“Not everyone’s idea of a party”

This was part of the voicenote from a friend I was due to meet on Friday for coffee, but I cancelled. He was very understanding, because we were going to be meeting at his regular haunt in his home city and I had reluctantly decided I wasn’t going to visit after all.

The meet up was in Jerusalem and I was due to be on a flight to Israel yesterday.

His voicenote was a brilliant moment of satire and respite from what had become an increasingly bizarre and frightening day.

So in between cancelling my flight due to the impending threats of total annihilation of Israel from Iran, my WhatsApp notifications were alive and well. They alternated between messages of love and understanding from my friends in Israel who were receiving my message cancelling our plans to meet up, and messages of despair, support and hope in some of the interfaith WhatsApp group of which I am a part in my home city of Leeds.

Because yesterday, it seemed that threats of Armageddon were alive and well not only in the Middle East but from far right extremist groups over here in the UK as well.

I am unwavering in my support for dignity respect and love for all human beings, and all of creation. I try to live by these values each day.

I am humble and proud to be part of an interfaith response in Leeds. And I am totally bewildered by the parallel worlds that seem to exist in my life.

On social media, I read of a call to reach out to Muslim friends who were feeling scared and vulnerable over the last few days.

I did this immediately and wholeheartedly, despite knowing some relationships are fractured as a result of misunderstandings, assumptions and allegiances since October 7th.

I also reach out regularly to Israeli friends and family to say I am thinking of them and sending love and prayers for peace and a better world. Especially right now, when a hostile neighbouring country along with its allies are threatening to destroy its very existence.

I can hold both, because I don’t see it as holding both. I see it as holding one.

One position, of love and hope and alliance and dignity and valuing each and every holy human soul. One position celebrating the interconnectedness of all beings and the beauty of creation and all its glory and manifestations.

I read in the news this morning about gatherings in city centres to counter the threat of extreme right gatherings in those places. I wanted to go and be part of it. I want to join that party.

But I saw a Palestinian flag in images of the gathering in Bristol. I know that a Palestinian flag is not an antisemitic symbol. But I also know that, in the absence of an Israeli flag flying with it, it is taking a ‘side’ and that ‘side’ does not hold the nuance, the complicated multifaceted truths of an incredibly complex situation, and, as we have also seen these last ten months that rhetoric unfortunately all too easily slips into antisemitism.

So currently, unfortunately, a place with a Palestinian flag is not a place I feel welcome. It is not a place I see nuance and calls for peace and love and seeing the humanity in each other, of seeing the humanity in me.

In May this year there was a terrorist plot with the target being the Jewish community in Manchester. The intent was there. The action was thwarted thanks to Greater Manchester Police and the Community Security Trust. But the intent was absolutely there. No one reached out to me. No protests were organised to show solidarity.

2023 recorded the highest number of antisemitic incidents since 1984 when the data first started being collected. Two thirds of these were in the last three months of 2023, ie after October 7th (you can read the full article here). In fact, there’s a new news item, today, about the increase in 2024 too… you can read the full BBC article here. No one has reached out to me. No protests are organised to show solidarity.

I am left with the uncomfortable question, why?

Then I went on Facebook and there on my newsfeed was a flier for the counter demonstration in Finchley, the neighbourhood in North London where I grew up, where my family still live. A hive of Jewish activity. A place I call home.

The flier read; “Get fascists, racists, Nazis, Zionists & Islamophobes out of Finchley!”

My heart sank, and raced at the same time. Zionists? Really? What does Zionism (misguidedly) mean to the people who included it in a list of far right ideologies?

To be clear: Zionism is the support for the notion of Jewish national self determination. It is not a dirty word to be listed alongside facists and Nazis. It is not a subscription to the support of the current Israeli government, or rejection of the idea of a Palestinian state.

To list Zionists (and where are antisemites on this list? Glaringly absent….) suggests that those who support the very notion of a Jewish state is a far right ideology and should be opposed alongside Nazism and fascism. To list Zionists blacklists the majority of Jews (half the world’s Jews live in Israel after all) from this invitation to stand united against racism.. To list Zionists makes it feel like Zionism is a dirty word, and it’s not.

I’ve now seen footage from some of the counter protests from yesterday, and a lot of my Facebook feed is in a jubilant mood; that ‘we’ve got our country back’ and there is solidarity across the communities and they have warded off the far right. But I know that I wasn’t party to that. I wasn’t included either as a victim of antisemitism (of which, unfortunately I personally have been) or as an ally against racism,

I feel a foreboding grey cloud. We have been here before; we are not welcome, as our true full authentic selves, anywhere. Ironically that was the momentum that brought the State of Israel into being in 1948, supported by the international community at the time, to finally give the Jews a place they could truly call home.

Where’s the party where we can stand in solidarity together for peace? Where can we be allies for each other against all forms of racism? Where can we see the humanity (and Divine spark) in each and every one of us?

Now that’s the party I want to go to. I’m just not sure right now who else would join me…