On Monday morning, I stepped out for a coffee in Muswell Hill, the area of north London where I live. It was a bright, cloud-free day, and my heart leapt to see rows of yellow ribbons fluttering on the railings around a small park.
Yellow ribbons have long been a sign of support for people taken hostage or in captivity, and right now they are a way of remembering the 48 Israeli hostages – 20 of whom, it is hoped, are still alive – held in horrendous conditions in tunnels beneath Gaza. Yesterday, October 7, marked two years since they were abducted.
We don’t really see the yellow ribbon very often – most of urban UK is mired in the red, black and green of the Palestinian cause.
And on the rare occasion the ribbons do get put up, they last for minutes before they are unceremoniously ripped down by people who can’t bear to think there are humans on both sides of the conflict.
On Monday, I caught one of those ribbon-rippers in the act. Or should I say ribbon-snippers, because the young woman in front of me was mechanically cutting down the ribbons with a pair of dressmaking scissors. She had clearly come well-prepared that morning. Snip, snip, snip, she went, then stuffed the dangling pieces into her bag.
It later transpired that this woman was called Nadia Yahlom, a ‘Palestinian-Jewish artist’ – I’m not sure what that means – who lives in the local area.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked. My knee-jerk response was a cold, furious need to challenge her: not even a sociopath wielding a pair of scissors was going to stop me.
‘What are you doing? What’s your name? If you’re so proud of yourself, please tell us your name.’
I took out my phone to film her because, even in that split second, I knew the world needed to see this.
‘You can call the police if you think it’s illegal,’ she said.
A man who had joined me in the street added his voice. ‘You’re disgusting,’ he told her.
To which, the woman responded, predictably: ‘I think committing genocide is disgusting.’ Here we go, I thought.
There is a horrible war going on in Gaza, with an appalling loss of life, but how is putting up yellow ribbons ‘supporting genocide’, exactly? The ribbons are to remember those poor young men still in captivity.
The woman eventually skulked off. A bunch of north London Jews had dispatched their vigilante justice in the way we always tend to: with words. I later found to my great joy that the ribbons had been put back up.
Sitting in the coffee shop after this altercation, my anger turned to sadness, then a tiny pop of fear.
What if the woman was waiting for me on the way back? What if she’d hired a mob of friends to berate or attack me?
It turns out my anxiety wasn’t just paranoia: the woman had in fact enlisted a male friend to turn on another Jewish lady in the crowd, who’d been reduced to tears.
None of this is happening in a vacuum. Fear among British Jews has been rising since October 7, 2023. On October 9, before the first bomb dropped on Gaza, pro-Palestinians held a demonstration in London.
Scrap that: let’s call it a celebration, because that’s what it was. ‘Globalise the intifada!’ they shouted with their drums, flares and hatred.
Well, as we all know, the intifada found its global way to a synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur last week, when a stabbing attack resulted in the loss of two Jewish lives. I don’t know why the BBC, the politicians, the commentators, all seemed so surprised. As the news began to break, every British Jew thought: ‘We told you this would happen.’
I am not a particularly observant Jew. I am not an activist. I did not grow up being especially interested in Israel: no family or friends live there. Until a couple of years ago, being Jewish was very much a secondary part of my identity.
Unlike others I know, I had never suffered anti-Semitism and I did not engage with the synagogue much at all. But the genetic memory of persecution runs through us like the pink writing on a stick of rock.
Our ancestors survived attacks by the medieval Christians, the Cossacks, the Nazis.
My family came over here to escape eastern European pogroms at the turn of the 20th century, but my aunt’s husband was a survivor of several Nazi concentration camps – that story is never far away.
For years, I told friends they were being paranoid when they said the UK ‘was no longer a place for Jews’.
But in the past couple of years, I’ve started to think they have a point. Especially since last Thursday. While I wouldn’t say I feel frightened on a day-to-day basis, I’ve taken some precautions.
Last year I took my surname off my Uber account, because I know of Jewish friends who’ve been subjected to tirades by their drivers.
I glance with a spike of anxiety at my mezuzah (the Jewish prayer scroll we nail to the door frame) when a delivery driver stomps up the stairs to my flat. Is this paranoia or just being sensible?
Now we are told a wave of anti-Semitic and racist comments are going unchecked among doctors in the NHS, with some openly celebrating ‘Palestinian resistance’ and saying that ‘all UK Jews should be held accountable’ (for what’s going on in Gaza).
Just last month, one doctor was not deemed a ‘danger to patients’ and allowed to keep her licence to practise, despite claiming on social media that the Royal Free Hospital – not far from my incident with the ribbon-snipper –was a ‘Jewish supremacy cesspit’.
On social media, I’ve had abuse from both the far Right and the far Left. I have been called a babykiller, a c***, and a rat. I’ve had a swastika and horns superimposed on my profile picture.
Yes, there are neo-Nazis out there, but I’m afraid the vast majority has been from Islamists and Left-wing anti-Semites. One lovely fellow told me to ‘go back to Jew land’ last night, while denying the right of Israel to exist. Where is ‘Jew land’, I’d love to know.
Then, of course, there are the constant marches. While I would dispute that central London has become a no-go zone for Jews at the weekend, I certainly wouldn’t venture into Trafalgar Square on a Saturday afternoon.
I’m sure the scissor-wielding charmer yesterday morning is no stranger to a Saturday march; that she sees herself on the side of the angels. But could they please give it a rest this week of all weeks? Do they have a heart?
The Muswell Hill ribbons were flying on Monday afternoon, restored to their former glory after the snipper.
But by yesterday, October 7 itself, they’d been taken down again. So a rallying call went out, via a local WhatsApp group.
At 11am, back went a group of Jewish residents, bearing armfuls of yellow silk, more resolute than before.
And so the little park on the corner of the road shines brightly once again – with optimism, hope, and love.
