The silence was deafening. From the distress of bullied children to the cold shoulder of colleagues or the parade of friends who turned out not to be friends at all, testimonies from the Jewish community in Britain reveal the same bleak experiences.
It wasn’t just the world that changed the day Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 last year. The world of British Jews did too, as mutating strains of anti-Semitism worked their way beyond smashed shopfronts and violent protests and into the domestic and everyday. And each witness uses the same expression. The silence was deafening.
“My whole life has changed since October 7,” says Barbara Smith*, 49, from London. “I’ve lost half my friends. I’ve lost my best friend. I don’t know how the situation will ever right itself.”
