Samson is 13 and has had to get used to antisemitic abuse when he leaves his north London Jewish school, but there was one incident a couple of months ago that still scars him. He was walking towards Belsize Park underground and was lagging behind his friends. “Most of my friends had crossed the road but I was on my own when I was targeted by two guys wearing balaclavas. They did a Nazi salute, they spat on the ground and said, ‘dirty Jew’,’’ says Samson.
“Then they grabbed me by my shirt collar and pushed me against a gate and demanded my phone.” The assault only ended when other people approached the attackers. “The whole episode left me feeling quite shaken up,” adds Samson. This wasn’t the first time he’d been attacked on his way home from school — he’d been spat at on the Tube and called names — just the most violent.
Belsize Park, where there is a Jewish school nearby, has become just one of the flare-up areas in London for attacks on Jews. A few months ago, another schoolboy was hospitalised after being attacked in the area. The police are always alerted but little, it seems, is done to protect them.
“Samson was anxious afterwards and didn’t want to go to school,” his mother Lydia says. “He started to have stomach aches from the anxiety; he was afraid that they were going to come after him again. Police say they will monitor the situation but that doesn’t really happen. It almost feels like they’re waiting for something really catastrophic to happen before they take it seriously.”
Schools are just one of the many areas in which antisemitism has spiked since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 heralded the start of a new war with Gaza. The Community Security Trust (CST) which monitors anti-Jewish hatred has labelled school antisemitism a particular growth problem, with 107 reported incidents in the last six months. Jewish parents find themselves in a quandary: send them to a Jewish school where they will be safe in the playground but attacked when they leave (41 of those incidents happened during a daily commute) or send them to a non-religious school and hope they don’t get bullied.
Dozens of London Jewish parents have had to remove their children from schools because of antisemitic bullying. Worst of all? It might come from the children but can be seen to be encouraged by the teachers.
‘I was afraid for my children’
Eve* describes how for her eight-year-old Jewish daughter there was an incident almost every week. In the playground children asked, “Are you Palestine or Israel? You have to choose.” She quickly realised saying Israel was a mistake: “Kids would say things like, ‘I’m going to draw a map of Israel and burn it in your face’.” Eventually Eve removed her children from the school.
Half of Jewish teachers have experienced antisemitism in recent years, often from pupils
It is not just the kids. Last month the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers revealed that half of Jewish teachers have experienced antisemitism in recent years, often from pupils. Antisemitism in universities has been well reported on, but it is all over education. Sarah* even found it at her drama workshop.
“My teacher was always trying to talk about racism, but after October 7 she started to talk about Zionism and how it was colonialism, racism, all of that. I tried to explain that it was just self-determination for Jewish people. She became very aggressive and told me I was no longer welcome in her class. I had been going for two years.”
London likes to regard itself as a melting pot for communities, but as anyone from any minority knows that is only half the story — that ostensible cohesion can feel like an item of clothing which just needs someone to give a thread a slight pull and it will come apart. London’s Jews, one of its oldest minorities, are now wondering for the first time whether they have a future in the only place they know of as home.
London's boroughs under assault
According to the latest CST figures, in the past six months alone there were 774 antisemitic incidents in the Greater London area — nearly half in Barnet which has the highest proportion of Jews. There were 95 incidents in Westminster and just behind came Camden, Hackney, Haringey and Harrow. These incidents range from violent attacks to antisemitic graffiti.
The hatred impacts whoever is obviously Jewish. Some try and hide while others have starting sporting a Star of David necklace in defiance. But everyone is scared of this hatred and what it could lead to. Model Caprice Bourret, who lives in west London, says that like many Jews she has taken down her mezuzah — a scroll parchment attached to a door frame to bless a house — because “I was afraid for the safety of my children”. Broadcaster Vanessa Feltz, meanwhile, has described how she was singled out in central London by a man yelling, “Vanessa Feltz, fascist Zionist scum.” She added: “He was chasing me, screaming into a megaphone.”
‘I had to leave London’
Jews have been part of the London fabric for centuries — ever since Oliver Cromwell allowed Jews back in 1656 (they first arrived with William the Conqueror but were thrown out due to antisemitism 200 years later). Many came to escape pogroms in the Russian empire in the late Victorian period. And there were more recent waves of Jewish immigration here in the run up to the Second World War when Jews escaped the Holocaust and again in 1979 when Iranian Jews fled the Islamic Republic.
