Rhea Brooke ✡️🧡🐈‍⬛🐈‍⬛🐈

'To Jewish families, more than 1000 years of history is bleak evidence that they are right to fear they will once again be on their own.' @TrevorPTweets reflects on antisemitism in Britain, after a swathe of violence against the Jewish community trib.al/S3icMYg

On Carnaby Street last night, a kid on a bike cycled up, saw it was me, looked friendly at first then offered up his favourite “lyric”: “Heil Hitler.” I wasn’t sure whether to share this. I hadn’t experienced that personally before. The most striking thing: I wasn’t shocked. No threat. No anger. Not a victim. Just: what has he been taught Hatred is learned. We are not defined by it. We answer it by what we teach.

Yet another ill-informed comment. The facts are worth checking before posting. The Metropolitan Police received the first request to organise a national march against Israel at 12:50pm on October 7 2023. Hamas militants were still actively killing and kidnapping civilians at that moment. (Nasfatmanchester) The Nova music festival massacre was still ongoing. Families were still being dragged from their homes. Israel had not yet declared a state of war. It had not yet conducted a single retaliatory strike. And the placards were already being organised. That is not a reaction to Israeli actions. The infrastructure of protest, the slogans, the placards, the organisational networks, was ready and deployed before Israel had done anything. The antisemitism that followed did not track Israeli military conduct. It was waiting for a trigger and October 7th provided one. On Netanyahu speaking on behalf of Jews worldwide. He does not and most diaspora Jewish organisations have said so clearly. But that observation cuts both ways. If Netanyahu does not speak for all Jews then Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the IRGC and Hezbollah do not speak for all Palestinians or all Muslims. The logic that holds Israel collectively responsible for every action of its government while exempting every other group from the same standard is not consistency. It is a double standard applied to one people alone. The rise in antisemitism in Britain has one cause. Not Israeli military action. The ideological infrastructure that was ready to march before the bodies were counted. "[T]he first request to organise a national march against Israel [was] at 12:50pm on October 7 2023. Hamas militants were still actively killing and kidnapping civilians at that moment."

@LiquidFaerie Am sorry to hear this is what has been having. Sending <<<virtual hugs>>>

I’ve had to delete most of my personal photos, island life, garden, house, anything that shows my location. All personal pics of home. Found that someone has archived my account, so had to get security services involved. Emails sent to wayback archive. Sorry folks, can’t share island life, because apparently jelous nasty people are doing nasty things. Here’s a sweet cat I met yesterday instead.

'This is not about Netanyahu or Israel, this is Jew hatred.' Andrew Marr discusses the truly 'scary' thing about the Golders Green stabbings.

I’m very sad to inform you of the passing of Stanley Fisher earlier this afternoon.

🚨 SHOCKING: Concert for terror victims canceled after refusal to perform with Jews A Sydney benefit concert for victims of the Bondi terror attack has been canceled after members of the Australian Hellenic Choir voted against sharing the stage with the Sydney Jewish Choral Society. Read that again. Please tell me what is happening to Australia?

I am a British Jew. I was raised there. I voted. I paid my tax. I am now leaving because the U.K. is not safe for Jews. Let that sink in.

If you don’t think these fanatics are escalating to another Dunblane, you’re not paying enough attention

I’m a diaspora, secular Jew, British born/raised. Jewish mother, non-Jewish father. No religious background at all. I’m telling you - this is a frightening and heartbreaking time for Jews, not just in UK. I’m quite a brave person, and would speak up for you. Speak up for us.

People keep asking why I changed. I didn’t. I still believe in liberal values, equality, democracy, LGBT rights, and human rights. What changed was a Democratic Party that made room for antisemitism, excused Islamism, and treated Jews like they needed to pass a moral purity test just to be seen as human. I didn’t leave the party—The party left me.

Remember when @tyleraloevera and his sycophants tried to do a hit job on @Hatzola and the American Hasidic community? Guess who is saving New Yorkers who collapse on the floor long before 911 show up? @Hatzola and Jewish Hasidic volunteers.

