Neviim Tovim, blogs by Gillian Gould Lazarus

Two, four, six, eight, we don’t want no police state.

One, two, three, four, something something something war.

The chants on marches and demonstrations are always pretty much the same – not the words, but the tune which passes from generation to generation. When young, a teenager, I chanted with the rest of them: ‘We don’t want a nuclear war,’ and all I can remember from the innumerable demos outside the US embassy in London is ‘Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?’ One could also hear ‘Hey, hey, Ho Chi Minh, how many kids have you done in?’ but this would not have been far left orthodoxy.

I watch news footage of the ‘pro Palestinian’ marches. The marchers have a soft spot for the Houthis whose flag is emblazoned with the words, ‘Curse the Jews.’ One wonders how many Yiddisher people the Houthis encounter in present day Yemen. ‘Operation Magic Carpet’ rescued 49,000 Yemenite Jews from persecution in 1949 -1950 and most went to live in Israel.

The staple chants of the current marches are of course ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ – a favourite as it marries a call for the genocide of Israeli Jews with plausible deniability – and ‘We don’t want no two state, we want 1948.’ In point of fact, the United Nations voted in favour of the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine into Israel and Jordan in November 1947 so one assumes the marchers really want to return to 1947 but the rhymes for seven are limited.

Such is the audio of the marches. Visually, there is the constant comparison of Jews with Nazis, an image of the Israeli flag with a swastika instead of a six pointed star or a drawing of Netanyahu feasting on children while blood drips from his mouth. You truly don’t have to like Netanyahu to see this as the objectionable antisemitic trope which it is.

JW3 is a Jewish Cultural Centre on Finchley Road, a large modern building opened in 2013, a project of the Clore Duffield Foundation. Classes are held there, films are shown, lectures and conferences take place. There is a cafe/restaurant. Last time I was there, I had a beer and a tuna sandwich, before entering an auditorium to hear four illustrious speakers discuss the reawakening of western antisemitism after 7 October.

The name JW3 is an allusion to the postcode, NW3 and the fact that it is a Jewish cultural centre.

Yesterday, the demonstrators came to JW3. The stood in front of the entrance, yelling ‘Yemen, Yemen, make us proud, turn another ship around.’ Some, who were over-excited, made grotesque, contemptuous gestures at people arriving for a conference. One elderly woman was seen crying as she struggled past them to get into the building; another had her hands over her ears. Ironically, the conference was put on by Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper so critical of the the government that it is often cited on anti Israel social media. Among the speakers were Palestinians, including a former Member of the Knesset. Ehud Olmert, a former Prime Minister of Israel, was also a speaker.

It made no difference to the demonstrators that the conference was substantially critical of Israel. Whatever the politics, JW3 is a Jewish centre and there were Israelis inside the building. We have seen similar demonstrations when Israelis, however left leaning, are invited to speak at UK universities. The presence of progressive Hen Mazzig at a London college provoked rage no less than events addressed by the undoubtedly right wing Israeli ambassador, Tzipi Hotovely.

Thanks to Alex Hearn for this video where the demonstrators screech ‘In our thousands, in our millions, We are all Palestinians’ while people run the gauntlet past them to enter the building.

A child is inducted into the cult of hate, protesting at the Jewish community centre yesterday pic.twitter.com/r6Gd7esU4Z

— Alex Hearn (@hearnimator) October 28, 2024

‘Intifada, revolution,’ was also shouted but it is the second half of a couplet, usually, ‘We don’t want no Two State Solution, Intifada revolution.’

There are many snippets of film showing bestial abuse from the demonstrators but a feature present in all of them is the excitement of roaring in the street as if the volume could carry the day – and, in a close second place to the volume, the rhymes. Just south of Swiss Cottage, outside a centre for Jewish culture, discussion and learning, they shout ‘Yemen, Yemen make us proud; Turn another ship around.’ The shouting is climactic, accompanied by the bodily movements which accompany the production of maximum decibels.

The chanting drowns out reflection as the person loses themself in the crowd, like a Heideggerian Das Man who reassures himself by being one of a consensual many, freed from the burdens of individuality.

