the bodies of six hostages, I realised that I had a new feeling. I am numb.

I am not sure my body knows how to react to the news. I am so sad for the families of these hostages. The pain they have endured cannot be imagined and to hear this news where they lost their loved ones because they were close to potentially being freed is devastating.

It is not just sadness of their unnecessary death. Unfortunately, since 7 October we have had so many victims from the day, from our courageous soldiers, from the victims of terrorist attacks. It has unfortu-

nately become a routine to which we can never be accustomed but that we have learned to live with. Because we knew we had to be strong to beat this evil enemy.

The numbness comes from the way they were killed. From the reports I have read, these hostages were executed once Hamas realised that the IDF was close and that they had nowhere to go. They decided that instead of doing a deal with Israel under the mediation of Qatar and Egypt, it was better to kill them to ensure that we would not be able to recover them alive.

I am numb because I don’t think I can understand this evil anymore. Maybe I should not be that surprised. This is a group that decided to start a war with Israel without having any concept of protecting its population. Its strategy was to use the population as a shield. This is a group whose killing of Jews, and Israelis of any religion, was a reason to call parents to express pride.

And now this is a group that prefers to execute civilians rather than do a deal to save their own people.

As many others, I had been hoping for the last few weeks that a hostage

deal was coming. I don’t know exactly what has been happening in the negotiations over recent few months. Maybe a deal could have been done or maybe not.

What I do know is that it was Hamas who killed these hostages in cold blood. Today I am numb but in honour of these hostages and the families, we cannot stay numb for long. We need to regain our strength and ﬁght even harder for our country.

We need our leaders to realise that this is not about them but about the country. That we cannot continue to win this ﬁght if we keep getting divided. We need strength and purpose, together with compassion and empathy. We are grieving too much, and leaders need to give us a way forward but also to comfort us from the pain. President Herzog’s statement captured the moment perfectly.

I have no desire to get into political arguments today here anymore. What I know is that we need to make sure that with the same strength and power that we need to defeat our evil enemies, we need the compassion and empathy for the families and the country who grieves with them.

I don’t want to feel numb again.

dents, Magen David Adom and Maccabi GB. Many more organisations are expected to join as people return from summer breaks.

“Because we don’t know what the situation will be like regarding the hostages on that weekend,” Grunwald said, “we know we have to be adaptable. But we wanted to give people the opportunity to

mourn those who were murdered on that day, and to continue to show our support for and solidarity with, the hostages who were taken.”

Organisations with an interest in the matter have been invited to set up stalls at the fringes of the venue — “a bit like what happens in Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, to show what they have been doing”.

The London event is set to be the biggest commemoration but ceremonies are due to take place in other communities across the country.

On Monday, the anniversary of the British date of the terrorist attacks, numerous events will be held community-wide, particularly in schools, using educational material devised by the memorial organising committee. Such material could be used on Simchat Torah itself, the Hebrew date of the murders, which this year falls on 24 and 25 October.

Grunwald added: “We, the organisers, are of one mind. This is not a political event, it is a memorial. We will not allow politics to intrude on it. This is something we are doing for the Jewish community. The British Jewish community has also su ered its own psychological trauma and our aim is to bring people together to respond to what happened.”

PEW RESEARCHERS TO REVISE FIGURES

The New York-based Pew Research Centre has agreed to revise ﬁgures in its latest report about the religious composition of the world’s migrants, writes Jenni Frazer.

The decision at the respected centre comes after Jewish News questioned its statistics relating to the UK, part of a global survey which suggests that Jews are more likely than any other religious grouping to move to another country

In the Pew survey, released in Washington DC last week, its researchers said the UK was the third-most common destination for Jewish migrants (120,000), followed by Australia and Russia. Pew says that “as of 2020, just over 21,000 of such Jewish migrants to the UK came from Romania, closely followed by almost 21,000 Polish Jews. Almost 14,000 Jewish migrants to the UK came from Israel, with 7,406 from America and 5,041 from Hungary.”

Additionally, Pew said that the UK – had been ninth on the list in 1990. “Jewish migration to the UK rose substantially during this period, with the stock of Jewish

migrants living in the UK tripling from 40,000 to 120,000. Germany experienced similar growth, from 30,000 to 90,000, and rose to sixth on the list from 10th.”

But, even anecdotally, it was clear that there were not 120,000 Jews who had not been born in Britain, living in the UK in 2020. Pew’s ﬁgures, indicating that there were just over 40,000 Romanian and Polish Jews living and working in the UK, were profoundly at odds with what is known by British Jewish community planners. Recent UK ﬁgures show that in fact about 80 percent of Jews living in Britain today were born here.

A hostage vigil in London. Next month’s three-day commemoration is organised by four Jewish bodies

French Jews arriving in Israel

Meet the Jewish grandma aiming to topple Trump

Kamala Harris isn’t the only woman currently campaigning to be the next president of the United States, writes Sandy Rashty

Kamala Harris isn’t alone in aiming to shatter the White House glass ceiling this November by defeating Donald Trump to become the next president of the United States.

As the Socialist Workers Party’s nominee ahead of the presidential election, Jewish grandmother Rachele Fruit is campaigning for a society led by what she calls “the industrial labour force” – not the ruling classes and the parties that represent them.

We meet over drinks in Golders Green (water for her, coffee for me), where Fruit – who was last in the UK in 1992 – shares her vision for a world led by workers.

She also talks about why her party backs Israel, describing 7 October as “the worst attack since the Holocaust”.

Fruit, who names Malcolm X in the US, Fidel Castro of Cuba and South Africa’s Nelson Mandela as her “heroes”, has been spending part of her summer in the UK on a campaign trail from Coventry to Redbridge to hail the “centrality of the working class”.

“We are building an international movement, an international class. We have to focus on the rights of all workers,” she says.

A champion of industrial workers, she is one herself. As well as being a political candidate, the

74-year-old works a housekeeper at the renowned Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach.

It’s just one of the many jobs Fruit has held. She has worked across “four or five industrial unions” since her first posting as a clerk sorting mail in the US post

office. She has worked in a garment factory in Baltimore, unloaded baggage on the ramp for Eastern Airlines before she was “laid off”, worked as a meatpacker for seven years and later in a factory that repaired jet engines.

Today, as a housekeeper in a luxury hotel, she describes camaraderie with colleagues. “There are 1,800 people in the hotel where I work,” she says.

“It’s a big workforce with people from different countries; most of my co-workers are Haitian immigrants so I am learning Creole. Being part of the international working class expands your world.”

Her views on workers’ unity, class politics and rejection of the mainstream political parties are not surprising. But her vocal support of Israel is – in a world where far-left groups demonise the Jewish State.

For Fruit, 7 October was a turning point – cementing her decision to run for office. “At that moment, I knew we had to stand up and speak out,” she says.

“It should have been made clear to the world that the aim of Iran – and their proxies, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis – is to carry out a programme of annihilating

Israel and the Jewish people. Their politics are Nazi-like politics. Our party, our movement, had to say ‘no’, to say we defend Israel’s right to exist as a refuge for the Jewish people, because there is no other refuge.” She adds: “We don’t call for Israel to stop the war. That’s their decision to make.”

She pulls out a copy of her party’s newspaper, The Militant. On the front page of the August issue is an article with the headline Defend Israel’s right to exist as a refuge from Jew-hatred

But on this, surely she stands alone among comrades, including the UK’s Socialist Workers Party, which has openly called for a “Victory to Palestine”?

“The Socialist Workers Party in the UK has nothing whatsoever to do with our party,” Fruit says. “Unfortunately, they have the same name, but that’s not who we are.”

Fruit says such organisations have lost their way – focusing more on identity and race politics than class politics.

She adds: “When you see the LGBTQ community supporting Hamas, how bizarre is that?”

Fruit, who has never been to Israel, says it would be the “workers” who would find a solu-

tion to the Israel-Palestinian conflict: “Israel can’t find a solution because it is a capitalist country. The only thing that can resolve the issues in the Middle East is the unity of Jewish workers, Palestinian workers, Iraqi, Iranian and Lebanese workers.”

Born to a secular Jewish family in north-east Philadelphia, Fruit says her family expected her to become a “professional” – a doctor, lawyer or accountant.

But at the age of 15, and having attended Hebrew school, she was impacted by the Vietnam War.

She took a bus to Washington in 1965 to attend a major anti-war march, joined by her father, a high school teacher, and mother, despite their initial concerns: “They were worried. They lived through the witch-hunt in the 1950s, when communists and socialists were under attack in the US.”

At the march she found her voice, identifying with campaigns led by the Socialist Workers Party. “They were publishing anti-war newsletters on the [soldiers’] bases and we would help distribute them” she recalls.

And she has never looked back. She has travelled across the globe, campaigning among other things for safer railways and visiting elderly sugarcane factory workers in the Dominican Republic.

Fruit – whose elder brother Edwin Fruit heads the SWP in Minneapolis – has now resumed her campaign in the States.

“We campaign everywhere,” she says. “We campaign in workingclass neighbourhoods. We don’t care if someone voted for Trump or Biden or didn’t vote. Most workers probably don’t bother to vote because they don’t see anything in their own interests.”

She has never met Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, or the Democrats’ candidate Kamala Harris.

“They don’t allow us to debate them; they’re fighting to debate each other. Their policies are to carry out the will of the ruling class. They profit from keeping our wages as low as they can. Our interests are opposite.”

Yet, I wonder what she would say to them, given the chance? “I’m not speaking to them; I’m speaking to the working class.”

US Socialist Workers Party presidential candidate Rachele Fruit speaking at a Los Angeles campaign meeting

Struggling to hear the TV? Missing out on family phone chats?

Hearing just not what it used to be?

Jewish Deaf Association

Barrister case / Football hate / Hostage

Legal complaint is rejected

The Bar Standards Board’s Independent DecisionMaking Body (IDB) has dismissed a complaint against Garden Court Chambers barrister Franck Magennis, who uses a picture of Hamas terrorists breaking into Israel on 7 October as his Twitter/X banner, writes Jenni Frazer

The complaint was made in a private capacity by solicitor Simon Braun, who told Jewish News he was “livid, but not surprised,” at the IDB decision.

Magennis, who represents numerous Palestinian clients, posted a comment on Twitter/X on 7 October, writing: “For almost two decades ‘Israel’ has trapped more than two million people in an open air prison for the ‘crime’ of being insu ciently Jewish.

“We owe Palestinians our solidarity in their struggle against this naked racial domination. Victory to the intifada.”

Braun said: “Under the Terrorism Act, it is a criminal o ence to support or glorify a terrorist organisa-

tion. Not only did the police not prosecute, which is beyond perverse, but we were refused [the opportunity] to allow a private prosecution [against the barrister] to be brought before a judge”.

