Neviim Tovim, blogs by Gillian Gould Lazarus

On Sunday, I was at the annual LCSCA conference, the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, a flourishing organization conceived, brought to birth and nurtured by Professor David Hirsh of Goldsmith’s, University of London. Professor Hirsh emphasized the urgency of working against an antisemitic ethos which he said is now found ‘at the highest levels of sophisticated thinking…and that’s something which hasn’t been the case since the Holocaust, I think.’

Certainly, when I encounter the opinions of certain academics, journalists, ambassadors , lawyers and politicians, often of international repute and with a significant activist and social media following, and they say that Israel should not exist, should never have existed and that we who are Zionists should be penalized by law as accessories to every imaginable crime, then the world itself seems to me less safe than it ever was in my lifetime, even at the height of the Cold War. Our own warfare and lawfare against these grandees of antisemitism is waged most potently by academics, writers and lawyers.

In writing about the LCSCA conference, my intention is not to record what was said, even by the astute and experienced keynote speaker Dr Dave Rich, but about the subjective experience of an almost permanent anxiety being relieved, in a public space among a large number of trusted people. For me, everyone there was a trusted person.

When one visits a gallery, theatre or nearly any public venue, security staff will search the bags of visitors. This is reassuring but it does not mean that some ballet dancer will not unfurl to scattered applause a Palestinian flag or that a monomaniacal visionary of Palestine Action will not empty a can of green paint over the Wilton Diptych. Although this would not cause physical harm to persons, it would, for me, resemble being in the cafe in ‘Cabaret’ when a lad from the Hitler Youth sings ‘Tomorrow Belongs to Me.’ I used to reflect, when watching this unforgettable scene, that tomorrow did not belong to him, but now there is the chill of wondering if perhaps it does.

On any given day, news breaks of anti Jewish activism and exclusion, especially in culture and academia but beyond that, in NGOs, in medicine, even in the hospitality industry. I understand the thrill for the anti Israel activists of being one of so many, drumming and shouting their way through city streets. I therefore appreciate the feeling of safety in public, for example at the AJEX remembrance parade back in November, wearing my father’s war medals among Jewish servicemen and servicewomen of the UK armed forces, ex servicemen and the children and grandchildren of servicemen.

I remember hearing a Shoah survivor recollect how, as a boy in Germany in the 1930s, he thought the Nazi parades looked stirring and exciting, the way parades often are.

As at the AJEX parade, the LCSCA Conference felt safe, not only the physical space but one could imagine a safe future. With so many people dedicated to the continuation of Jewish life here in the UK, the survival of Israel and the safeguarding of enlightenment, it no longer felt that we were on the brink of losing all of these desiderata.

I used to feel a similar security in the synagogue and it is only occasionally diminished when I wonder if there exists on the outer reaches of Progressive Judaism a view that the abrogation of the State of Israel would be a price worth paying for the purchase of tikkun olam, ‘the repair of the world,’ a phrase overladen by constant repetition.

Not being afraid in public spaces depends only in part on the presence of effective security. More than that is the sense of being in well-meaning company where one is out of harm’s way. Not only shall I not be called ‘genocidal maniac’ but the people with me know exactly what it is like, to be called such names but to carry on campaigning.

On completing this post, such as it is, I turn to X where I find that I and other activist women have multiple messages from an individual who counsels us to stop killing innocent people, saying that only then will our troubles cease. I have told her this is on my to do list. Sometimes I can’t help snapping back.