The video below was something I filmed outside Wood Green Library, earlier this year. It was not connected with the JW3 demo, but I noticed the intensity and the way the woman moved her body to help her produce the loudest possible shrieks as she cried ‘Yemen, Yemen, make us proud…’

George Orwell said that the point of the goosestep used by the armies of authoritarian regimes was to communicate, ‘We look absurd but you dare not laugh.’ So it is with the chanting.

Wood Green, 16 March. 'Yemen, Yemen, make us proud ' Yikes. pic.twitter.com/pGoPk3AXtX

— Gillian Lazarus (@GillianLazarus) March 16, 2024

Galut is the Hebrew word for exile. It mean the Jewish diaspora outside the Land of Israel and, in the bible, it is used of the captivity in Babylon from about 587 BCE until about 537, when the Persian emperor Cyrus permitted the return of the exiles.

This article, however, is about Finchley and the anti racist demonstration which took place there last night.

It is August, when even the supposedly placid Brits have been known to take to the streets and riot, last time in the dog days of 2011. The trigger in the present case is the tragedy of a murderous rampage by a teenager in Southport, killing three small children and injuring many others. The falsehood that the perpetrator was a Muslim immigrant was circulated on social media and the riots began, populated by self-styled patriots who set fire to vehicles and attacked mosques. Even when the identity of the killer was made known, and he was revealed to be neither a Muslim nor an immigrant, the riots persisted, spreading to many cities in the UK, including Belfast. There was a clearly racist impetus against Muslims and it put at risk all people of colour.

In Southport, residents gathered together after the riot to clear up the mess and to repair damage to the mosque, and the other cities followed, attempting to repair not just the physical but also the civic and social wreckage.

This became a moment for the left to formulate their response and assemble their activists. Professor David Miller was not alone in asserting that Zionists had caused and directed the anti Muslim riots. The far right Nick Griffin, former leader of the British National Party, took exactly the same view. Tommy Robinson, in recent years more at the forefront of the far right than Nick Griffin, has designated Islam and immigration as the enemy but he is not anti Jewish. On the contrary, he wanted to participate in a march against antisemitism but was turned away by the organizers, rightly in my opinion, as his presence would have been used to characterize the march as Islamophobic. Boris Johnson’s presence among the marchers was hardly remarked on, but Tommy Robinson would have damaged the brand of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, which had brought out a hundred thousand people, marching to Westminster.

Yesterday was Wednesday. It was widely reported by social media that the far right were going to attack specific immigration centres and other vulnerable targets, related to asylum seekers. The anti racists swiftly organized counter demonstrations and, in the event, many thousands gathered to defend the designated locations, while there was no show from the far right. In almost every way, it was a good outcome.

However, this leaflet was distributed concerning the anti racist assembly in Finchley, just a mile or two from where I live.

The inclusion of Zionists among the categories of the far right was a racist solecism. I am only too familiar with the argument that Zionism is separate from Jews and Judaism, which is invariably the response of those accused of antisemitism on the basis of a fanatical or violent anti Zionism. And yet, it is often the same people who substitute the word Zionists for Jews in highly anachronistic ways, claiming that ‘Zionists’ killed Jesus, sank the Titanic, were readmitted to England by a malfeasant Oliver Cromwell and -one I saw for the first time yesterday – had King Charles I beheaded.

In practice, most Jews I know hold liberal Zionist views, severely tested for some by reports of right wing bigotry among members of the Knesset or delinquent behaviour from some West Bank settlers. Where their Zionism is not crushed into non existence, they tend to repose hope still in the Two State Solution and the cessation of settlements in the disputed territories. They excoriate Prime Minister Netanyahu without reserve although some, like myself, have too often seen Netanyahu portrayed in antisemitic iconography as a blood soaked monster to want to add my voice to his demonization. Those of my generation tend to have histories of activism with the Anti Nazi League and to have demonstrated in the past against the National Front, the BNP and South African apartheid.