The IDB ruling says “all the available information was considered” and “the decision was made to dismiss the matter… as the IDB decided that there was insu cient evidence of a breach of the BSB handbook as alleged”.

Braun was told “the IDB determined that there was insu cient evidence to show that the Twitter/X reposts and use of the photograph, indicated support for Hamas. The IDB also determined that there was insu cient evidence to show that a reasonable person could perceive that Mr Magennis’s actions on Twitter/X indicated support of Hamas”.

There is no mechanism for an appeal against the ruling, the Bar Standards Board says, unless new evidence comes to light.

The ruling comes after a UK Law-

yers for Israel (UKLFI) application to the Director of Public Prosecutions to bring a private prosecution against Magennis under the Terrorism Act was rejected earlier this year. For certain o ences, DPP consent is required before an application can be made.

UKLFI was told “criminal liability for this o ence requires su cient evidence to establish that the suspect was responsible for publishing the

Footballer abused

The transfer of Israeli international Manor Solomon to Leeds United FC has been met with a barrage of antisemitic and antiIsrael abuse on social media.

Solomon, 25, moves to Leeds on loan from Tottenham Hotspur, where he spent much of last season recovering from injuries.

Born in Kfar Saba, he and his Israeli girlfriend Dana Voshina were safely evacuated by the Israeli government from the Ukrainian club Shakhtar Donetsk after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

In Britain, he played for Fulham before

moving to Spurs. His year-long loan to Leeds makes him the ﬁrst Israeli and second Jewish player at the club, but the announcement of Solomon’s move attracted a torrent of ugly posts on social media.

The messages purported to be from Leeds fans with some accompanied by Free Palestine slogans. But many other posts applauded Solomon’s goal scoring and said they were happy to have him at Leeds for the new season.

Solomon himself said he was looking forward to meeting both fans and teammates.

JOINS HOSTAGE RELEASE PROTESTS

statement. Having considered the evidence submitted it was assessed that there was insu cient evidence of attribution to enable a prosecutor to assert that the Twitter account belonged to the suspect.

“The sole basis of attribution was the Twitter proﬁle name, the use of the word ‘barrister’ on the proﬁle and then a search of the Bar Standards Board website to link to the sus-

pect’s details. It was noted that there had been no attempt to obtain an account from the suspect to ascertain if he accepted responsibility for the questioned post. There was no other evidence provided to support the contention that the suspect must have been responsible for the Twitter account in question”.

The Crown Prosecution Service noted the absence of “evidence as to the contextual and literal meaning” of the phrase ‘victory to the intifada’ meant the contention the statement gloriﬁed an existing and current terrorist act “could not be established”.

Braun asked: “If there can be a conviction, which there was, simply of a woman doing no more than having a picture of a paraglider on her back — a conviction under the Terrorism Act, how on earth can one not even be allowed to put before a judge a picture of the terrorists breaking through the fence into Israel, with the words ‘Victory to the intifada’?”

Given the ruling of insu cient evidence to demonstrate Magennis’s support for Hamas, Jewish News has asked the barrister if he does or does not support the terror group. To date there has been no response.

BERLIN

People gathered at Pariser Platz, in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, to protest against antisemitism and call for the immediate release of hostages held by Hamas. Demonstrators marched from the landmark to the Berlin Cathedral waving Israeli flags and holding large banners

The X homepage of barrister Franck Magennis featuring the Hamas attack

Franck Magennis

Manor Solomon

One in four Jewish children face antisemitism

by Jenni Frazer @Jennifrazer

A survey from the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR) shows that 23 percent of Jewish respondents report their children have experienced antisemitism at school, in its vicinity or travelling to or from it.

Unsurprisingly, the survey, written by JPR’s senior research fellow, Dr Carli Lessof, shows that Jewish children in mainstream schools are more likely to experience antisemitism at school. Those at Jewish schools are more likely to experience antisemitism while travelling to and from school.

Intriguingly, one in ﬁve Jewish parents with children in mainstream schools say that following the 7 October attacks on Israel and the war in Gaza they are more likely to send their children to a Jewish school.

The JPR report, Antisemitism in Schools, draws on data collected in June and July 2024. It explores Jewish parents’ understanding of whether their children have experienced antisemitism either at school, in the vicinity of school, and travelling to and from school. The research investigates whether parents would make di erent choices about schools in light of the events of 7 October, the war in Gaza and the rise of antisemitism in the UK.

Among the key ﬁndings are that 23 percent of British Jewish parents reported that their child or children had experienced antisemitism at school (12 per cent), in the vicinity of school (six percent) or travelling to or from school (nine per cent).

Thirteen percent of parents of children at a

Jewish school report that their children experienced antisemitism while travelling to or from school; three percent said their children experienced antisemitism at school.

Those with children at mainstream schools are more likely to report their children experienced antisemitism at school (21 percent) than travelling to/from it (two percent).

Three-quarters (73 percent) of Jewish parents with children in mainstream schools said the 7 October attacks and war in Gaza would not a ect their choice about where to educate their children, but one in ﬁve (20 per cent) said they were now more likely to send their children to a Jewish school. This proportion doubles for parents whose children have experienced antisemitism in, around or travelling to or from their mainstream school.

Fifty-two percent of Jewish parents with children in Jewish schools said the attacks on Israel and the war in Gaza would not a ect their school choice, though most of the remainder (46 percent) said they would be even more likely to opt for Jewish schooling now.

The UK has 136 registered Jewish schools in the UK, educating 36,000 Jewish children. That ﬁgure, broken down, shows that about two-thirds of all Jewish children are educated in these schools: almost all strictly Orthodox children learn in Jewish settings, as do an estimated 43 per cent of other Jewish children.

In the 1950s, there were just over 5,000 Jewish children in Jewish schools.

In 2018 a joint JPR/Ipsos study identiﬁed the factors a ecting the choice of children’s education for British Jews. Parents picking a Jewish school had three main drives: wanting

Nicholas Winton St unveiled in Prague

Holocaust survivors came together in Prague this week to name a new street in memory of the Kindertransport hero Sir Nicholas Winton.

The idea to name the new street in the Holešovice, Prague 7 area was initiated by the municipal district, in cooperation with the Memorial of Silence, based at Bubny Station, the departure point for transports carrying tens of thousands of Prague’s Jewish inhabitants to the Nazi ghettos, concentration camps, and extermination camps.

The initiative is also supported by the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic and the Association of Jewish Refugees, which helps Jewish victims of Nazi oppression living in UK.

Nicholase Wintona will link the neighbourhoods of Letná and Holešovice, connecting Veletržní and Dělnická

Streets, following the route of the former Prague Jewish transports to the ghettos and concentration camps from Bubny railway station.

At the ceremony, which also marked the 85th anniversary of their safe passage to the UK, were Kinder including Alexandra Greensted, Lady Grenfell-Baines, Petr Schiller and Rev. John Fieldsend.

The street’s naming coincides with the 85th anniversary of the last planned Winton train, which was

intended to carry children to safety but was prevented from doing so, due to the outbreak of the Second World War on that day. Its participants later boarded Deutsche Bahn trains, which deported them to Nazi concentration camps from Bubny station.

Lady Grenfell-Baines who travelled from Prague to the UK as an unaccompanied child, said: “It is deeply moving to be standing here in Prague alongside fellow Winton children, 85 years since the Nazis tore our worlds apart.”

The Kindertransport saved more than 10,000 German and Austrian Jewish children who ﬂed Nazi persecution to London, and helped 169 mostly Jewish children escape occupied Czechoslovakia.

The future street will be crossed by a railway corridor, following the route of the former Jewish deportations.

Did not experience antisemitism

Experienced antisemitism at school

Experienced antisemitism in or around the vicinity of school

Experienced antisemitism travelling to or from school

three-quarters of Jewish parents

children

Question: As far as you are aware, has your child(ren) at a Jewish/non-Jewish school experienced an antisemitic incident directed at them personally? Sample is based on unique households of parents with children in Jewish schools (n=304) and mainstream schools (n=225). Multiple responses are possible so the figures do not sum to 100.

their child to have a strong Jewish identity (80 percent), to have friends with similar values (60 percent) and to attend a school with high academic standards (40-45 percent).

have experienced antisemitism there. It is also striking to learn that 40 percent of these parents would be more likely to opt for a Jewish school now, given the choice again.”

In contrast, Jewish children in mainstream schools are significantly more likely to experience antisemitism within school (reported by 21% of parents) and are much less likely to experience it travelling to and from school (2%). This is likely due to the fact that the teachers, staff and students will be diverse; indeed, as previously noted, one of the main reasons that parents choose mainstream schools is that they want their children to be exposed to religious and cultural diversity. In comparison, Jewish children wearing standard school uniforms are less likely to be identifiable as Jewish outside of school.

In contrast, the motivations of parents preferring a non-Jewish or mainstream school were: wanting their child to be educated in an environment that is not exclusively Jewish (60 percent), convenience (35 percent), and again, attending a school with high academic standards (30 percent).

JPR executive director Dr Jonathan Boyd said: “It is particularly jarring to see that a quarter of Jewish parents with children in mainstream schools report that their children

The JPR report comes out at the same time as new ﬁgures were released on racism in schools, with a report from the Runnymede Trust saying that thousands of children, some as young as four, were sent home from school for racism last year.

Campaigners, who said the ﬁgures could indicate that bigotry had become “normalised”, believed that in some cases the children were repeating in the classroom what they heard at home and from right-wingers on TV and radio.

Our initial analysis suggests that in mainstream schools the characteristic most closely associated with experiencing higher levels of antisemitism is the parent's financial situation The sample sizes we are working with are small so we cannot confirm that our findings are statistically significant, but it is striking to see that two-fifths of parents who said they were finding it ‘quite difficult’ or ‘very difficult’ to get by14 reported that their child or children had been subject to some form of antisemitism at school, compared to one-fifth in wealthier economic categories. What is statistically significant is that a quarter (27%) of pupils from the most disadvantaged homes had experienced antisemitism in the vicinity of school compared to less than one in twenty (4%) in other economic categories and one in ten (11%) had experienced categories schools,

them through economic means, for example

All of these factors may be associated with

A key to unlocking the issues faced by more economically disadvantaged parents with children in mainstream schools, may be found in comments made spontaneously by some parents when asked whether they would have made a different choice of school following O A number of parents reported that they would still choose to send their child to a mainstream school, but they would choose the school carefully, citing, for example, strong school management and the importance of having a number of other Jewish school. It is very likely that parents who choose mainstream schools consider how sympathetic that school will be towards Jewish pupils, but parents from more disadvantaged backgrounds may be more constrained in their choices.

