Protesters must not use Jews like me as a punching bag

Two years after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, divisions and tensions in Britain are deepening, says Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner - but we can still choose empathy over anger

When I hear the words “October 7”, I am aware of the visceral effect on my body. I am – and I hate this word – triggered. Our eldest child lives in Israel. I have lived in Israel. I am set off into panic just thinking about it. All that is despite the fact that when I lived in Israel, I worked on the Oslo peace process and in Ramallah with Palestinians.

Today, on October 7, university students from several institutions are to gather at an event in London – two years to the day since some 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage during Hamas’s incursion into Israel. I want to ask the question: how does it help today? What outcome do you envisage that’s not just a venting of your own anger?

If you’re venting your own anger, well, go for a run. Go and bash a punching bag, like I do. But don’t turn other people into a punching bag just today.

I am driven by wanting a Palestine and an Israel to coexist. But I’m aware of my own dissonance – when I see a large demonstration that says “Free Palestine”, I feel threatened. If that’s happening to me, what’s happening to other Jews who haven't lived in the area or worked in the occupied Palestinian territories in peace work?

Maybe if there was a call for “From the river to the sea, two nations should be free”, this would be more positive, rather than just one.

Protestors should show solidarity, not anger, on the second anniversary of the October 7 attacks in Israel (AFP via Getty)

But there is a difference between trauma and the truth. While those are my emotions, the truth is that the vast number of people at those demonstrations want what I want – a Palestinian state – because they’re good people. They don’t hate Jews, they hate the situation. Good! But don’t demonstrate on October 7. Raise money. Do other things.

We’ve had two years of this horrendous war. Tens of thousands of Gazans have been killed. Lots of people in Britain are against it. And it is not, as the home secretary and prime minister suggest, un-British to protest, and to me this feels divisive, this language, “un-British”.

I don’t want to be set against pro-Palestinians. It’s a false boxing match setting pro-Palestinians in one corner and British Jews in another. No. We are all in the same arena – Britain – where people want freedom and statehood for Israelis and Palestinians. Don’t put everyone in the boxing ring here.

What is clear to me is that there is a fight for the soul of the Jewish community going on in Britain. I listened to a voluntary security guard from the Manchester synagogue, where the terrible attack took place last week, and he said it’s not safe for Jews living in Britain. But if you look at the data, that is simply not true. There have been far more antisemitic incidents since this war began two years ago, but we are the sixth least antisemitic country in the world.

We are the recipients of racism, like other racisms. I don’t want to be special. If you make yourselves special kinds of victims, then you can’t connect with others who are also victims of different racism. I don’t want to be especially loved. When people are especially loved as a people, they get to be especially hated pretty quickly. I’d quite like to be especially ignored. Being simply mundane is lovely.

A yellow ribbon calling for the release of hostages held in the Gaza Strip (AP)

In north London, a friend of mine and her 20-year-old son were recently walking when they saw a man with a Jewish head covering, a yarmulke, screaming at a man in a balaclava, cutting down the yellow ribbons that had been tied to a wall. Yellow ribbons are an internationally recognised symbol used to call for lost people to come home.

When people want to show solidarity for the hostages still in Gaza, they put yellow ribbons on things. And this Jewish man – an elderly man – was a Holocaust survivor. You don’t get more classic than this. He said, “How dare you, this is terrible, these ribbons are just for hostages.” And the man in the balaclava was screaming right back at him, “These yellow ribbons are anti-Palestinian.”

My friend’s son started talking to these two men. It took 20 minutes. He said to the man in the balaclava, “Why do you think they’re anti-Palestinian?” He asked the elderly Jewish man, “Why do you think they’re not?” And he got the two of them to talk. This is a true story. He asked the elderly Jewish man, “Why are you screaming? Why is this so upsetting?” And he got them to realise what the other thought. The guy with the balaclava apologised and stopped cutting down the ribbons. And the two walked off.

There are three types of actors in this story. In a conflict, you have different kinds of perpetrators and different kinds of victims, but what’s important is that the bystander intervened. In Britain, we are bystanders. What can we do to make it better? One thing is not to make it worse – not to have assumptions. The other is to reach out.

Laura Janner-Klausner is rabbi of Bromley Reform Synagogue