I can tell you that when I was on a counter demonstration against dockers who marched in support of Enoch Powell in 1968, the antisemitism I heard that day came from some of the Powellite dockers, not from the counter demonstrators.

Be that as it may, it appears that Zionists are now not welcome at anti racist demonstrations, so I count myself as excluded.

The CEO of a Jewish organization posted on X, formerly Twitter, that he had attended the Finchley anti racist demo, feeling bound to show solidarity with the Muslim community. When I replied that I would not feel welcome with my Star of David and yellow ribbon pin, which alludes to the Israeli hostages still captive in Gaza, he replied that he had worn these signs and not encountered hostility. So far so good, but others appeared on my timeline, thus:

I have concealed the names, apart from my own, but ‘A’ is the Jewish man who was at the demo.

I read statements from some Jews who are anti Zionist activists, saying that they found nothing but goodwill on the anti racist demos, but they say the same about the weekly pro Palestinian marches and indeed failed to spot a shred of antisemitism in the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.

It has often seemed to me, perhaps wrongly, that Jews – my family and my friends – are Zionists unless they state otherwise. These days, more state otherwise than used to. They may be unhappy with Israel’s part in the wars it has to fight or they may simply not want to be excluded from political movements which they and I have always supported: anti racism, Gay Pride, civil rights, women’s rights.

It is not a pleasant thing to be exiled from political activity which has always been part of one’s life. It is this feature of the present day UK which makes England exilic for me as never before.

There is a new video of a Labour councillor making a speech from the midst of one of the demos. He calls for fascists and racists to have their throats cut and the crowd cheers wildly. Visibly powered by adrenalin and serotonin, he then roars ‘Free, free…’ and the crowd chants back, ‘Palestine!’

All the UK General Election nights of my lifetime stand out in my memory, but they have rarely made me happy. Even when Harold Wilson won in 1964 after – as he phrased it – ‘thirteen years of Tory misrule,’ his majority was no more than four, barely workable for government. Two years later, he achieved a substantial majority but his special relationship with the United States during their pursuit of the war in Vietnam tarnished his reputation in the eyes of the left, among which I counted myself. However, I was not yet old enough to vote and, when I was of voting age, in 1970, Edward Heath knocked Labour off its perch, so the sun rose on a desolate summer morning.

In ’74, Wilson was back but with a tiny majority and he resigned two years later, Jim Callaghan taking over in Downing Street. 1979 was the beginning of the Thatcher years. Initially it was interesting that a woman was Prime Minister but still depressing that it was Margaret Thatcher, whose winning streak continued until her party forced her resignation. John Major, known as ‘The Grey Man’ was now PM. He had a reputation for being dull and eating peas although, to be fair, peas are an underrated vegetable. Whereas Spitting Image depicted him as terminally unremarkable, the more recent Netflix series, The Crown, portrays him as a man of integrity, not without glamour. Either way, I cried in 1992 when Neil Kinnock, expected to carry the day, lost to the grey legumephage.

1997 was the first really happy election night. Blair shone in those early years of his premiership, perhaps less in 2001 than in 1997, but he got the second term. Then, while the country raged against him over the Iraq war, he won a third term, the first Labour Prime Minister to do so. Labour’s majority was down to sixty-six which was a big drop, but seems perfectly adequate compared to subsequent General Elections. Then Blair was out, with his future behind him and Gordon Brown stepped up but did not have much of a future in front of him. Neither Labour nor Conservatives had won the 2010 election as there was no overall majority, but Nick Clegg, the LibDem leader, was in the role of a kingmaker and opted to go with the Tories. He and Cameron gave a press conference in the Downing Street rose garden. It was like a buddy movie in which Nick Clegg was the straight man or, certainly, the junior partner.

I was sad when Gordon Brown made his valedictory speech. Perhaps I cried; I can’t remember.

Although I preferred David Miliband to his brother Ed, I rejoined Labour during the 2015 election campaign and it seemed to me that Ed was going to make it. This was because I didn’t know anyone who admitted to voting Conservative. Like a spectator at the Grand National, I was saying ‘Come on Ed. COME ON ED!’ but Ed had fallen at the bacon sandwich and the Edstone, and Cameron romped home, so that was another bad night.