Protecting and securing the Jewish community in the UK against antisemitism is what we do. CST will leave no stone unturned in the fight against those who wish to do us harm. We

Jewish school Mainstream school

Nearly

with

in mainstream schools said the 7/10 attacks and Gaza war would not affect their choice about where to educate their children

The street is officially named

Rabbi

Heartfelt tributes to beloved S&P ‘pillar’

by Sandy Rashty

Tributes were paid this week to Rabbi Israel Elia, a much-loved leader of the S&P Sephardi community, who has died after a brief illness, aged 68.

Rabbi Elia, who was born in Tunisia, served the S&P community for 40 years.

A Lauderdale Road synagogue favourite, he was remembered by family, colleagues and former students as a “pillar of the S&P community, the friendly face of a large synagogue”.

The Rev Zvi Amroussi, also from Tunisia, ﬁrst met Rabbi Elia at the Monteﬁore Kollel, which was set up to train future rabbinical leaders. “We were very close, we would speak on the phone and discuss questions of halacha,” he says.

“He loved teaching Torah, he loved teaching young people. His former students would only want him to marry them, and he would ﬂy all over the world to do so.

“Sometimes I would do a wed-

ding service with him. He had a great sense of humour and would always make sure the couple felt calm and at ease.

“Rabbi Elia would approach and speak to anybody. It was something I always admired in him.”

Over his career, Rabbi Elia taught hundreds of bar and batmitzvah students, as well as leading

the Made in Heaven pre-wedding marriage courses for couples under the S&P. He also led assemblies at the Naima Jewish Preparatory School in north London. Remembering her father, Naomi Elia said: “We will all remember my dad as someone of stature, a man who was e ortlessly empathetic, a man who often kept

his good deeds private, many that we are only ﬁnding out about now, a man with the strongest handshake, a beautiful voice and of course, a radiant smile. A man that we were blessed to call, our dad.”

Rabbi Joseph Dweck, senior rabbi of the S&P Sephardi community, said: “Rabbi Elia was so dearly loved beyond measure by our whole community. He selflessly dedicated countless hours to support and care for our kahal for over 40 years. His loss is profound and we will miss him dearly.”

Rabbi Elia moved to the UK from Djerba in Tunisia aged 14 in 1971 to study at the Monteﬁore College. He went on to to use his position to encourage positive relations between Tunisia and the Jewish community, even being a guest of a former Tunisian president, enjoying kosher meals at Djerba beach.

A grandfather, Rabbi Elia leaves his mother Nurit, his wife Gina and four children Yakir, Daniel, Nicole and Naomi.

SUPPORT IN EUROPE

The Conference of European Rabbis has launched a programme to deliver religious services to communities across the continent.

Through its Community Package Initiative the conference, which represents more than 700 mainstream Orthodox communities, will support groups in smaller or remote areas, ensuring that assistance is available to every community in every country.

The Community Package costs €2,700, or £2,272, payable in monthly installments over three years. It includes inspection of mikvaot every three years, as well as consultation, halachic advice, and a port of call to answer any halachic questions.

The package also includes expert checking of Torah scrolls, and their electronic registration to help prevent theft and forgery, as well as acting as a liaison with sofrim (Torah scribes) should a new Torah scroll need to be written.

Additionally, the package o ers unlimited access to Birur Yahadut (Jewish status determination), and providing expert rabbinic opinion regarding complex cases.

The CER says the package can be tailored to suit the speciﬁc needs of each community. Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of CER, said: “By making these vital services available to even the smallest and most remote communities, we are ensuring that every Jewish community has the resources to sustain its religious practices and traditions.”

YOUR LEGACY

A new bus o ering a direct link for the community living in Golders Green and in Stamford Hill has been launched in an initiative Mayor of London Sadiq Khan says is an attempt to “reassure the Jewish community they are going to be safe”, writes Lee Harpin.

Single-decker number 310 buses began operating this week, with the mayor conﬁrming that the surge in antisemitism in the aftermath of the 7 October attacks in southern Israel had persuaded him that the service was essential.

Speaking to Jewish News from a seat on a 310 bus at it journeyed from Golders Green at Monday’s launch, Khan said: “I have listened and heard the concerns of Jewish Londoners, and these concerns are real.

“I was struck by the conversations I had recently with the Jewish community, who were frightened of the massive increase in antisemitism since 7 October. I was also told stories by families who when they changed buses travelling between Golders Green and Stamford Hill at Finsbury Park, they were frightened at the abuse they received.

“This direct route also connects congregations and connects families. But it also reassures the Jewish community that they are going to be safe when they travel.”

At the launch, the mayor was joined by representatives from the London Jewish Forum, Jewish Leadership Council, Board of Deputies, and by politicians including Finchley and Golders Green MP Sarah Sackman, and London Assembly member councillor Anne Clarke.

The 310 will follow the same routes as the 210 that links Brent Cross and Finsbury

Park via Golders Green, Highgate village and Archway, and the 253 between Finsbury Park and Stamford Hill Broadway.

The mayor said he had been lobbied by communal groups for 16 years who called for a bus to link the two parts of London, which are home to thousands of Jewish families. He recalled a lively Jewish News-hosted mayoral election husting at JW3 this year, noting that the biggest cheer from the audience came when he made a pledge to introduce the 310 if he was re-elected.

The mayor said Transport for London bosses had told him there was “no business case” for launching the route a cost of £3.2m but that “public transport is a public service” and therefore there was a case for subsidising the route.

“This is a subsidised bus route and I would urge Jewish News readers to try to use it to feed into the consultation,” he added. “This is a good example of public transport responding to the concerns of Londoners, especially around safety concerns and rising antisemitism.”

Rabbi Israel Elia served the S&P community for 40 years

Sadiq Khan (centre) at launch of the route

Police yet to identify ‘Hamas 7’ supporter SOUTH AFRICA’S CHIEF RABBI

Police have still not identiﬁed a man who was pictured four months ago wearing a Manchester United football shirt with ‘Hamas 7’ printed on the back.

The Telegraph reported in May how authorities were searching for the man, who was photographed by a Jewish passerby near the Oxford Circus tube station in central London.

“Police received a call from a member of the public reporting that a man was walking in Oxford Street, W1 wearing a football shirt with an o ensive message on it,” a Metropolitan Police spokesperson said at the time.

“Enquiries are underway to try and identify the man.”

The ‘Hamas 7’ tag is a reference to the Palestinian terror group’s 7 October massacre of 1,200 Israelis and the abduction to Gaza of more than 250 people, more than 100 of whom remain in captivity.

Stephen Silverman, director of Investigations and Enforcement at the non-proﬁt Campaign Against Antisemitism, said: “Threatening

or carrying out acts of violence against any minority is despicable. And it’s absolutely right that anyone engaged in that sort of behaviour should feel the full force of the law.

“The problem is for the last 11 months, and especially in London, we have been watching a double standard being applied, whereby one form of extremism is clamped down on with an iron ﬁst while another is treated with an unacceptable level of leniency.”

Silverman attacked the resulting “lack of real deterrence

through policing” which he said had created “a climate [that] has been allowed to develop that is permissive with regard to expressions of hatred directed not just at Jewish people, but at Britain as well and at the liberal-democratic value we all rely on to keep us safe.”

Expressing support for a proscribed organisation is a criminal o ence in Britain under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act.

The UK banned Hamas’s military wing in 2001 and extended the designation to the organisation’s political wing in 2021.

CRITICISES POPE

The Chief Rabbi of South Africa has issued a ﬁerce attack on Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and the Pope for what he says is their “rejection of the Bible” and support for a ruling by the International Court of Justice that Israel’s presence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is unlawful.

In a trenchant video message posted on Twitter/X, Rabbi Warren Goldstein accused the two religious leaders of “abandoning their most sacred duty to protect and defend the values of the Bible”.

Now was the time, Rabbi Goldstein said, “for religious leaders to come to the defence of society, to speak up for Western values and freedoms”.

He added: “Instead, Pope Francis and the Anglican Archbishop are silent: indi erent to the murder of Christians in Africa and to the threat of terrorism throughout Europe, and outright hostile to Israel’s attempts to battle these Jihadi forces led by Iran.”

The archbishop had issued a statement earlier in the month which referred to a previous visit he had made to the region.

In it, he said that he had visited Palestinian Christians whose future was threatened by the deprivation of a Pal-

estinian state through occupation and the building of settlements.

“Having visited our Palestinian Christian brothers and sisters many times over recent decades, it is clear to me that the regime imposed by successive Israeli governments in the occupied Palestinian Territories is one of systemic discrimination,” archbishop Welby said.

“I am particularly aware of how this is impacting Palestinian Christians, threatening their future and viability. It is clear that ending the occupation is a legal and moral necessity.”

He added that the embrace of the advisory opinion was important in the face of increasing violations of international law.

A photo of the man in Oxford Street was taken by a Jewish passerby

Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein

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Wheels of triumph – the Paralympian chasing gold

While training for his second Paralympic Games, 30-year-old Danny Sidbury reaches up to 23 miles an hour in his racing wheelchair, writes Michelle Rosenberg.

He won the silver medal in the men’s 1500 metres T54 event at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham and is also a two-time bronze medallist at the 2023 World Para Athletics Championships held in Paris.

Ahead of his second Paralympics, he spoke to Jewish News about his first comppetition in his race-chair: the 5k heat qualifier held last Friday in Paris.

Sidbury was born in Finchley to a British dad, Phil, and Spanish mother, Nati. The family, including sister Ambar, moved to Almeria in Spain when he was eight, six years after he lost both his legs beneath the knee to meningitis. Despite a brief sojourn in London, the Andalusian city has been his home ever since.

Bilingual, Sidbury jokes he’s “still working on his English”.

While he became a bilateral amputee due to meningitis, he says: “I don’t nor-

in autumn 2021 took place in the thick of the Covid pandemic.

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mally say that. I say a shark attack because that’s much more exciting. Although there aren’t that many shark attacks in Spain and even fewer in the UK.”

Officially, he’s competing in ParaAthletics, which Sidbury describes as “an umbrella term for any form of athletics done by people with a disability.”

Within that, he adds, it gets “even more niche, as I do wheelchair racing specifically, and within that, I’m the T54 classification. It gets very confusing, very quickly.”

To the uninitiated, the ‘T’ in T54 stands for track, as opposed to ‘F’ for ‘field’. The classification system is a way to represent your “level of disability or impairment, so that everyone is competing on as level a playing field as you can get”.

Those in the T54 category, he says, are “the most able-bodied athletes in wheelchair racing. Our impairment affects us from the waist down.”

Those in T53 Sidbury explains, have “core muscles that are also affected, T52 is quadriplegic (paralysis of all four limbs) and T51 is more severe. The category also includes cerebral palsy qualifications.”

Sidbury had his first taste of wheelchair racing at the age of eight “when my dad just thought I should do sport, just for exercise and social purposes, like any other kid”.

Surprising himself, he caught the racing bug after meeting his future and current coach Christine Parslow, who worked with him as he embarked on his first London Marathon in 2015.

