Who knows what else will have unfolded by the time you read this article. In this Trumpian world, everything, everywhere, feels so unpredictable. Personally, I’m pretty sure that the ‘law of unintended consequences’, will begin to take over. I fear for the future of the Middle East, the fate of the Iranians, the Palestinians, and the very future of the state of Israel – and the 16 million Jewish people worldwide.

‘Antisemitism is a light sleeper’ as the Irish writer Conor Cruise O’Brien once said. The terror attack last October at the Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur, the Jewish faith’s holiest day of the year, touched all Jews in some way, whether they felt directly at risk or not.

The innocent suffer when the extremists unleash atrocities in their name. Imagine how the Muslim community in the West must have felt after 9/11 and the London Tube bombings in 2005. Religious hate crimes have reached their highest levels since statistics started to be gathered, exclusively targeted at both Muslims and Jews.

In the same way as Islamophobia in the UK is affected by events in other countries, so too is antisemitism. Notably, the rise in hostility felt by Jews in this country has coincided with the horrors we have witnessed in Gazza since the brutal Hamas attack on Jews in southern Israel on the 7th of October 2023. The indefatigable nature of the retaliation delivered by the Israeli government on the Palestinian people of Gaza since, has been impossible to ignore. Similarly, the acceleration of Jewish Settlers in the West Bank forcing the Palestinians from their homes and land, has led to charges of ‘genocide’, even ‘apartheid’.

Islamophobia and antisemitism are clearly both wrong, but they’re not the same. I think it’s fair to say that most Muslims in the UK are people of colour and are therefore highly visible targets for racists, and in today’s febrile political climate, more likely to feel the brunt of Reform UK generated anti-immigrant hostility. Most Jews in this country, however, are usually white, and therefore less visible. To the antisemite, Jews are undercover; lurking as a dangerously potent enemy within, and as a result, have frequently been accused over centuries, of conspiracy, plotting and subterfuge, largely to wheedle their way into positions of power.

I was born just 10 years after the end of the Second World War. Horror stories from British soldiers returning from liberating the Jewish ‘prisoners’ of Belsen concentration camp were common. I remember being told at school that the Nazis made soap from the bodies of the Jews they had exterminated. The war was recent history.

Growing up, my next-door neighbours were Jews who had escaped Nazi Germany in the 1930’s – just in time. During my childhood, their home was a common gathering place for Jewish refugees living in 1960’s Edinburgh. I grew up convinced that nothing as evil and inhuman as the Holocaust could ever happen again.

In Jewish circles there is a saying that strikes at the very heart of what it means to be a Jew, ‘Put two Jews together and three beliefs emerge’. This certainly applies when the question is asked as to what defines a Jew.

The foundation story of the Jewish people is to be found in the Torah, i.e., the first five books of the Old Testament. It is the story of Moses leading his people out of slavery in Egypt when God formed a Covenant with ‘the people of Israel’, handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai.

However, being Jewish cannot be summed up in theological terms alone. It is not comparable with being a Methodist, a Presbyterian or even a Catholic. Yes, there is belief and practice, but the practice includes a strict code of behaviour, including how you live, what you can wear, what you can eat, and when – this comes across as a code for life, not necessarily worship. Indeed, in the USA, where half of all Jews live, 50% identify as secular; in the UK it is estimated at around a third. Despite this secularity, these people still identify as Jewish.

Nor can the Jews be described as a nation, because until relatively recently, they have had no possibility of nationhood. Jews cannot be defined by ethnicity either, because after two thousand years of being repeatedly expelled from multiple countries, any semblance of homogeneous ethnicity has been dissolved over countless generations. Less than a third of global Jewry live in Israel, and even there, whilst they make up a majority, a quarter of Israeli citizens are Muslim or Christian.

Fundamentally, the Jews view themselves as, ‘a People’; indeed, one Rabbi I listened to, summed up the whole definition question with the following, ‘I’ve always described a Jew as someone who other people regard as a Jew.’

In strictly orthodox terms, being Jewish is to have a Jewish mother. In my research, I found a very poignant story of a woman who only discovered that her dad was a Jew after his death. He was one of the German Jewish children rescued in the 1930’s thanks to the UK government’s Kinder transport initiative but had always hidden his heritage. After his death, she made a pilgrimage to his birthplace, visited a Synagogue, and spoke to the Rabbi who dismissed her claim to Jewishness when he learned that the line came through her father. Her reply says it all, ‘Would that have made any difference to Hitler?’

Despite our various, multi-ethnic societies, we are still a tribal species, and as such, we tend to keep the criticisms of our own tribes private. I have rarely heard Muslim voices roundly condemning Islamist beheadings or Taliban misogyny. Minorities who are all too familiar with prejudice, fear criticising their own, lest it fuel further prejudice. That is why I have been so pleased to learn that a significant number of British Jews are overtly vocalising their objections to the actions of the Netanyahu led Israeli government.

In April last year, a letter was published in the Financial Times, written by thirty-six members of the Board of Deputies of British Jews who state that their, “Jewish values compel us to stand up and speak out”. They condemned Israel’s actions in breaking the cease fire. Furthermore, they decried “this most extremist of Israeli governments that is openly encouraging violence against Palestinians in the West Bank”. The letter finishes with the line: “It is our duty as Jews to speak out.”

They are not alone. Another group of prominent Jews called, ‘The London Initiative’ accuse the Israeli government of being in breach of the values written into the 1948 Israeli Declaration of Independence which committed Israel to be: 1) a liberal democracy, 2) fair to all its citizens, and 3) to live in peace with its neighbours.

Another organisation: ‘Na’amod – British Jews against occupation’, goes even further. Their opening statement says: We are a growing movement of Jews in the UK seeking to end our community’s support for apartheid and occupation, and to mobilise it in the struggle for dignity, freedom and democracy for all Palestinians and Israelis.

What worries me most is that the current coalition of Likud and the Religious Zionist Alliance seem to be set on a path toward an Orthodox Jewish theocracy, a ghastly replica of the current Iranian regime. After two thousand years of homelessness, I support the principle of a homeland for the Jews in Palestine, but one that would include the West Bank and Gaza with equal rights for Israeli Jews and Palestinians, what is referred to as a ‘one state solution’.

This may seem like an impossible fantasy, but I fear that without such a solution Israel is doomed, and Jews throughout the world will bear the brunt.