The Brexit referendum came and went, leaving disaster in its wake. Cameron resigned, striking me as oddly sympatique in his parting speech. I was sorry for him too, as he had experienced tragedy in his family life. By this time Jeremy Corbyn was in situ as Labour leader, which brought the horrors of antisemitism in my own party, combined with aggressive cult-like behaviour from the demographic known as Corbynists. I left the Labour Party, not precisely when Corbyn became leader, but when he was nominated to run for the leadership by a sufficient number of Labour MPs. I thought they were irresponsible and that, contrary to their expectation, he might win the leadership contest, which of course he did.

Theresa May was now Prime Minister and I quite liked her; felt as if I wanted to go for a drink with her. If my allegiance to Labour hadn’t come to a stop, I would probably have cast a colder eye on the second woman PM of the UK. Her 2017 General Election was a disaster. Expected to win, the Tories lost their majority. Expected to do badly, Corbyn did relatively well and became a Capraesque hero: the honest man who stands tall among the venal and the corrupt; hence the chants of ‘Oh Jeremy Corbyn’ at Glastonbury. But – although the Corbynists denied this furiously – he had a problem with Jews, which aroused a new kind of fear among British Jews, self included, while many on the left accused us of lying in order to protect Israel.

Boris Johnson was chosen to succeed Theresa May. ‘Get Brexit done.’ Was this a good thing or a bad thing? He was perhaps the most likely to beat Corbyn but his brexiteering and louche persona counted against him. Nevertheless, when the election came in 2019, I voted Conservative, as I had done in 2017. Not only could I not vote for Corbyn’s Labour, I wanted to use my vote to their detriment, as far as possible, and that was Tory, not LibDem.

When the exit poll predicted a big Tory majority, I sent up a prayer of thanksgiving. It is, as far as I recall, the only time that I prayed in response to an exit poll. And it was one of the few election nights during which I was happy as the results came in.

Then, last night, General Election 2024. Starmer had done so much to change Labour for the better that I resolved to vote for them again. Then I found that boundary changes meant that my Labour candidate was now Kate Osamor, to whom I did not like to give my vote for a few reasons, involving Holocaust Memorial Day and – a separate thing – something to do with baseball bats. I voted LibDem but I still wanted Labour to win and Keir Starmer to be PM, and so it happened.

Was it a happy night? Not really. Reform under Nigel Farage was up and coming, often achieving second place in Labour voting constituencies, while Tories came third or lower. Candidates identifying themselves as ‘standing for Gaza’ gained about four seats in constituencies described as having a high concentration of Muslim voters. Corbyn swept back into Islington North as an Independent, also for Gaza, this being his tweet on Election Day:

My hope is that Starmer will be a good and effective Prime Minister but I ask myself, ‘What is up with the UK?’ There is a loss of faith in the democratic process, a loss of civility in public life and a loss of safety on the streets. If Keir can go some way towards fixing this, I will vote Labour next time, if I live.

Polly was my cousin by marriage. Her mother had died while she was a teenager, likewise my cousin who was her bridegroom had lost his mother, and while still teenagers, they were married. I was a bridesmaid, obliged to wear a turquoise blue dress which was ruched from the neck to the knees, a bad choice for an overweight twelve year old. Within a few years, they had three children.

Later in their marriage, they engaged in rackety diversions: wife swapping parties. An ongoing accommodation with neighbours led to Polly and the husband next door going off together, leaving an abandoned husband and an abandoned wife.

Polly engaged in philanthropic works. She did not enjoy robust good health and seemed often to undergo medical procedures. She had a serious operation and, when I saw her afterwards at a family gathering, she told me that Jesus had appeared to her while she was under anaesthetic. Not without a sense of humour, she seemed aware of something absurd in this assertion and giggled when she reported that she had said to Jesus, ‘But I’m Jewish!’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Jesus replied, which is the most memorable thing I ever heard Polly say, although in point of fact it may have been Jesus not Polly who said it.