Fast forward to the Tokyo Games, where he participated in an extraordinary T54 1500m final and together with five other athletes broke the world record.

Now at the Paris Olympics, he jokes that at least there will be more people in the stands this time, as the Tokyo Summer Paralympics

Sidbury was waiting for his family to arrive in Paris after his qualifying race, admitting he was “under great pressure to make the final because everyone has bought tickets to it.”

With a determined eye to the future, he says this will likely “be the only Games where my family will be able to come and see me in person because the next ones are in Los Angeles (2028) and then Brisbane (2032), which logistically makes it a lot harder for people to come and watch”.

The racing chairs he says are built with the specific purpose of going around a track at speed. “They are uncomfortable to sit in, you push them completely differently to a day chair (regular wheelchair) and they only turn left because that’s all you have to do on an athletics track.”

Aside from his twice-daily training sessions six days a week, Sidbury says in terms of mental preparation, it’s all about timing. “The intensity, the pressure, excitement and the butterflies are all good things, but you’ve got to feel them at the right time,” he notes.

“I try to stay as relaxed as possible, playing piano to unwind, enjoy my time as much as possible, keep things ticking over in training and then when it’s time to go all-out, allow myself to feel all those things.”

With athletes from countries across the globe, including China, Thailand, Switzerland, the USA, Canada, Eritrea, Japan and Australia, Sidbury was down to compete in the 400 metres, 800 metres, 1500 metres and 5k races, the latter challenge consisting of twelve and half laps round a track the size of a football pitch.

While he was looking forward to moving from his hotel to join fellow athletes at Olympic Village, when it comes to the crunch, Sidbury says: “It’s every man for himself.”

He adds: “I don’t see myself as a role model. It’s not my ambition. I’m just a guy turning up for work, and my job is to do laps.”

As to his biggest ‘work’ challenge, it’s simple: “Winning gold.”

Left, Danny Sidbury aboard his specialised race-chair at one of his twice-daily training sessions; above, at full speed in he heat of competition

Dozens help search for war widow’s ring

War widow Gal Moreno has thanked dozens of volunteers who came to help her ﬁnd her late husband’s wedding ring after she lost it on a beach in Ashkelon, writes Joy Falk.

Itay Moreno, 24, a master sergeant in a reservist commando unit, was killed ﬁghting terrorists on 11 October, four days after Hamas broke into southern Israel. Since his death, his widow told Ynet News, “I’ve been wearing his ring around my neck.”

But, she said: “One moment it was on my neck — I saw it in a picture I took — and suddenly it fell oﬀ. I hope and pray that they ﬁnd it. I won’t stop looking and hoping. We have a wonderful and amazing nation. A lot of people mobilised to help me”.

She put out a plea on social media for people to help her ﬁnd the ring — and there was an instant response.

The Israel Antiquities Authority was working on an excavation near the Ashkelon beach where Moreno lost her ring. Eli Escusido, the IAA director,

authorised licensed metal detectorists to scour the beach for the missing ring, and also allowed volunteers to expand their search into the area under the IAA jurisdiction.

On Sunday afternoon, Itay Moreno’s wedding ring was found, and his young widow paid grateful tribute to everyone who came to help.

US $454M TO COMBAT RELIGIOUS HATE

The US government is to spend nearly $150 million more this year than in 2023 to secure religious organisations, following the rise in antisemitism since 7 October.

The Department of Homeland Security said it had allocated $454.5 million this ﬁnancial year

toward the nonproﬁt Security Grant Programme, which funds security enhancements at houses of worship and religious organisations. It is the largest sum yet allocated toward the programme, and a big increase over last year.

Homeland Security secre-

tary Alejandro Mayorkas, who is Jewish, said the funds, available to all denominations facing hostility, “will provide communities across the country with vital resources necessary to strengthen their security and guard against terrorism and other threats”.

ANGER AT LIST NAMING ‘SUPPORTERS OF ISRAEL’

Italy’s New Communist Party has been denounced by fellow politicians for releasing a list of individuals it allegedly ﬁnds “guilty” of supporting the existence and survival of Israel.

The ‘Zionist Organizations and Agents in Italy’ list on the party’s website has 150-plus names of Jews, Israelis and Italians in politics, media, business, technology and the military.

It is split into seven sections, including Israeli ﬁnancial and insurance companies active in Italy, and others called ‘Zionists present in the Italian mass-media’, ‘Zionist representatives of political parties’ and ‘Israeli real estate companies’

Those listed include journalists, professors, former Italian ambassador to Israel Luigi Mattiolo, former president of the Jewish Community of Rome Riccardo Paciﬁci, chief rabbi of the Jewish Community of Rome Riccardo Di Segni, chief rabbi of the Jewish Community of Milan since 2005 Alfonso Pedatzur Arbib, and Adolfo Locci, chief rabbi of the Jewish Community of Padua since 1999.

The New Communist Party refers to them all as “Zionist agents who must be condemned and fought against”.

It adds that “the Zionist entity is an integral part of the power system

of the Papal Republic”, and claims its “research on the presence of Zionists in Italy is still limited” because often “Zionist investment funds, banks, speculators and businessmen hide thanks to the cover of US imperialist groups behind formally US companies or with their own oﬃces in tax havens” . It adds that they must be “condemned and fought against” and that the list is a work in progress.

The list has been condemned by other politicians. Ignazio La Russa, cofounder of ruling right-wing Brothers of Italy, called on left-wing parties to denounce it, calling it “a serious and unacceptable attack on freedom of thought and a worrying threat to the safety of the people involved”.

He ended by calling for the list to be “unanimously condemned”.

Italy’s parliament in session

The wedding ring and the late Itay Moreno. Pic: IDF

Editorial comment and letters to the editor

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

VOICE OF THE JEWISH NEWS

Symbolic gesture sends risky signal

The UK government’s partial arms ban on Israel is largely symbolic, impacting just 30 out of 350 export licenses and leaving major contracts such as F35 fighter jet parts untouched.

Despite this, the decision will have very serious implications for UK–Israel relations while its timing, coinciding with the burials of hostages brutally murdered by Hamas, added a shocking element of insensitivity and misjudgment.

Broader consequences for international relations are also concerning. While the foreign secretary presented the decision as a commitment to upholding international law and moral standards, it will have the opposite effect.

As the Chief Rabbi pointed out in his unprecedented public criticism of government policy, the move will only embolden Iran and its malign proxies in the region, inviting further aggression rather than deterring it.

In the quest for peace and security, in the face of barbaric enemies like Hamas and Hezbollah, democratic societies must weigh up the signals they send and the allies they support. This deplorable decision falls far short of such considerations.

A peaceful future is built on consistent and firm commitments to those facing existential threats, not ill-conceived gestures that benefit only those who violently oppose such values.

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Progressive Israel bashing

I am responding to Rabbi Gabriel KanterWebber’s letter in the issue of the 8 August. It is sad that a person in a position of compassion and understanding felt the need to pursue letter writer Lucy Solomon and Israel with such vigour in defence of Rabbi Haft YomTov’s fallacious accusations.

With juvenile reliance on the word ‘perhaps’ relative to suggested corroborative statements, Rabbi Kanter-Webber’s misguided sense of purpose and satisfaction are clearly visible in an apparent abandonment of a core tenet of Judaism; that Israel is central to our theology and religious identity.

The rabbi’s exhaustive pursuit and recounting of statements made by Israeli

politicians and military leaders may not be blood libel, but seem more like another thinly veiled attempt at attacking Israel.

Any credibility his view has is clearly lost by incredulously relying on emotionally charged outpourings, made literally hours after atrocities the likes of which the Jewish people had not seen since the Holocaust.

All sensationalist progressive bashing of Israel does is play into the hands of the extremist left, driving anti-Zionism and antisemitism.

Try supporting Israel instead. It remains the only safety net for Jews. Rabbi Gabriel KanterWebber included.

Marc Sidney, Brighton

7/10 COMMEMORATION QUESTIONS

I welcome the decision to host a UK communal commemoration of the atrocities of 7 October in southern Israel last year. The National Jewish Assembly is offering its full support and will have a stand at the event.

I also endorse the assurance of the organising committee chair Henry Grunwald KC that politics will not be allowed to intrude on the event, and that it will be a memorial for the tragedy that we have suffered.

Yet there is another dimension to Mr Grunwald’s assurance that needs to be addressed, and that is political differences regarding Israel, its

government’s policies and stances on the hostage release negotiations. Opinions are of course very varied, both in Israel and in the diaspora, and it is good that these issues will be put to one side while we commemorate the lives tragically lost on that fateful day and the many hostages who have also been murdered since.

I hope, too, that we can remember the many hundreds of brave Israeli soldiers who have also lost their lives in the war that has ensued, as well as all innocent civilians who have perished. Gary Mond, chair, National Jewish Assembly By email

WHAT ABOUT JEWS? GUARDIAN SHAME

The International Day of Remembrance and Tribute to Victims of Terror is aimed at honouring and remembering regardless of nationality, ethnicity or religion. “The UN stands in solidarity with all the victims and aims to uphold their rights and support their needs.” So says the UN’s Counter-Terrorism Office. Yet not a single reference to a Jewish victim of terror.

Shylock’s spech in The Merchant of Venice comes to mind: “Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is?” How does the UN explain its omission?

Shimon Cohen

By email

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The Guardian headline ‘Protesters turn on Netanyahu in fury over deaths of six hostages’ was repugnant but unsurprising. British Jews should show their outrage. At a time when the focus should be on demanding the terrorists surrender and comforting the innocent victims the Guardian stoops to a new low. The newspaper should know that the safe return of hostages has always had little do with Israel. We are dealing with genocidal Islamist groups holding hostages as bargaining chips.

Derek Saker

By email

‘The Paralympics are down the block. These are the Paravlympics’

Cyber warfare and the assault on our freedom

CATHERINE PEREZ-SHAKDAM

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, WE BELIEVE IN ISRAEL

There was a time when warfare was defined by tanks and fighter jets, when borders were patrolled by armed guards and fortresses. But today, the most insidious threats to our freedom do not emerge from the obvious instruments of violence but from the dark recesses of cyberspace. The Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI), a regime notorious for exporting terror and destabilising entire regions, has discovered that it can wield far greater influence through a keyboard than it ever could with a battalion. We live in a world increasingly bound by digital infrastructure, where convenience is shadowed by vulnerability. The UK, like many of its allies, remains woefully unprepared for the kind of cyber onslaught that

Tehran is now capable of unleashing. This is no distant dystopia; the threat is real and present. In 2012, Iran launched a crippling cyberattack on Saudi Aramco, wiping out data from 30,000 computers and sending shockwaves through global energy markets. More recently, during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Iranian hackers targeted the UK’s National Health Service, attempting to sabotage life-saving operations while the nation struggled to cope with a health crisis.

