Neviim Tovim, blogs by Gillian Gould Lazarus

As you know, the yellow ribbon is used as a symbol for keeping hostages or prisoners in mind, currently with reference to the hostages still held in Gaza, the living and the dead. At home, I have some yellow ribbons which were handed out at vigils I attended in London, for the hostages and in memory of those murdered on or in the wake of 7 October 2023.

I thought about tying them round trees locally, even about buying more yellow ribbons, to adorn the trees of the ‘Quieter Neighbourhood’ roads, as an Enfield Council initiative is pleased to call them. I am aware of course that these ribbons, like the photos of hostages, get torn down as soon as they go up. In the UK, those who want the hostages forgotten are more numerous than those who want them remembered. I thought also that I would not like to see a street full of Palestinian flags here in Palmers Green and perhaps the yellow ribbons would incite a game of one-upmanship, over whose symbol would last longer or be greater in quantity.

The Palestinian flag is seen more often on London streets than the Union Jack, in Ireland readier to hand than the Irish tricolore. At the Labour Party Conference in 2018, under Corbyn’s leadership, Palestinian flags were handed out to delegates so that a whole forest of them waved in the conference hall, without a red flag in sight.

On the pro Palestinian marches which takes place in UK cities on most Saturdays, the symbol of the Star of David is butchered, drawn with a swastika inside it or behind it, with blood dripping from the six pointed star or being thrown into a waste paper bin. How does the self-vaunted ‘Jewish bloc’ of perhaps twenty persons put up with it? Perhaps they tell themselves that the Magen David is not a Jewish symbol at all but represents the Israeli flag – but we know better. The six pointed star on the gravestones of my relations, in the synagogues and worn on a chain round my neck – they are not about Medinat Israel but about, a people, a faith, a history and an identity.

We have learned since 7 October, if we did not already know it, that we Jews, so often talked about, so often in the news, are a minority among minorities, perhaps 300,000 at most in this country and fifteen million, half of whom live in Israel, in the whole world. Our antagonists want us somewhere else, not here, not there, possibly not anywhere, or else gathered in Poland: Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Mizrachim, Beta Jews, Italic Jews, North Africans. What would the Poles think about it? In reality, ‘Go back to Poland’ is a curse because it is perceived as our graveyard, the epicentre of the Shoah, more than Berlin, Munich, Vienna or Budapest.

There are people who steadfastly build memorial sites for the killed and the kidnapped of 7 October. Daily, vandals kick over plants, tear down posters and remove objects related to love, pity and mourning but they are set up again, in the full knowledge that another vandal will come and the memorial be restored again after them.

The actor Jason Isaacs wears a yellow ribbon pin in solidarity with the hostages but a so-called influencer digitally erased it before posting the photo of Jason Isaacs, minus the yellow ribbon. If the Star of David gives offence and the Menorah and the scrolls of a Sefer Torah, all of them Jewish symbols, so too does the yellow ribbon, not political or religious but simply a sign that our missing people are not forgotten.

At the heart of the Yom Kippur liturgy is Yizkor, the memorial service, for which my synagogue suddenly fills up, seats at a premium, because many who are not given to religious devotions still want to remember the loved ones they have lost. Willingly, they pray for them. The yellow ribbon however signifies remembrance of the living, who may still come home. Some will want to erase it, finding it an unbearable symbol, although it is a symbol of hope. God willing, more may still come home.