Don’t sweat the small stuff. When God appears to you, it doesn’t matter if He’s wearing tefilin, a turban or a feathered fascinator.

I wasn’t immune myself to the attractions of Christianity but realized when I was about twenty-one, that the shortest route to God was the path of my forefathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and my grandfathers, Yitzhak and Yaakov. I studied my religion during my early married life, later in academia and still, haphazardly, to this day. After retirement, I attended classical Greek classes, hoping to be able to read the Septuagint and, as a bonus, The New Testament; however I quickly forgot how to recognize the aorist tense or decline τριηρης, meaning trireme.

When we reach our limits in theology and the languages of antiquity, we have to hope that God will appear to us in our time of need, like Jesus to Polly.

There is a war at the present time where God is invoked by opposing sides, one side calling Him Allah and the other, Hashem as well as many other names, such as Shaddai, Ha Makom, Ha Kadosh Baruch Hu (the Almighty, the Omnipresent, the Holy One, blessed be He). I believe ‘The All Merciful’ is one of the Islamic names for God, a beautiful concept. It is the depiction of God at His least merciful which drives this secular generation away from faith, to which enlightenment is considered the antidote.

The Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, share the belief that there is one God. After Abraham’s funeral, Ishmael goes back to the house/tent of Isaac his half-brother. I imagine that they drink tea in china cups and eat sponge cake and, sitting with crossed legs, marvel at the memory of Abraham circumcising himself when he was ninety-nine years of age.

‘He had a steady hand right to the end,’ Isaac tells Ishmael, but Ishmael, who has not seen his father for many years, does not want Isaac to be the maven on all things Abraham. They have the same father and the same God but, if their perceptions of their father are at odds, how much more so, the perception of their God?

I am moved by a multi-season streamed drama, The Chosen, about the life of Jesus, directed by a Christian film-maker, Dallas Jenkins. The Jewishness of the Judean and Galilean environment is evident in every scene. There is a modern aspect to the expressions of emotion yet it adheres to the narrative of the gospels and conveys numinosity which Hollywood biblical epics so often aspired to and so rarely achieved.

Our lives are a mystery; we can hardly doubt this, but they are not all the same mystery. Each of us lives their own mystery, just as each of us dies our own death, alone. Slavoj Žižek joked (or simply said!) that the light at the end of the tunnel comes from another train on the track, heading straight towards us.

Notwithstanding, don’t we all hope to see the light?

‘This time it will be total extermination,’ a hubristic neonazi assures me on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Neonazis do not appear every day in my notifications and Triple C may even be a former acquaintance who used to send me pictures of gas cannisters and promises of another Shoah. I thought of the person as Colorado Adolf, due to his obsessive trolling of a Jewish politician in Colorado as well as his constant praise for Hitler who, as you see, appears in his profile picture.

Triple C has one follower, currently tweeting as Lady4Gazans. ‘Lady Justice’ as she calls herself in all her numerous Twitter accounts remembers always to say ‘Zionists’ when she calls for global extermination.

It is her habit to refer to the young Israeli women killed or taken hostage on 7 October as ‘whores’ and she often expresses the thought that ‘they should have stayed in Poland.’

The neonazi Triple C has no difficulty in referring to Jews as Jews. His Hitler fandom spurs him to repeat the aims of the Third Reich, which he insists will soon be realized.

Both Triple C and Lady Justice utilize the ‘Happy merchant’ meme, a Streicherish cartoon of a cunning, grasping Jew, persecuting the world yet fearful of retribution. Lady Justice admires Hamas but not the Nazis who she believes were Jews, offering the word Ashkenazi in support of this theory. They are a match for each other, but her longevity as an X account is likely to exceed his by far. When she tweets anachronistically that Zionists killed Jesus, besides being behind various historical disasters, one can infer that she means Jews but the word Zionists serves to keep her in business, as far as X adjudicators are concerned. Both are adept at alternating their accounts, with minimal changes in the name.