It doesn’t require much imagination to envision the chaos a coordinated attack on the UK might bring. Picture this: small businesses wake up to ﬁnd their bank accounts frozen, their systems locked by ransomware spreading like wildﬁre. Families discover their smart devices—those supposed tools of convenience—hijacked and turned against them, leaving homes and businesses alike exposed. Communications falter, emergency services crippled. A simple click by a regime operative halfway across the world could bring Britain to its knees, leaving ordinary citizens and small enterprises scrambling in confusion, without the resources to defend

themselves against this unseen assault.

Yet, cyber warfare is only one aspect of Tehran’s broader strategy. Far more dangerous is the ideological subversion that it conducts under the guise of resistance and liberation. For years, the regime has exploited online platforms and international forums to fan the ﬂames of division, particularly by targeting Jewish communities and Israel’s allies under the convenient label of “anti-Zionism.” Let’s be clear: this isn’t about social justice.

What is being marketed as resistance is merely a rebranding of ancient hatreds, repackaged for modern sensibilities, driven by the disinformation machine of a state intent on destabilising societies.

The true menace of this strategy lies in its ability to masquerade as a movement of empowerment, when in reality, it strips people of their freedom of thought and choice. Under the guise of liberation, the regime’s proxies and sympathisers lock individuals into rigid ideological traps that stiﬂe debate and dissent. What emerges is a twisted form of cultural Marxism, where identity becomes a weapon and any questioning of the narrative is met

with accusations of racism, reactionism, or worse. Genuine discussion shrinks, giving way to a culture of grievance and victimhood.

Tehran’s assault is not conﬁned to antiIsrael rhetoric; it seeks to redeﬁne the very terms of discourse, turning vice into virtue and virtue into vice. Anti-Zionism, laundered through the language of human rights, is stripped of its historical context to obscure its real intent: denying Jewish self-determination and delegitimising the Jewish state.

What was once the domain of openly antisemitic movements has now found a home in progressive circles, celebrated as moral high ground. The sleight of hand here is deliberate—by presenting itself as a champion of the oppressed, the regime inﬁltrates Western societies that are too eager to adopt any cause that promises justice, however illusory.

The road ahead demands clarity and courage—traits that are rare in a world more eager to placate than confront. We must rise to meet these threats, whether they come in the form of a digital blackout or the creeping acceptance of malicious ideologies.

Our security and future depend on it.

‘Israel as classroom’ idea has been hit hard by war

DR JOHNATHAN BOYD EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE FOR JEWISH POLICY RESEARCH

One third of all adult British Jews have participated in the Israel youth summer tour. This summer – for obvious reasons – participation fell by 60 percent. The war in Gaza might also affect what our children learn next time they visit.

Beyond the horrors of the 7 October attacks, there was something deeper about that day that left its mark on Jews everywhere. As Hamas committed its atrocities, many Jews had a momentary sense of what it feels like to be completely powerless and vulnerable; to be entirely at the whim of those who wish to exterminate us. For a brief moment, we had a taste of what it feels like to live in a world without a Jewish State.

It’s not a familiar feeling. You have to be well over 80-years-old to have any real memory of what life was like for Jews without

the State of Israel. Indeed, we have become so used to the country’s existence that as much as the notion of Israel as a safe haven might resonate in some theoretical way, Jews rarely ‘ﬂee’ to it anymore, certainly not from the UK. About two in every thousand British Jews make aliyah every year and that rate has remained steady for decades. Despite concerns about rising antisemitism, we’re not exactly running for the Judean hills.

Instead, we have increasingly come to see Israel as the ‘classroom’ of the Jewish People, a concept ﬁrst championed by the former Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks z”l. As he argued 30 years ago, where Israel once saved Jews, now it would save Judaism. He saw it as the place where young people could have a ‘total Jewish experience’ – to learn about their Jewishness, and to bring back their passion to help revive Jewish life in the Diaspora.

Perhaps the greatest educational endeavour to emerge from this concept was ‘Birthright’ – the all-expenses-paid Israel experience for young adults that has now taken over three-quarters of a million Diaspora Jews to Israel in the past 25 years.

The concept of the Israel experience goes further back that that – it pre-dates 1948. Israel has long been our classroom – indeed, half of adult British Jews have been on an educational trip there, and quarter has been on more than one. And chief among these is the Israel youth summer tour, which a third of adult British Jews has participated in.

Rresearch demonstrates that the summer tour actually has a rather limited long-term impact on our Jewish identities, certainly as a one-o experience. It is only when it is embedded in a wider set of Jewish educational experiences that it seems to become truly e ective. It is far more impactful on young people who were involved in a youth movement before their summer tour and continue to be afterwards, than those who simply ‘go on tour’ one summer. Our Jewishness takes time to evolve.

Still, research also demonstrates that longterm Israel programmes – i.e. those lasting several months at least – are more impactful than any other major Jewish educational experience, including Jewish schooling. Living intensively in a fully Jewish milieu as

part of a group for an extended period leaves a lasting impression on who we become. And of course, those participating in such schemes are often former summer tour participants.

Short-term programmes lead to long-term ones. Yet the ‘Israel as classroom’ concept has been hit hard by the war. Israel tour participation numbers this summer were down by some 60 percent on summer 2023.

Moreover, coming so soon after summer tours were also badly hit by the pandemic, the number of young people who went on tour in the past ﬁve years is barely half that who did so in the previous ﬁve.

Much depends now on how community leaders manage this challenge – whether they see the recent lean summers as mere blips, or as a portent of things to come. Whether they look for a new educational paradigm to stand alongside or replace the ‘Israel as classroom’ one, or double-down on it in the hope of better times ahead. This issue matters deeply.

We need Israel to be a source of inspiration for the good of Jewish life everywhere; what should we do if it can no longer play that role?

Building a secure future for Jewish life in the UK

KEITH BLACK CHAIR, JEWISH LEADERSHIP COUNCIL

The events of 7 October continue to reverberate around the Jewish world. The CST’s antisemitic incidents report for the ﬁrst half of 2024 shows a record surge in anti-Jewish hate, with more than double the incidents compared to the same period in 2023. This alarming increase comes amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas conﬂict and widespread farright riots across the country, which have led to growing social unrest.

We are a community under grave threat, not set up to deal with the level of animus and hatred we are feeling. For 11 long months our entire community has been working to protect everyone from the horrible level of anti-semitism that so many of us are experiencing. As part of this collective effort, in March the JLC launched the Forge the Future (FtF) plan, an ambitious yet achievable set of initiatives for the entire community to get behind and ensure

the future of Jewish life in this country.

Through nine projects and extensive crosscommunity collaboration, new structures and networks are being built to enable us to respond effectively to the challenges. We are also pleased to see new funding and new ideas enabling this to happen.

FtF is not a programme delivered by any one organisation but a community programme facilitated by the JLC with a focus on ensuring maximum community collaboration. For it to work, we know that we need the buy in and support of our members and of the wider community and of course, also from funders.

We are conscious that the current generation of British Jews have more complex views on Israel than their predecessors, so the requirement for deeper understanding and more education on the current realities of Israel’s situation are evident. We must provide the opportunity for constructive as well as positive engagement with the country, always on the bedrock that without Israel, Jewish life in the diaspora would be much more vulnerable.

The recent general election has resulted in a significant number of new MPs in parliament.

Our external affairs team continues to engage government, both nationally and locally, on the full range of issues pertinent to our community, bringing together key communal stakeholders to ensure a coordinated approach.

Students have been on the front line since 7 October, highlighting the urgent need to make schools and universities safe and positive environments, which are affirming of Jewish identity and experience. UJS and other organisations on campus have done phenomenal work in supporting them on many levels we will continue to assist them in increasing collaboration across the sector and facilitating a joinedup campus strategy for the community.

To ignite the ‘silent majority’ for whom antisemitism is abhorrent and to build resilience and reduce isolation for Jews working across the gamut of civil society, we are establishing a robust network to engage with influential leaders across civic society.

We have mapped out key sectors and organisations, identified training offerings and we are examining best practices for HR & EDI (equality, diversity and inclusion) policies. We aim to build a network of ambassadors who will

enable this work to flow through society and will commence our pilot phase of this project this month.

Through proactive campaigning, we want to revitalise the way we inform the public about British Jews. In partnership with the Board of Deputies, a proposed Jewish History Month initiative received warm support when suggested last year in parliament. This will now be taken forward and shaped by relevant experts within the Jewish community.

Through engagement with Bicom, We Believe in Israel and others we want to develop our community’s messaging on Israel and strengthen communal advocacy; we plan to feed into this through polling that will explore a range of issues concerning British Jews.

We are also moving forward with plans for other community communication projects, including the setting up of a community activation hub.

We are very grateful to the many organisations and individuals who have already contributed to delivery of the FtF strategy and welcome others to be in touch if they feel their work aligns with it: forgethefuture@thejlc.org

To vanquish hate crime we must work together

BARRY RAWLINGS

LEADER, BARNET COUNCIL

The antisemitic hate crime data published last month by the Community Security Trust (CST) is stark evidence of the surging levels of abuse and violence experienced by Britain’s Jewish communities.

As leader of Barnet Council, I am deeply concerned and angered by the fact that 40 percent of all antisemitic crimes recorded in Greater London in the ﬁrst half of this year occurred in our borough.

This huge spike in reported crimes followed the 7 October attack. Distressingly, openly antisemitic rhetoric seeped into the recent counter-protest in North Fiinchley against the far-right.

The vast majority of the counter-protestors did not indulge in that hate, but it was still shocking that antisemitism could be found in what should have been a safe space for our Jewish community, many of whom came to support the counter-demonstration

despite their concerns. I have heard from Jewish residents how troubling it is they can ﬁnd antisemitism among those who say they are peaceful protesters calling for tolerance. The current rise in antisemitism is following an all-too-familiar pattern. There

is a long history of antisemitic narratives being peddled at times of national crisis, with racists promoting the lie that Jewish people are intent on overthrowing the natural order of things and so are to blame for all of society’s ills.

❝

THE CURRENT RISE IN ANTISEMITISM IS FOLLOWING AN OLD FAMILIAR PATTERN

We are seeing some of that rhetoric now being used, and not just by racists, to blame Jewish people for the recent chaos on UK streets. Barnet is home to Britain’s largest Jewish communities, so sadly that makes us an obvious target for antisemites.

We are also a borough with a strong partnership with local police to combat this. Tackling antisemitism in Barnet in all its forms requires us, the council, to continue working closely with the CST, Shomrim and our police partners.

We must work together to stamp out hate crime and we must work together to maintain an open dialogue to promote greater community cohesion.