Two of my close friends are moving because of Jew-hatred. This is what it has come to for Jews in Toronto. These two women lead very different lives but have both been deeply affected by the hate in Toronto. For their privacy and safety, I can't mention their names or where they are moving. They are both strong leaders in my community. It is time for serious change.

April 1941. Sarajevo trembled under Nazi boots. Soldiers kicked in doors, dragging Jews into the street. Screams echoed between houses. Zejneba Hardaga watched them seize her elderly Jewish neighbor. The man’s desperate cries tore through her. Next door lived her dear friends—the Kavilio family. She knew they were next. Without hesitation, Zejneba ran and pounded on their door. “They’re coming,” she whispered urgently when Yosef Kavilio opened it. “Come to my house. Now. All of you.” Yosef’s eyes widened. “If they find us with you, they’ll kill you too.” Zejneba’s voice was steel and fire: “Then don’t let them find you. Move.” Yosef, his wife Rifka, and their young daughter Rivka slipped across the threshold into the Hardaga home. Mustafa Hardaga was waiting. “Upstairs. The back room. Not a sound.” For three terrifying years, the Hardagas hid the Kavilios behind a false wall they built with their own hands. They shared every precious scrap of food. When Nazis banged on the door—three separate times—Zejneba greeted them with a calm smile and offered tea. “Jews? No, sir. Only my family.” The soldiers searched closets, basements, every corner. Their heavy boots marched inches from the hidden room where the Kavilios pressed against each other, barely breathing, hearts hammering. One whisper, one cough, and everyone would die. Neighbors asked about strange noises. “Just mice,” Zejneba lied. When soldiers came at night, Mustafa spoke loudly at the door, buying precious seconds for the family to vanish deeper into the shadows. They risked everything—every single day—for three long years. In 1944, the Nazis fled. The Kavilios emerged, blinking into the light, alive. Yosef embraced Zejneba, tears streaming: “You saved us.” “You are our family,” she replied softly. “That’s what families do.” The Kavilios eventually left for Israel and built new lives. The Hardagas stayed in Sarajevo, never boasting about their courage. They simply returned to quiet, ordinary days. Forty years passed. Then, in 1992, war ripped Bosnia apart. Sarajevo was under siege—bombs, starvation, snipers. Zejneba, now 73 and widowed, huddled with her children and grandchildren as death closed in. The phone rang. An international line from Israel. “Mrs. Hardaga? It’s Rivka… the little girl you hid.” Zejneba’s voice broke. “My little Rivka?” “I’m coming for you,” Rivka said. “You saved us fifty years ago. Now we’re saving you.” The Kavilio family moved mountains. They contacted Israeli officials, diplomats, the military. “This Muslim family hid us during the Holocaust. They are Righteous Among the Nations. We must bring them home.” Israel answered. A daring convoy braved the war zone, extracted Zejneba, her daughter, and grandchildren, and flew them to safety in Jerusalem—the very land where the family they had saved now thrived. At the airport, two elderly women—Zejneba and Rivka—fell into each other’s arms, sobbing. Different faiths. Different lives. One unbreakable bond forged in terror and repaid in love. In 1985, Yad Vashem had already honored Zejneba and Mustafa as Righteous Among the Nations—the first Muslim family ever to receive this distinction. Zejneba had shrugged it off: “We only did what our faith taught us—to protect our neighbors.” But the deeper truth was written in their lives: kindness knows no border, no religion, no time. Zejneba died in Jerusalem in 2003, buried near the people she had saved. At her funeral, Rivka spoke through tears: “She risked everything for us… and fifty years later, we were there for her. That is how it should be.” A single tree stands at Yad Vashem bearing the Hardaga name—a living witness that one Muslim family chose humanity when the world chose hate, and that the family they saved chose humanity right back. Full circle. Perfect. Eternal.