Triple C combines letters and numerals, often simply adding a number to create a new account from one which has already been penalized. I believe this was one of his accounts last year – at least, Triple O shared Triple C’s hatred of Jared Polis, the Governor of Colorado.

I know I am not the only person to report these accounts. Anything gruesomely offensive will be reported many times over, but it takes dedication to get a response from X and sometimes there are mixed messages.

There is a skill to staying on X. One has to be careful, in quoting something outrageous, not to have it attributed to oneself, as hate speech. A friend who referred to a country which hanged gay people was banned from Twitter for many months as the words [they] ‘hang gay people’ was taken to be an instance of homophobic hate.

I have been many years now on Twitter/X and must assume that I am often reported, for the offence of Zionism. Nevertheless, I have not undergone a suspension, although I was advised early on by Twitter not to use profane language.

What can one hope for from X Support? A little, I hope, but not very much. X remains an information exchange and locus of mutual support for people of good will, which is what I supposed it would be when I joined Twitter in 2009. ‘People of good will’ begs the question – who are these people? The X wars are founded on disagreement over precisely this question.

I would have supposed that a person who tweets to me that I am going to be gassed would be an open and shut case for X discipline but it ain’t necessarily so.

One day after I wrote the above:

@CCc149139 has been suspended.

@CCc1491398 has deleted all their posts and replies and is kept in reserve.

@ZZz1397870 is active and abusive.

@Lady4Gazans continues in the same vein, always remembering to say Zionists rather than Jews, however anachronistically.

And tonight, when the bodies of three more hostages have been retrieved from Hamas tunnels, Lady Justice rejoices in their death and wishes it on all Zionists, everywhere. Her tweet gets reported by many but we are ghosted by X, as is so often the case.

Now, in the dog days of August, Lady Justice and Colorado Adolf make new accounts, after days or weeks of silence, and they both take care to tag me, so that I know they are back in town.

A killer on the rampage in Sydney’s Bondi Westfield Shopping Mall murdered six people yesterday, and succumbed to the gunshot of a policewoman who fired from close range. This was naturally headline news in the UK, resulting in prompt speculation about the killer, whose name was withheld by the Australian authorities. There was some blurred footage of a thin, dark haired man walking swiftly through the mall, as well as an image of his lifeless body.

The Australian police said they did not believe the attack was terror related, but there was speculation on social media and from some, a presumption that this was an instance of Islamist terror. While the killer had not been identified, this could not be known and later, when he was named as Joel Cauchi with a history of mental illness, it was shown to be false.

Before the killer was named, I saw that the column on an X/Twitter page which shows trending topics, displayed the trend ‘Benjamin Cohen’. I assumed this was a participant in one of the TV reality shows which I never watch, but which account for certain social media trends which, as far as I am concerned, are an undiscovered country. Through various chat groups, I soon saw that ‘The Jew Benjamin Cohen’ was also a significant trend and that a person of this name was being identified as the Bondi mall killer. I did not find any authoritative source for this and saw that a photo of a dark-haired young man, Ben Cohen of Sydney, was being used to assert identity with the man who turned out to be Joel Cauchi.

A baby had been stabbed in the mall and afterwards received surgery and I saw this kind of tweet proliferating on X.

I saw that the identification of the man as Benjamin Cohen was being promoted by anti Israel or anti Jewish activist accounts and thought it was likely to be false but could not know for sure. Why did I care? Answer: the rumour was already being used to abuse Jewish people in general.

Late last night, Australian police divulged the name of the deceased attacker, Joel Cauchi. So far and, as far as I know, this has not been used to libel any particular demographic. The real Benjamin Cohen has made a brief and dignified video in which he regrets the rumour mongering of social media.

Those who yesterday were asserting his guilt have today moved on to Iran’s overnight attacks on Israel, with drones and missiles, 99% of which were intercepted before they could do harm. They are celebrating this as a great victory for Iran.

Social media puts a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes. It has the speed of a ballistic missile, powered remotely and intended to cause maximum damage. Intercepting a lie or an error is not always possible, but one must try.