Thursday 7 November – Sunday 17 November 2024

We’re really excited to be adding this amazing itinerary to our 2024 programme. An absorbing experience that combines the challenge of cycling off the beaten track with dramatic backdrops and the calming tranquillity of a stunning country and culture.

If you have adventure in your soul, a huge sense of camaraderie and a passion to help some of the most vulnerable in our community, then join us!

Places are limited so we recommend booking early.

REGISTER NOW via the QR code or our website, or for details talk to Julie on 07718 969138 or at julie.braithwaite@norwood.org.uk Scan

Protesters at a counter demonstration in Barnet against the far-right

Five tips for happiness and success at secondary school

NICKI COHEN INDEPENDENT COUNSELLOR, SUPERVISOR & MENTAL HEALTH CONSULTANT

My youngest son has begun secondary school, marking the ﬁnal journey for all three of my boys into what we all know can be a turbulent experience.

Year 7 WhatsApp/Snapchat groups have been in full force for months and, after a quick glance, highlights include: “I will deﬁnitely be in the most popular group... not sure if my primary school friends will”... “Oh we will be dropping him in September” and other such delights!.

It’s true to say secondary school for all its positives can, for some, be brutal.

Having worked in a huge secondary school for the past six years looking after students’ mental health, I’m fairly certain I have seen it all – the good, the bad and the truly ugly.

It starts as soon as they set foot through the door. The tribal nature of the friendship

groups, the ﬁght for positions of King and Queen Bee (often a fascinating watch when all the former primary school Kings and Queens are placed together in one playground), the tears as primary school friends don’t all go the same way – and don’t even get me started on social media and Friday afternoon arrangements.

So, here’s what I’d love you to tell your child if he or she is also starting out on the secondary school adventure:

1. This is an amazing time to decide who you are and choose your people. In primary school there isn’t a lot of choice. At secondary school you get to decide who you give your time to. This is great and powerful thing. So choose wisely.

2. The most popular group may not be where you want to be. Getting in can be very hard, staying in is harder. It will likely soon become toxic and it probably won’t make you happy.

3. It may take time to ﬁnd your friends, so don’t be disheartened if it doesn’t happen straight away. Keep going, push yourself to go to events where you will ﬁnd people you have things in common with. Your friendship

group will likely change over and over in year seven and that’s ﬁne. Give everyone a chance and, when you ﬁnd the ones who make you feel happy and safe, stick with them.

4. You might go to secondary school with all your best friends, but your group might not stay the same. This is ﬁne too. It doesn’t mean you can’t still be friends or that you won’t end up coming back together down the line. Trust the process.

THIS IS AN AMAZING TIME FOR YOUNG PEOPLE TO DECIDE WHO THEY ARE ❝

5. There will be drama. It’s very tempting to get involved but do your best to stay away from it. Be kind and treat people the way you would wish to be treated.

The whole experience goes by so very quickly so make the most of all of the opportunities school o ers academically and socially.

Encourage your child to try out for di erent teams, play instruments, audition for shows, volunteer for extra responsibilities and broaden their horizons.

Secondary school is life changing and so much more than what goes on in lessons. They will be di erent people in ﬁve or seven years time when they leave. Who they become is in their own hands.

Reasons to be cheerful amid prevailing gloom

ALEX BRUMMER

CITY EDITOR, THE DAILY MAIL

As Britain moves from summer to autumn, it’s hard not to feel desolate. The malicious killings of six youthful Israeli hostages has cast a terrible pall over Israel and Jewish communities everywhere. The best that can be hoped for is that from this terrible evil, vast demonstrations on the streets of Israel, the trade union strikes and the anguish of grieving families will reinvigorate e orts to bring as many of the remaining hostages out alive.

Lifting the spirits and adapting to normal life in such circumstances seems impossible. Here in the UK, our new prime minister Keir Starmer appears in the Downing Street rose garden to declare his government found a ﬁscal black hole but also faces a ‘societal black hole’. There is so much to disturb us all. The smiling photos of the killed hostages and their grieving families have been heart wrenching. Elsewhere, columns of the Jewish and secular

press are ﬁlled with details of antisemitic incidents and anti-Zionist protests on the campuses of the UK’s greatest universities.

Israel’s battles on three fronts – Gaza, the West Bank and against Iran-fuelled Hezbollah attacks – command little sympathy beyond our own community.

The near-year-long Gaza conﬂict and the ordeal and fate of the remaining captives leaves all of us dispirited. Closer to home, the return of Jewish children to heavily-guarded schools and students heading o to universities where they will have to contend with vile anti-Israel rhetoric and demonstrations is cause for anxiety. It is hard to sleep easily while the hostages are held, IDF troops face death on a daily basis and young people face educational challenges But gloom can be overdone. There is huge danger in talking ourselves into a permanent state of depression. In the UK more generally and in the British Jewish community, there are myriad reasons amid the sadness for hope. Similarly, despite Israel’s political, military and regional angst, it is possible to look over the horizon and see shards of light.

On the domestic front, one doesn’t have

to be a critic of Labour to recognise chancellor Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer have been laying on the pessimism with a trowel. The reality is of a surprisingly vibrant UK economy in the ﬁrst half of this year.

In our own community, there is much to be proud of in the Jewish contribution to brilliant science and the creative economy.

Our entertainment culture is alive and well and the show goes on in spite of vile illinformed protests. The current production of Fiddler on the Roof in Regent’s Park demonstrates the resistance of the Jewish contribution to culture in spite of adversity.

I have recently been in my native city of Brighton & Hove where the new Jewish Community Centre and the Novellino restaurant have enlivened Jewish life and participation after the Hove Hebrew Congregation closure. The whole experience is uplifting for those of us who have only seen decline.

The King’s Speech recommitted the UK to the long-delayed Holocaust Memorial, hopefully at Victoria Tower Gardens. At Alyth Gardens, Britain’s largest Reform community, an elegant new sanctuary and communal

facility have been added. The freshly refurbished Museum of the Home in Dalston, the history of the Jews of the East End, is revisited alongside other immigrant communities.

As for Israel, despite the geopolitical challenge, the economy has come roaring back from the depths of despair. Remarkably, major forecasters expect overall growth of 2-3 percent this year, putting much of the rest of the region and the West in the shade. Moreover, Israeli life sciences and tech continue to punch above their weight. In the ﬁnal days of August, the pharma giant Johnson & Johnson snapped up – for $1.7bn – V-Wave, which o ers breakthrough heart-implant technology.

On a personal level, I was encouraged and uplifted by the attitude of two young Israeli women staying with members of my family. The girls, from Haifa, are studying physics, preparing for army service next year and thinking about post-military studies at the Technion. In spite of the dismal political stalemate in Jerusalem, they felt joyful enough to join in the singing and dancing before the shimmering Shabbat candles.

As the psalmist says, let us lift up our eyes…

JN THEATRE CLUB

Jewish News is delighted to offer all readers the opportunity to join our Theatre group.

We have amazing seats on shows like Abba Voyage, The Devil wears Prada, Mrs Doubtfire, Matilda, Harry Potter, Starlight Express, Moulin Rouge, Stranger Things and many more.

Go to www.tfaclub.co.uk/jewish-news or scan the QR code to register and to see our fantastic offers.

‘Later

Cable Street director

Adam Lenson tells Darren Richman why he’s focused on the here and now

In October 2002, American singer-songwriter Warren Zevon appeared on David Letterman’s chat show shortly after having been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. In one memorable moment, he told the host: “I might have made a tactical error not going to a physician for 20 years. It was one of those phobias that didn’t pay off.”

It was an incredible performance but undoubtedly exactly that – a performance. Zevon’s son has made clear his father was simply acting out his dream of coming across like Humphrey Bogart on national television when, in reality, he was scared.

Theatre director Adam Lenson is happy to admit he’s scared. His situation is nothing like as bleak as Zevon’s (it turns out seeing doctors is deﬁnitely the way to go) but he does confess, early in our conversation: “I’m probably more likely to die of cancer than old age.”

Watching the director in rehearsals for Cable Street, however, he seems to have just as much energy and enthusiasm as he had when we met as teenagers and he mastered the harmonica, if not chatting to girls.

Cable Street is a new musical that sold out its entire run earlier in the year oﬀ the back of rave reviews. The latest incarnation will

A look

Musician David Broza and comedian Tova Leigh are in town

is an ILLUSION ’

run for ﬁve weeks at the Southwark Playhouse Elephant and, for Lenson, the entire journey has been a heady cocktail of the personal and political.

It all began in 2017 when he set up Signal, a musical theatre concert series aimed at challenging restrictive assumptions around the artform. It ran quarterly and the idea was that the songs showcased should be so new “the paint was still wet”. The following year, inspired by an article about the Battle of Cable Street as well as the contemporary political landscape, composer Tim Gilvin premiered a song entitled Only Words at Signal.

Another composer in attendance that night was struck by the timing. On the very same day, he had received an email from a playwright friend, Alex Kanefsky, eager to collaborate on a Cable Street musical. Gilvin and Kanefsky were introduced and wrote a new song for each of the next three Signal nights. Fast forward to March 2020 and Signal, like everything else, had moved online. Despite dodgy internet connections, a producer was suﬃciently moved by a new song to commission a full musical and Adam was brought on as director.

That was not the only strange bit of timing. In March 2019, before the ﬁrst Cable Street song was performed

at Signal, Adam discovered that he had cancer. That April, a revival of Falsettos was announced, a beloved Jewish musical brought back without a solitary Jewish presence in the cast or creative team. Lenson felt angry and hurt, not least because Falsettos is a show about illness, mortality and Jewishness. Uncharacteristically, he was open about his frustrations:

“I had been playing a slow game. You have to bide your time if you want to do things a bit diﬀerently in theatre but it suddenly occurred to me – what if I don’t have time?”

The director’s online activism led to him losing plenty of work he knows about and, he feels certain, plenty he doesn’t. He feels more philosophical these days, however,

given he has made his own opportunities. This is a man who wrote a book about the importance of musical theatre and hosted a podcast exploring similar issues. He set up Signal and Signal led to Cable Street, “a show about Jewish inclusion and Jews ﬁnding space for themselves amid intersectional activism”. There was a clear path to this moment even if it didn’t seem obvious at the time.

In July of last year, Lenson learned all of his labour over the past few years had paid oﬀ and the show would open at the Southwark Playhouse in early 2024. In October, he discovered his cancer was back and gruelling treatment would begin in January. Through tears he explains:

“You can’t help but notice the timing. This artistic high of my life comes along at the same time as this personal tragedy. Maybe it’s part of the plan that these things come along at the same time. If I was ill with nothing to do that would be terrible. If I was doing the show and I was well then that would be great but it wouldn’t mean as much.”

The director used every bit of energy he had to stage the show but was unable to be present for the last two weeks of the run as he convalesced in a hospital spitting distance from the theatre. On the

ﬁnal day of the run, he entered the Southwark Playhouse in a wheelchair to thank the cast. With a wisdom that comes from hardship, Adam says: “I don’t believe in God but I do believe in timing.”