Being a Jewish student in Britain today means living a kind of double life. I go to lectures. I take exams. I navigate seminar rooms and library queues like any other student. But unlike most of my peers, I do all of this while calculating: am I in danger because my Star of David or Kippah is visible? Will speaking up in this discussion make me a target? Is today a day there'll be a demonstration outside? Going to university is supposed to be a student’s main job. Right now, for many British Jewish students, it feels like a side gig - squeezed in around the exhausting, full-time business of simply being Jewish on campus. My great-grandmother was Lily Ebert. She arrived at Auschwitz at just 20 years old. In a single day, her mother, her younger sister, her youngest brother, and over 100 members of her extended family were murdered - gassed and cremated, their ashes scattered with no grave, no place to mourn. That was July 1944. She survived. She came to Britain to rebuild her life, and she did more than survive; she thrived. She built a large and loving family: ten grandchildren, 38 great-grandchildren and even a great-great-grandchild in her final year. She believed Britain would be a safe haven. A place where her family could live openly, proudly, as Jews. A country that had learned the lessons of history. For decades, she travelled across the UK speaking in schools, and in her later years she used social media to warn young people that the Holocaust did not begin with violence. It began with words. With small actions. With a shifting atmosphere. In her final months before she passed away in October 2024, my great-grandmother was horrified. Horrified to see the country she had trusted - after the greatest crime in history beginning to fail its most basic duty. She was right to be horrified. And this week, her warnings feel more urgent than ever. British counter terror police are today investigating a wave of arson attacks on Jewish sites across London - four in as many days - probing whether Iranian proxies are responsible. Two synagogues and a Jewish charity torched. And an Iran-linked group threatening to fly drones carrying hazardous substances at the Israeli embassy. This all coming only a few weeks after Jewish ambulances were set alight in Golders Green – one of the most Jewish areas in the UK. Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has warned that "a sustained campaign of violence and intimidation against the Jewish community of the UK is gathering momentum." Prime Minister Keir Starmer has expressed surprise and called the attacks "abhorrent." But how can he possibly claim surprise? If you tolerate chants of "Globalise the Intifada," don't be surprised when the Intifada is globalised. And throwing money at the problem simply is not a solution. You cannot pay your way out of an Intifada. And we cannot continue to besiege ourselves with security – living behind ever thicker doors and higher fences with barbed wire. This violence doesn't begin with arson. It begins with ideology - and until Britain starts tackling the ideology, no amount of policing or security will stop the flames. That means banning the IRGC, who may well be behind this very campaign of attacks. And it means confronting the Muslim Brotherhood, who are radicalising young people across this country - on campuses, in mosques, in community centres - and may well be recruiting the people lighting these fires. And it starts closer to home too, on campuses like mine, where week after week, masked demonstrators flood university spaces, chanting slogans that go far beyond political protest into something far darker. Jewish students are singled out in lectures, booed, shouted down, accused of being "baby killers" simply for being Jewish. Many now tuck away their Star of David necklaces and think twice before speaking up in seminars. A Jewish professor had his lecture stormed by masked protesters who screamed abuse, branded him a "war criminal," and - according to witnesses - threatened to behead him. His only crime was being Jewish and refusing to be intimidated. And it is not just coming from the students. Too often, academics themselves are part of the problem. On my own campus, the medieval blood libel - the conspiracy that Jews use non-Jewish blood in their rituals - was repeated to students as fact, at one of supposedly the best universities in the UK. Beyond campus: an NHS doctor posts "gas the Jews" online and faces no meaningful consequence. Jewish artists are quietly dropped from programmes. Jewish events are cancelled without explanation. Protests where chants cross into open hatred are allowed to continue unchecked by police. Individually, each moment can be explained away. Together, they reveal a slow and steady normalisation of dangerous jew-hatred. In the past year alone, the UK recorded the highest number of violent antisemitic assaults per capita anywhere in the diaspora - roughly one for every 2,500 Jews. Jewish schools have warned students not to wear visible symbols on their commute. Jewish teenagers have been assaulted on public transport. Every Jewish institution now sits behind security barriers, guards, and locked doors. We are a community under siege. My great-grandmother spent her life warning that these things begin not with violence, but with silence. With the small capitulations. With institutions that hedge, qualify, and reach for the language of "context" and "balance" - as if balance is possible when a minority is being targeted. Britain has a choice. It can honour the lessons it claims to have learned. Or it can allow that silence to continue - and discover, too late, where silence leads. My great-grandmother, Lily Ebert, survived Auschwitz. It is shameful that she lived to see Britain begin to echo the very hatred she had survived - and thought she had left behind in Eastern Europe.

