Last month I published a blog entitled, “There can be no hierarchy of hate crime”. The blog reflected on my own observations that the response to incidents that were anti – Semitic and those that were racist or homophobic was very different.
Shortly after I published the blog, I was put in touch with a Jewish lady who lives in Northern Ireland. Despite feeling frightened since the terrorist attack by Hamas on her homeland, she agreed to share with me what it felt like to be a Jewish person living here at this time.
I began by asking Sarah* how she came to be living in Northern Ireland.
“I left Israel when I was 23, just after completing my National Service with the Israeli Defence Force. I wanted to see the world and set off backpacking around Europe. After traveling around I settled in Northern Ireland. I fell in love with this place, it’s so beautiful and it’s people are warm and welcoming – it’s been home since 1991”.
I asked Sarah how her family and friends are in Israel after the terrorist attack.
“Physically they are fine as they weren’t caught up in it directly, but everyone is affected. We are a close knit people, an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us. Everyone knows someone who is affected and everyone is psychologically scarred. It was a brutal attack, murder, torture and rape of ordinary people.
And we feel vulnerable as a country and a people because of the ambivalence of the world. We are a political football and you know what, the monster has raised its head again, it never truly went away.”
I asked Sarah on what she meant by this.
“The monster of anti semitism, the hate that made the Holocaust possible, that allowed intelligent, civilised people to develop a murderous plan called the ‘Final Solution’. Look at the reaction of so many civilised people to the attack by Hamas on my people. Politicians here were posting selfies in front of a Palestinian flag, beaming with joy just hours after news broke of the atrocity. Even in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, the reaction wasn’t as brazen as that.
And the BBC, cannot even call Hamas a terrorist organisation, despite that being a legal fact in the UK. How does that make a Jewish person feel – that their life is less valuable. When there is a terrorist murder here, are the culprits referred to as fighters or militants by the BBC, no they are called terrorists.
And the huge marches and the protests, they are so vitriolic and anti Israel. Are the people who take part motivated by concern about the deaths of Muslims in Gaza or by latent anti semitism?
Well I tell you it’s often the latter. During the Syrian civil war, when Assad was slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Muslims was there mass protests? And what of the slaughter of Muslim’s in Yemen – the streets of London weren’t packed with protestors.
It’s different with Israel, even though we are attacked and acting in self defence, we attract such a mass mobilisation of condemnation”.
I asked Sarah about the songs and slogans that the anti Israel protestors have been using; she focused particularly on the Nazi symbols and analogies that have been very prevalent recently.
“When some people want to make an argument that Israel is oppressive or disproportionate, they deliberately choose the symbols of Nazism and the language of the Holocaust. They could use any amount of analogies to make their argument, but they choose the ones that hurt Jewish people the most – the regime that murdered 6 million of us”.
“And it’s often the same core messages as the Nazi’s pedalled, when they amplified the latent anti semitism in Germany. Portray the Jews as all powerful, their tentacles stretching everywhere, blame them for your lot, de-humanise them and eventually you sanitise their mistreatment”.
I tweeted her sentiment recently when anti Israel protestors stormed a meeting of Derry City & Strabane Council. It is striking that so many people of influence use Nazi terminology and symbols when criticising Israel.
Earlier this month Joe Brolly published this on his Twitter profile. It is unfathomable to me that anyone thinks it’s ok to intertwine the Swastika with the Star of David.
I was critical of the lack of political condemnation of the presence of a man dressed as an Hamas terrorist at the Halloween carnival in Londonderry. There is no confirmation of any criminal investigation. I am convinced that the political reaction would have been very different if this local man had dressed in a Klu Klux Klan outfit.
Sarah is part of our community who visits various festivals, so I asked her what she made of this incident.
I would’ve died if I saw that, it was at a very tender time just after the terrible events in southern Israel. That people think they can make light entertainment out of our sufferings is obscene. I cannot imagine how a Jewish person would feel seeing that in the flesh. You know we are a very small community here and getting smaller, it’s harder being so far away from home because you might be physically safer, but you also have less support.
The sense of isolation when these sort of things happen and they go unchecked is immense, because no one in authority is standing up for you. When there is no accountability; it’s like you don’t matter, you don’t count. We are a free hit, a punch bag in a way that other victims of hate are not.
The demonisation of my homeland and the politicisation of our conflict makes people uncomfortable in even checking that I am ok, because being an Israeli Jew is toxic. I noticed after the Hamas attack that some people kept their distance from me, almost not wanting to be part of the controversy. That’s when you miss home, the support and solidarity.
And you know we get no appreciation. Israel lives under constant threat, truly existential threat. We treat Palestinians in our hospitals, pick them up in ambulances and give them the best medical treatment. We have also punched above our weight in the world, bringing innovation in medicine, bio science and agriculture. We are good global citizens, all we want is to live in peace with the rest of the world.
All these slogan and songs are based on hated and worryingly young people participate in them without knowing what they mean. If they are asked what ‘river’ and what ‘sea’ they are chanting about they invariably don’t know. It’s radicalisation of people against Israel and Jewishness. It’s frightening.
I also had a second Jewish person contact me, I shall call him David. He moved here in 2018 to work for an IT company and he has considerable expertise in coding, but he cancelled our planned conversation.
Despite loving Northern Ireland, he just moved to Golders Green in London in London. The reason he gave echoed what Sarah said about the sense of isolation, he wanted to be closer to support networks. He agreed that I publish a message he sent me describing why he was left Northern Ireland.
‘I felt isolated and vulnerable, there is more protest activity and hatred in London, but also more support because we have social networks here. I don’t feel so alone. There is no accountability for the anti semitism, just impunity. If it’s ok to carry banners with Nazi insignia, is it ok to put them on the wall outside my house and then is it ok to put them on my door and then what?
That is our experience as Jews, creeping hate, the stealthy steps of anti-semitism. My neighbours now are Jewish, I feel part of a community that can look out for each other’.
David has already found another job, he’s high demand with his skillset and he wanted to no pity. His leaving is our loss.
I only truly appreciated the scale of the Holocaust and its brutal efficiency when I visited Auschwitz -Birkenhau in 2006. The suitcases and shoes piled high, many that clearly belonged children. The human experiments conducted by Josef Mengele. The fingernail marks still on the gas chamber wall.
And similarly, by speaking with local Jewish people, I was better able to understand their sense of isolation and the extent to which the historic persecution of Jews haunts their present day sense of safety and well being.
People are entitled to their own views on the conflict in the Middle East, but in my view they ought to show more respect for the history of the Jewish race.
If you chose to paint Israel’s response to Hamas as oppressive, there are endless ways of doing so without relying on the symbols and slogans of the regime that tried to eradicate Jews from the face to this earth.
It was a privilege to speak with Sarah and fleetingly engage with David. It was a hardly a mile I walked in their shoes, but the few steps made all the difference. To them I say – thank you.
* The name Sarah was used to protect this ladies identity.
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