In Lenson’s most recent scans, in July, it emerged there were new cancer cells and treatment needs to resume. He is aware of his mortality in a way most people in their 30s are not. In the most famous moment from that Zevon interview with Letterman, the musician dropped the façade. His old friend asked him what had changed in his attitude towards life since the cancer diagnosis and Zevon replied, “You’re reminded to enjoy every sandwich.”

My old friend is in agreement: “Most people go through life in a way that’s not mindful of the present. I try to have a good time today because later is an illusion. I enjoy being outdoors with the breeze on my face and getting a coﬀee with my friends. Life is made of those moments. Now is what we have.”

• Joshua Ginsberg, who plays Sammy in Cable Street, has been nominated for best actor in a musical in the Stage Debut Awards. • Cable Street is at Southwark Playhouse Elephant from 6 September until 10 October.

southwarkplayhouse.co.uk

Adam Lenson: ‘I believe in timing’

A scene from Cable Street, now at the Southwark Playhouse

Israeli singer David Broza is journeying from the front line to Finchley. By

Jenni Frazer

He’s often spoken of as Israel’s answer to Bruce Springsteen, and certainly singer songwriter David Broza has every bit as much charm and charisma as the man universally known as The Boss.

But David, who has just turned 69, and is due in London for a long-awaited concert on 12 September, has other strings to his guitar besides his natural warmth.

He is renowned throughout Israel for his willingness to go to the front line and bring a little bit of respite, through his music, to any sort of audience, big and small. Nowhere has this been more true than in the months following the horrors of 7 October.

David, who divides his time between Spain, where he develops his musical life, New York, where he lives with his fashion designer wife Nili Lotan, and Tel Aviv, happened to be in Tel Aviv when the news broke about the Hamas attacks.

Immediately David went out on the road. So far, he thinks, he has played about 200 separate events since. “At ﬁrst all the concerts were in the south, and then over the months we moved to the centre and the north; we played for displaced communities, reservists, military units… now it’s a mix. Last week we were in kibbutzim. What we should perhaps have anticipated is that everyone is everywhere right now and the entire country is a front line. Nowhere is more exposed than anywhere else”.

As an illustration of how David will play anywhere for anyone – and, despite having worked with the likes of Paul Simon and Jackson Browne, doesn’t demand huge audiences – there is a sweet video online

showing him keeping his promise to play for the two girl border guards outside the southern city of Ofakim.

One of the girls tells him she likes to sing. So David begins to play Carole King’s Y ou’ve Got A Friend , and Osher Beniso reveals her magnificent voice. David, being David, doesn’t leave it there. He sends a video clip to his friends at the Rimon School of Music, which promptly awards Osher a full scholarship to take up when she finishes her army service.

David certainly doesn’t act ‘big rock star’, which in a country the size of Israel is probably just as well. His background is unusual: born in Haifa in 1955, he is the son of an Israeli-British businessman, Arthur Broza, and Sharona Aron, in her time a feted and admired folk singer.

His grandfather, Wellesley Aron, whom David adored, was co-founder of the ArabIsraeli peace village Neve Shalom, and also founder of Habonim. He became Chaim Weizmann’s political secretary.

The Spanish connection came early: when he was 12 Arthur Broza moved David and his sister Talia to Madrid for a business opportunity. “He invested all his money and lost it, and we were stuck” – in Franco’s Spain –“until he made it back,” says David.

The young David a learnt to play guitar in Spain and you can hear the driving ﬂamenco rhythms in much of his music today. For a brief period, when his parents were worried about his schooling, David was sent to Britain for a less-than-successful year at the Jewish boarding school Carmel College. It was not a marriage of true minds.

Instead he returned to Israel to do his

army service, followed by a fateful meeting with the poet and journalist Yonatan Ge en, the nephew of Moshe Dayan. Aged just 22, he wrote, with Ge en, the song that has become his calling card, Yihye Tov, variously translated as It Will Be Good, or Things Will Get Better Almost religiously, one might say, every concert that David gives ends with Yihye Tov, and Israelis young and old know all the words and sing it with him. It is a song which has an added poignancy now, and David, a veteran peacenik with a profound belief in reaching hands across to his Arab counterparts, sings it with passion and hope.

He has said repeatedly that he does not believe in boycotts – not least of other musicians or settlers – despite the current violence in the north and south of Israel and the vitriolic rise in global antisemitism. Had he ever been tempted to change his mind?

“No. Because I think that the more dire it gets, the more important it is to keep the channels open. There is no doubt in my mind that if we followed the policy of the boycotters, all the way from BDS to the settlers… it’s like, ok, your daughter has just turned against family principles and as of now, she is boycotted and she’s thrown out of the family until she gets herself together. Really? Don’t you think it’s basic human nature to embrace, bring in, look them in the eyes and try to make sense of it all?

“Maybe,” David continues, “you have to learn something. Maybe the other side has to learn something. Maybe we learn from each other. But boycott? It’s primitive, it’s uneducated, unintelligent. That’s how I see it - and so I open my heart, my doors, my everything, as long as they accept me as to who I am”.

Were there not some people with whom it was just not possible to have a dialogue? David is ready for this question. “Eventually they might. Maybe you missed the chance. How do you know? Look at Arafat signing the Oslo Accords and shaking hands with Rabin. Who ever thought that would happen?”

Just the same, David is not naive. He describes himself as “a peace ﬁghter, but not a paciﬁst. There’s a big, big di erence. I want to make sure that where I live is safe for me and my children and the next generations. If anyone is going to come and disturb that –forget about it, never again”.

In spite of everything, David says, he remains optimistic that things will indeed get better.

And he is someone who literally puts his money where his mouth is. Last week, a young Palestinian man, whose name has been withheld for his own safety, told an American presenter that he regarded David Broza as “my angel, my saviour”. He spoke about how he had been expelled from Tel Aviv University because he could not pay the fees. He put out a plea on social media for help. David saw it and made contact, asking the young man to meet for coffee. He heard his story.

“And then,” the young man said, “he saved me. He paid the rest of my tuition fees, he had me to stay at his home, he literally put a roof over my head.”

Like the song says: Yihye Tov

• Tzemach Productions is presenting David Broza at the Pentland Theatre at the Arts Depot in North Finchley on 12 September. artsdepot.co.uk

Ahead of her stand-up tour this month, vlogger and author Tova Leigh chats to Alex Galbinski about motherhood, social media and making the world a better place

As a less than perfect mother, I always ﬁnd it reassuring to watch Tova Leigh’s videos about parenting. Whether the sketches recreate her ‘romantic’ scenes with her husband Mike to send up other influencers, or poke gentle fun at new mums compared with their more experienced counterparts, Tova encourages people to see the humour in testing situations.

But the former lawyer – she was born in Jerusalem to an Israeli father and Irish mother and practised in Israel before moving to the UK to study acting – also tackles subjects including feminism, equality, rape culture, misogyny and the negative impact of social media on young people. For this – and for posting videos of herself in a bikini while not a size 8 – the mother of three has been criticised and trolled.

Luckily for us, Tova, 48, who now lives near Lisbon with her family, carries on regardless and will be visiting the UK at the end of this month as part of her new show, Honey I’m Losing It

While Tova, who has two million social media followers, is known for her humorous content, she is reluctant to call herself a stand-up comic. “I do tell stories that are funny, but I don’t like saying I’m a stand-up comedian because I’ve never done the clubs, the circuit, and there are people who have done this for many, many years and have really honed their craft.”

Regardless, this is not Tova’s ﬁrst rodeo. She has two tours under her belt: F****d At 40, which was based on her debut book of the same name, and You Did What? based

on her book about confessions. This is, however, her ﬁrst European tour, taking in Berlin, Zurich and Ghent “and a lot of places I’ve never performed at”.

During the hour-and-a-half show, she will be sharing stories, many of which will be about her life, about sex, relationships, marriage, parenting, hormones and perimenopause and, she says, “a lot of gags at Mike’s expense – after all, the show is called Honey, I’m Losing It and he’s Honey”.

Asked how she would define her work,

she says: “I trained as an actress, so I do see myself as an actress. When I go on stage, I act, I pretend to be a stand-up comedian, I pretend to be an author. And sometimes I act being someone who runs female empowerment retreats, which is something I’ve started doing since moving to Portugal [in 2022].”

It is connected, she says, because regardless of the content she produces, her goal is for it to “hopefully help people, empower people, make people feel good”. She adds: “A lot of the time, I use comedy as a way to do that.”

While her audience is made up mainly of women aged in their late 30s to mid-50s, men do watch her shows. “The show that had the most men was the F****d at 40 one in Texas – they all showed up with their husbands and about half of it was about vibrators. But they loved it!

“I think more men will come to this one because I’ve made a point of saying husbands are welcome, and a lot of the humour is about relationships and marriage.”

Asked about her motivation for doing the more serious content, Tova explains: “Well, like the beauty pageant answer, I’m trying to make the world a better place, but I really mean it.

“I’m a mom [she has daughters aged 11 and 13], I’m very concerned about their future and I want the world to be better for them. I obviously could do so much more – everyone could – but what I try to do is to raise awareness. Sometimes I do it more through humour or sarcasm and sometimes I do it in a very serious tone.”

It can be a tricky balancing act for Tova, who is strict about her children’s phone

and social media use. “If I’m being really honest, if my livelihood didn’t depend on social media [Tova also works with brands, including Sky, Amazon Prime and Always] and having high engagement, I probably wouldn’t have a social media account, because I don’t think it’s good for your mental health, which is also why I’m very mindful about what I put out there. I think the content [children are exposed to] would shock most parents.”

What was also shocking for her was the abuse she received upon speaking out about Israel and di erent aspects of the war early on after 7 October. “I made the decision, after a while, that social media just wasn’t the right place to put anything, because it’s a pool of dirt and people can be so vile.

“But it was also because the platforms themselves don’t really allow you to address anything in depth, so you can never have the nuance that something like the Middle East conﬂict needs. I wrote a few articles on my website and I haven’t really touched it since.

“I’ve had criticism from both sides of the spectrum; from Israelis or Jews saying it’s awful I’m not saying enough, and from pro-Palestinian supporters saying I’m not saying enough for the Palestinian people. So, really, you can’t please everybody – and I’m not trying to.”

Tova is, however, pleasing thousands, many of whom will be thrilled to be seeing her in the ﬂesh or looking forward to her forthcoming book, which discusses female empowerment.

