Opinion: As the candles fade, we must keep the light on
Both joy and sombre reflection at 10 Downing Street's annual Chanukah celebration, writes Benjamin Bell for Jewish News
While antisemitism is alive and unwell in the UK, mercifully it stops at the door to Number 10.
The short walk from Charing Cross tube to the heart of power takes in torn posters of kidnapped Jews and intimidating graffiti, but hate had no invitation to the annual Chanukah event in Downing Street.
It was a privilege to again join an occasion which in prior years was all celebration, but this week mixed joy with sombre reflection.
In the words of host Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron, 7 October renders 2023’s festival of light unique in modern times. It is about memorial, vigil and defiance.
Memorial to those murdered, vigil for those kidnapped, defiance of us all.
The same gathering in 2013 didn’t just feel different. The fate of one soul in particular made it truly so. A decade ago 10-year old Londoner Nathanel Young was a fellow attendee welcomed by the then Prime Minister. This time, Cameron tearfully noted the 20-year old’s absence, killed by Hamas.
Amid the tears and the fears of the community, there shone resilience. Chanukah song Ma’oz Tzur seldom echoed with such heart and candles burned with such poignance.
In the haunting, hopeful words of music festival and captivity survivor Mia Schem, ‘We will dance again’. Now British Jews were at least swaying.
It was a behind-closed-doors mirror of a larger public display of defiance a fortnight earlier. The National March Against Antisemitism was special not just for its size and plurality but for representing resistance of the right kind. Standing up proud, walking in unity, showing no hate.
Then here we Jews were. Behind the fabled black door with its beautiful Christmas tree and wreath – celebrating a non-Christian holiday.
Integration in action. A longing for belonging.
From first learning about the Holocaust as a kid, right up to 6 October, I wondered how it could have happened. 30 years of bewilderment that fellow citizens could stand aside – and even participate – in the delegitimisation and extermination of a race.
That changed just hours after Hamas had broken a ceasefire to launch their murder spree.
The same evening that the world’s tiny Jewish community reeled in shock while Israelis continued to battle genocidal terrorists on their own streets, on European streets parties celebrated the mass execution, rape and abduction of Jews. Despite suffering our worst loss of life in a day since 1945, we were barely afforded a night of untrammelled sympathy or period of graceful mourning.
Jews are an ethnic minority with evidenced roots dating back thousands of years in the land of Israel. Millennia later, rejected by the world, and surviving World War Two as a fraction of our 1939 number, we were granted a home there by the UN as refuge in the wake of Europe’s death camps, expulsion from Arab nations, and no end to persecution globally. Social media may try to deny history, but none of that is disputable.
Tackling the fevered debate in the years following 1947 won’t be attempted here. Rather the point is to spell out a context in which people need to wake up and smell the hummus.
Where are we meant to go if the notion of a Jewish Israel is rejected at the same time as the welcome mat for the diaspora is pulled from every other country? Maybe don’t answer that. Indulgence of hateful rhetoric from the mouths of Hamas supporters and on the placards of terror apologists says it all.
As does the now official antisemitic position of Harvard University; the vicious attack on a young, ‘visibly Jewish’ British woman; a shooting at a New York synagogue; a Polish MP extinguishing the Chanukah candles in parliament; my colleague’s Helsinki home vandalised for the Star of David on display. Each an incident just this week – and far from an exhaustive list. I dread what the next seven days might bring.
Uncomfortable as they might be to read, these are facts in an increasingly post-fact world. I am articulating the practical consequences of what haters demand. Despite the feeble claims of our public institutions, ‘From the River to the Sea’, ‘Globalise the Intifada’ and ‘Jihad’ are not nuanced pronouncements. They are a deadly screech to Jewish ears.
Last night was balm by contrast. As the Foreign Secretary noted, ‘Britain without its Jews is not Britain’. The Jewish contribution to national life – past, present and future – needs recognising and defending if nations want to keep its benefits.
Jews throughout history have met darkness and death, only to counter with light and life.
Today’s path of darkness and death is paved by the Iranian regime and trodden by Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis.
We prefer Humour, Hard work and Household. That is the Jews choosing light and life.
The journey to a peaceful, prosperous tomorrow for those on all sides who want that will be painful, complex and necessary. And the Jews are here for it.
Sticks and stones may break our bones but words will never hurt us? If only. But chant and spray what you want. Our chosen road, lit by life, won’t change.
Chanukah candles or not, we must keep the light on. Undermined but undimmed, the Jewish spirit knows no other way.
- Benjamin Bell is a public policy and communications leader based in London
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