The 17-year-old boy who on Saturday broke a London synagogue’s window and then lit and threw a fire bomb through it, has pleaded guilty to arson. District Judge Nina Tempia freed the synagogue arsonist on bail, allowing him to walk free from the court. Why? “I didn’t know it was a synagogue… I genuinely thought it was an empty building” the boy claimed, in a prepared statement read to the court. Look at the photo – architectural menorah relief sculpture, Hebrew writing – and ask yourself if that’s likely to be true. Besides, which buildings is it OK to throw firebombs through the window of?

I am still shaking from a soul-crushing Uber ride today in Dublin. It started with "Where are you from?" I said Iran, and the driver's face lit up as he thought he'd found a partner in his hate. He looked at me and said, "It must be crushing what the f***ing Israelis are doing to your country." ​The moment I pushed back, the moment I told him the truth, that I support Israel and want to see the regime in Iran fall, he erupted in pure rage. ​He began screaming about his uncle's high rank in the IRA, glorifying terror as a "success story" to justify the total erasure of Israel. To be trapped in a car with that level of brainwashed vitriol, being shamed and attacked for defending the Jewish people, is a burden I can't describe. ​Being Iranian is so incredibly taxing. You spend your life fighting the regime that destroyed your home, only to have strangers weaponise your identity to justify their antisemitism. To my Jewish friends: I see the hate you face. I will never stop standing with you, no matter how much it costs. 🇮🇱🦁☀️

This is a clip from the BBC’s Panorama documentary “Why British Jews Are Afraid,” which aired on BBC One. But two glaring issues stood out. First, the BBC repeatedly draws a distinction between antisemitism and anti-Zionism, yet never actually explains what Zionism is. That’s a serious omission. Zionism is simply the belief in the Jewish right to self-determination in their historic homeland. Without that basic definition, audiences are left without the tools to understand what “anti-Zionism” means in practice – or why, all too often, it functions as a modern vehicle for hostility toward Jews. This matters because many of the protests and narratives we’ve seen in London since October 7 have been framed under the banner of “anti-Zionism.” If a public broadcaster is going to platform that distinction, it has a responsibility to properly explain it. Second, the program highlights the role of social media in fuelling anti-Jewish hate – an important and welcome point. There is clear evidence linking spikes in online incitement to real-world attacks on Jewish communities. But the documentary stops short of examining a more uncomfortable truth: mainstream media coverage also shapes the climate in which this hostility grows. Persistent inaccuracies, lack of context, and disproportionate framing around Israel contribute to an environment where extreme narratives can take hold more easily. Social media may accelerate the spread, but it doesn’t operate in a vacuum. Panorama has finally told this story – but it feels like too little, too late. Antisemitic incidents in the UK had already hit record levels by the first half of 2024, with the Community Security Trust recording 1,978 cases – a 105% increase on the previous year. In London alone, over 1,000 incidents were reported, alongside a 465% surge on university campuses. The fear this documentary captures didn’t suddenly appear. The question is why it took so long to fully confront it.

I’m not crying, you’re crying. Romi Gonen, who was held hostage by Hamas for 471 days, just interviewed her 90-year-old grandmother on her podcast. They represent Israel’s founding generation and her future - and both are beautiful heroes.