• Honey, I’m Losing It is on at Leicester Square Theatre at 4pm on 28 September 2024. Tickets from £27. leicestersquaretheatre.com; tovaleigh.com

Business / Tech startup Island

By Candice Krieger candicekrieger@googlemail.com

ENTERPRISING TEAM BEHIND SECURE BROWSER

Tech startup Island’s product o ers control, visibility and governance, and has helped the company to a $3bn valuation – and the R&D is done in Israel

ometimes the right people come up with the right idea at the right time. Four years ago, tech entrepreneurs Dan Amiga and Mike Fey founded Island to create a revolutionary ‘enterprise browser’, with added security and features tailored to businesses to increase their productivity and user experience.

Sthe former president and chief operating o cer of Symantec, which had bought Amiga’s other company Fireglass in 2017 for a reported $250m.

Amiga, who spent ﬁve years in the elite IDF 8200 unit as a security expert and technologist, had previously developed Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) technology but saw an opportunity to improve on these solutions by integrating security directly into a user-friendly browser designed around the modern needs of remote and hybrid work environments. He teamed with fellow cyber-security expert Fey,

Their experience positioned them well to create a product that addressed real business challenges. Island, which is built on Chromium (responsible for many popular web browsers, including Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and others) is now the world’s leading internet browser for businesses, earning a remarkable $3bn valuation, doubling its previous valuation in less than a year.

Amiga, who lives in Israel where the company’s R&D is located, tells Jewish News: “Island’s mission with its enterprise browser is to deliver security, productivity and great user experiences in a radically simpliﬁed and cost-reduced way compared to current consumer browser solutions.”

Operating in North America, the UK, the Nordics and most recently Germany, Dallasbased Island has already partnered with over 200 global organisations, several in the UK.

While the company isn’t able to name clients, they include many Fortune 100 companies, a major global airline, a leading bank with over $2tn in assets and one of the top ﬁve global hotel and hospitality groups, and the company has ambitious expansion plans to sit on desktops across the world.

Island’s latest $175m fundraising round, announced in April, was led by new investor Coatue and current investor Sequoia Capital, with additional funding from existing investors.

In spite of the recent valuation and increasing market interest, Amiga says it still takes some explaining to get executives to understand the value of special securityfocused browser.

“Most senior IT and security professionals have taken for granted that the insecure and decidedly not purpose-built consumer browser was their only option to allow employees access to SaaS and web applications. When they get the power of having control over that privileged place where most work is done, any scepticism turns to outright enthusiasm.”

Quite. In a recent report on the category, Gartner predicted that “by 2030, enterprise browsers will be the core platform for delivering workforce productivity and security software on managed and unmanaged devices for a seamless hybrid work experience”.

Amiga believes that there will also be “consolidation of solutions in cybersecurity” more generally.

“The Island browser will supplant many product categories over time. But customers are also really craving consolidation as well,

so they are driving a lot of that momentum. Fewer vendors, greater accountability, more integrated solutions that are easier and more cost e ective to manage.

“But the bad guys are not going away,” he adds, “so there will always be room for innovation in this space. It is the only area of technology that has an active adversary, so that keeps cybersecurity rapidly evolving.”

Cyber has been a real hero of the Israeli tech ecosystem, which has faced a challenging year. According to a report by Startup Nation Central, cyber featured in four of the six mega-rounds with $846m in private funding in the ﬁrst quarter of the year and accounted for nearly 50 percent of the tech ecosystem’s total funding.

Amiga explains that “cyber crime in the form of breaches, data loss and ransomware is one of the most ﬁnancially and reputationally damaging things that can happen to a company. It is also incredibly lucrative for bad actors, so the need to constantly protect against current and new threats is immense.

“There is incredible talent in Israel, and surrounding that talent are really great venture capitalists, like our early and continued funding partner Cyberstarts.

“They have a great track record for spotting breakthrough ideas and high-performance leadership teams, and then invest not only capital, but in helping those seed-stage companies ﬁnd design partner customers, and high-quality leaders to join the company.”

Now with a team of nearly 300, Island, which has been growing year on year, is focused on continued expansion.

What’s the ﬁve-year plan? “Scaling up, segment expansion, global expansion and continuing to make the Island Enterprise Browser the desktop of the future, delivering incredible value to our customers.” island.io

Island’s enterprise browser is designed around the needs of hybrid work environments

Dan Amiga

MAKING SENSE OF THE SEDRA

RABBI

What is Israel? A secular state infused by Hebrew law, with modern expressions of ancient rules? Or a state committed to its Jewish character which, unless restrained, will take us towards a halachic state unliveable to some or most of its citizens?

The

ﬁrst two words in this week’s reading, Shoftim, are unequivocal:

“Set for yourselves judges and police in all your gates…” But is traditional – if ancient – law really practical in a modern setting, more than 1,650 years after the last meeting of the last Sanhedrin?

Two thousand years of exile, followed by a 75-year interlude of part-secular, part-religious legal jurisdictions in a secular state created for a religious Jewish identity can leave one a bit confused on the matter when it comes to the State of Israel.

Modern Israeli law has evolved as a potpourri of legal content and ongoing input from hardcore Shulkan Arukh to British-era emergency laws, and peppered with remnants of Ottoman land regulations. Is this still a viable way forward? Is there any way forward for a diwan, the Arabic Middle Eastern term for jurisdictional management, in purely Jewish terms, particularly in a Jewish state?

Recently I spent an hour in the Jerusalem home of leading Israeli legal authority and scholar Dr Michael Wigoda. I asked him whether

Israel could become a state run on the precepts and practices of halacha (traditional Jewish law).

He responded in the Jewish manner, with another question: “What do you mean by a halachic state? If it means that rabbis are prepared to confront the problems of the times in which we live and address them, then perhaps yes. But as long as rabbis such as those in Israeli rabbinical courts avoid making decisions by referring matters requiring creating rabbinic solutions to the secular courts, then there is no point in trying to determine what makes a halachic state.”

As an example, Dr Wigoda cited inheritance law. Whereas rabbis in Morocco settled the matter of females inheriting by passing a decree that they should inherit in equal manner to males, this not been followed by

the Israeli rabbinate, who have the authority to issue such decrees but have consistently refrained.

Dr Wigoda proposed that rabbinic establishments such as the convening Bet Din exercise the authority to make decrees. In over 75 years, he revealed, the rabbinate in Israel had only made two. The under-used instruments of lawmaking result not from jurisdictional impotence but from an unwillingness to decide.

I am now on a journey in Wigodean

territory, fumbling to ﬁnd my own bearings to these big questions. The next stage is for me, in the company of lawyers from other traditions, to visit and spend time at the courts in Israel, to check out the modus operandi of these institutions, and see what role ancient religious law and ethics play in a modern state. Until then, the words of the Torah echo persistently: that judges and justice must be equally accessible in all gates, no matter where or for whom.

Israeli law has had input from ancient rules as well and modern sources

LEAP OF FAITH

BY RABBI MIRIAM BERGER FOUNDER OF WELLSPRINGUK

Why Fiddler doesn’t have an ending

I started crying a few bars in to the ﬁrst song. There’s a way we do things. A way we pass on our identity to the next generation with our seder meal, our Purim costumes, dipping our apple in honey.

Taking my son to his ﬁrst viewing of Fiddler on the Roof was just another way of passing on tradition, identity, an understanding of who we are today. They are all inextricably linked, and sometimes all too painfully reminiscent of generations gone by.

He sat between my husband and me and coped with his uncool mum teary-eyed and clutching his hand as I prayed that society at large wouldn’t make it too difficult for him to be a proud inheritor of that tradition in his adult life.

So as we came out and I asked him excitedly what he thought, I took it a bit personally

when he declared it “a bit disappointing”. What? Why? It’s brilliant and emotional and beautiful in its painful way. “Well it isn’t ﬁnished,” my astute 13-year-old bemoaned. “I was loving it – the music, the set, the characters – but then they’ve just left me hanging. If I did that in an English essay my teacher would think I’d got lazy and left it unﬁnished. I want to know what happens.”

And that, dear reader, is why you don’t want to be the child of a rabbi. He got a sermon the entire way home from Regent’s Park to Finchley. The play doesn’t ﬁnish because the story hasn’t ended. He’s part of writing the next chapter and we never want to see an ending.

A stimulating series where our progressive rabbis consider how Biblical ﬁgures might act when faced with 21st-century issues

At the moment, more than ever before in my lifetime, I fear that others want to see a conclusion, an ending. People have tried to conclude it too many times in our history,

from Tisha B’Av to the Final Solution, and yet here we all were, a theatre filled with people we knew. An interval that felt like kiddush. If we knew what happened in the life of Tevye and each of his daughters it

would be fiction, but the fiction becomes history when we each get to tell our story, how we got from that shtetl in Lithuania or Poland, from the Rivers of Babylon or the foot of Sinai to the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre and we are still doing what “the good book says”.

In every generation we not only need a Seder, a Megillah and a production of Fiddler on the Roof but we also need to ﬁnd the deﬁance to say that no one else will end our story if we keep feeling a strong sense of belonging and a commitment to playing our part in the passing on of tradition.

And if that word ‘tradition’ starts you singing then it’s lucky they’ve extended the run. Seeing it is as much as a rite of passage as dipping your apple in honey in a few weeks’ time. It’s not Torah but it’s certainly all part of our tradition.

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WORDSEARCH

with brass bands can all be found in the forwards or backwards, in a horizontal, direction, but always in a straight, unbroken line.

SUDOKU

Fill the grid with the numbers 1 to 9 so that each row, column and 3x3 block contains the numbers 1 to 9.

Fill the grid with the numbers 1 to 9 so that each row column and 3x3 block contains the numbers 1 to 9.

SUGURU

(3)

18 Heavy uninteresting food (6)

20 Lottery (5)

22 Practise for a feat of endurance (5)

CODEWORD

(6)

The listed words associated with laundrettes can all be found in the grid. Words may run either forwards or backwards in a horizontal, vertical or diagonal direction but always in a straight unbroken line.

LL IE RY G KLA N

In this finished crossword, every letter of the alphabet appears as a code number. All you have to do is crack the code and fill in the grid. Replacing the decoded numbers with their letters in the grid will help you to guess the identity of other letters.

(4)

Each cell in an outlined block must contain a digit: a two-cell block contains the digits 1 and 2, a three-cell block contains the digits 1, 2 and 3; and so on. The same digit must not appear in neighbouring cells, not even diagonally.

Each cell in an outlined block must contain a digit: a two-cell block contains the digits 1 and 2 a three-cell block contains the digits 1 2 and 3; and so on. The same digit must not appear in neighbouring cells not even diagonally.

In this finished crossword every letter of the alphabet appears as a code number. All you have to do is crack the code and fill in the grid. Replacing the decoded numbers with their letters in the grid will help you to guess the identity of other letters.

next issue for puzzle solutions.

puzzle solutions.

Sudoku Suguru

Wordsearch

Codeword

COME HOME

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Today’s Olim, Israel’s future tomorrow

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