Shock, rage, increasing unease: UK’s Jewish community wrestles with response to war | Israel-Hamas war

Two days after Hamas unleashed a terrorist attack on Israeli civilians in southern Israel, hundreds of British Jews waved Israeli flags and sang the Israeli national anthem, Hatikvah, at a vigil outside Downing Street.

The event, organised by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council, and attended by the chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, was a powerful show of communal solidarity as the enormity of Hamas’s atrocities was still becoming clear.

Now, two weeks after the terror of 7 October, unease is creeping in, amid the grief and shock. “It still looks like the community is united, but there are incipient tensions,” said Keith Kahn-Harris, an academic and author of several books about British Jews. “And the longer it goes on, the more fragile Jewish unity will become.”

“It”, of course, refers to the war between Israel and Hamas. As images of dead Palestinian children, devastation and an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe have largely superseded images of dead Israeli children, shattered communities and grief-stricken relatives, some British Jews have begun to voice disquiet about what is happening and what is yet to come.

One expression of this was a letter signed by eight eminent British Jewish lawyers, including Lord Neuberger, a former president of the supreme court, reminding the Israeli government of its obligations under international law.

While stating that Hamas’s actions were war crimes and that Israel had a clear right to respond in self-defence, it said “some aspects of Israel’s response already cause significant concern”. Holding a population under siege, collective punishment and failure to ensure minimum destruction to civilian life and infrastructure “would, if established, constitute a grave violation of international law”, they wrote.

Danny Friedman, a human rights lawyer and one of the signatories, said that as a Jew it was “uncomfortable” for him to sign up to aspects of the statement, “but as a lawyer it is not”. He added: “Not everyone will agree with it, particularly because of the timing, when emotions are so raw.” Some in his own community had said it was “too soon” to be saying such things. But international law on war was “critical to our legacy. It arises out of the second world war, the Holocaust, the Nuremberg trials, the Geneva conventions. Of course, it’s a body of law for all, but it has a Jewish heritage.”

The lawyers’ statement reflected “modern Jewish history and values, and in these terrible times, I think it is important for Jewish lawyers to express their position,” he added. “One of the reasons why I’m a human rights lawyer is because I’m Jewish.”

Talk of the “Jewish community” as a homogenous body was misplaced, he said. “It’s not singular, and no one can stand up and say: ‘I speak for them’.” But the lawyers who signed last week’s statement were “reasonably confident that we reflect a strain, and an important strain, in modern Jewish thinking and sensibility in this country and around the world”.

According to Hannah Weisfeld, the director and founder of Yachad, a British organisation that advocates for a political resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, many Jews in the UK were “looking for a way to express both that what happened was unbelievably horrific, and that they’re not 100% comfortable with how things are unfolding”. Last week, Yachad and other Jewish organisations organised a memorial for murdered Israelis at JW3, a Jewish cultural and community centre in north London. “In a packed room, everyone was very clear that a Jewish tragedy needed to be mourned. Yet people were also concerned about innocent civilians in Gaza,” said Weisfeld.

But it was difficult to find the space, within the community and in the wider public sphere, in which complex and nuanced views could be held and expressed, she added. The lawyers’ statement may help to create such a space, where supporters of Israel following its darkest day might feel able to also voice anxieties or concerns about what is happening in Gaza.

“In dramatic times, it’s difficult not to see things in binary terms,” said Friedman. “It’s difficult to think about context. But with all these difficulties, it’s really important to try not to be binary, to make an effort to hold different thoughts in one’s head at the same time.”

Rabbi Charley Baginsky, who leads Liberal Judaism in the UK, said there was unease amid the rawness, distress and sense of vulnerability in her community. “I’ve always been very vocal in being anti-occupation, promoting a two-state solution and coexistence projects. But when is the moment when it feels OK to talk about that again?” she said. “And how can you express compassion and feeling for everybody in Israel and Palestine at the moment while not ending up making a political statement about something that offends somebody because sensitivities are really high? There are layers and layers of complexity in this.”

Most people in her community were not having such discussions, she said. “People are still processing their shock. They aren’t able to move beyond grief at the moment.”

Another rabbi, Jonathan Romain, director of the Maidenhead synagogue, said that most people in his community felt Israel was “doing the right thing” by giving warnings about airstrikes and not rushing into a ground invasion of Gaza. “I don’t think there’s been any lessening of a feeling that Israel must take whatever action is needed – but with the hope that it will be targeted at Hamas, not civilians. And there’s confidence that Israel has no interest and no benefit from targeting civilians.”

In the US, there have also been signs of discomfort about the unfolding war among American Jews. Protesters – including 400 Jews and 25 rabbis, according to Jewish Voice for Peace – gathered to demand a ceasefire near the Capitol. “We are here to say, ‘Not in our name’,” Jay Saper told the Washington Post. “We are here as Jews – many descendants of survivors of genocide – to stop a genocide from unfolding in real time.”

In London on Thursday, several hundred people joined a protest in Parliament Square organised by Na’amod, an organisation of leftwing Jews that campaigns against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory and the “crimes of apartheid”. “We will not let our grief be weaponised to justify genocide,” Na’amod wrote on X.

Some have pointed to generational differences among UK and US Jews on attitudes to Israel. In the past 15 years, three wars fought between Israel and Gaza have resulted in the deaths of thousands of Palestinians. The fourth, current, war has already produced a death toll of more than 4,000, according to the Hamas-run health authority in Gaza. In the West Bank and East Jerusalem, there is no end in sight to Israel’s 56-year occupation. Rightwinger Benjamin Netanyahu, a man who many believe has little interest in a peace settlement with the Palestinians, has been Israel’s prime minister for most of the past 14 years.

These factors have contributed to a loosening of visceral loyalty to Israel felt by younger generations compared with their parents and grandparents, and a greater willingness to look at Israel’s actions with a critical eye.

For now and for most Jews, grief, shock and a fear for their own safety amid an alarming spike in antisemitism is dominant. “Jewish life is fairly subdued,” said Kahn-Harris. “This isn’t going to be like previous operations that lasted a month, maybe, at the most. This may be months or even years. And it may get a lot worse.

“So there are questions about how we live Jewish lives amid this. How do you keep your synagogue going? How do you keep your school going? Those are the challenges that I think people are starting to wake up to. I’m not sure anybody has an answer.”