Things have never been perfect — I must have been six the first time I was called a “dirty Jew” by another child at my school in Northwood — but British Jews have also always known that we were the luckiest in Europe. Because the UK was never invaded by the Nazis, we never had to see whether our neighbours would turn on us.
Antisemitism feels like it has been growing over the past few decades, but everything became turbocharged on October 7 when, even as Hamas terrorists were still killing Israeli families and hunting down Nova festival ravers, there were celebrations on our streets. Since then, there has been a tsunami of Jew hatred.
Some of it has made it into newspapers — the universities, the hatred from bands, cancellation of acts, a recent attack outside a Jewish deli in Marylebone — but most of it goes unremarked upon as it becomes increasingly commonplace.
It felt like I was in a horror show
Gemma*, a theatre worker who lived in Islington, had barely even thought about her Jewish ethnicity until October 7. “Islington was my home,” says Gemma, whose husband isn’t Jewish. “I was part of the fabric of this multicultural community and I loved it. But then came October 7 and a day after, I started seeing Palestine flags going up in my neighbour’s windows. The biggest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust and they appeared to be celebrating. It felt like I was in a horror show.
“I started to wear a necklace with Hebrew writing on in defiance. One evening I was on the bus when two young women with hijabs stood in front of me. At first, I thought they must have been friends of my stepdaughter but then they pointed to the necklace and spat on me.
“Islington Green is where I got married. In December 2023 our menorah for Chanukah had been desecrated within a day. It made me realise I had to leave Islington. Leave London. Just before we moved, we passed a pro-Palestine demonstration outside Barclays and this woman started screaming at me so I asked, ‘What about the hostages? The tunnels?’ She screamed at me, ‘You Jewish pig’.” Gemma now lives in Henley.
For those who are most obviously Jewish it is perhaps hardest. Jack Miller, a shopkeeper who wears a yarmulke (skullcap), describes what happened at Tesco in Wembley recently. “While I bent down to pick tomatoes, I felt something land on top of my head,” he says. “Thinking it might be a bug, I went to remove it to find I had been spat on. I looked up and there was a young man who just smiled at me.”
Jade had just a yellow ribbon, denoting support for hostages, on when she was accosted in central London. She has video of a man who then attacked her, screaming “f***ing Zionist” and saying “you like depravity and death and torture” as well as ‘f***ing Nazis, the lot of you.’”
Company director Victoria Portnoy, from Ilford, wears a Star of David necklace. “I have had people shout ‘free Palestine’ in my face. I’ve been defriended by people I’ve known for years. Palestinian flags have been placed outside my synagogue. I feel angry and upset all the time.”
Stamford Hill, where many ultra-orthodox Jews as well as secular ones live, has become a particularly difficult place to live. Avrumi Sampson, who works in security, refuses to hide and advocates for the return of the hostages still being held in Gaza. His dog Molly has a coat embroidered with the words “Bring Them Home”. He sends me videos of people attacking him as a “genocide supporter” and “child killer”.
But it’s not just Jewish areas. Natalie says she feels she is being stalked because of her religion. She sends me photographs of chilling graffiti near her house: “Natalie baby killer supporter”; “Natalie Israeli witch”; “Natalie Israeli Nazi”.
“I live in Camden and I am being harassed by certain individuals who I have reported to the police several times now,” she says. “I can’t walk my dogs without seeing antisemitic graffiti and some of it is aimed at me. It is starting to affect my wellbeing and mental health.”
In both Natalie and Jade’s case, the Met say that they are investigating reports of hate crime, but no arrests have been made.
Claire Waxman, London Victims’ Commissioner, said she is “deeply concerned” about the “high levels of antisemitism” in the capital, adding, “World events can never be used to justify hatred for a community … For victims and the Jewish community to have confidence, the police and CPS must act robustly.”
A spokesperson for London Mayor Sadiq Khan said: “The Mayor is leading from the front to ensure the police take a zero-tolerance approach to antisemitism and is investing a record £15.9m to help combat hatred, intolerance and extremism.”
October 7 uncorked what has been called the world’s oldest hatred. The war in Israel and Gaza sadly sees no end in sight, but one day it will end. For London’s Jews the question, however, remains: what will happen to this hatred and will we still have a future here?
*some names have been changed
