A few weeks ago in Tel Aviv, on my first days there – before what has now become an extended stay due to the war – I stopped at a small place to grab lunch. I began my order in hesitant Hebrew, thinking I was doing well, but after a moment that exposed my linguistic limitations, the man behind the counter switched to English to ask where I was from. “London,” I said. “Ah,” he replied with a chuckle. “Londonistan.”
With the easy certainty of someone stating a fact, he then told me that London is no longer safe for Jews. I brushed it off at the time. It feels harder to dismiss now.
In the early hours of Monday morning, in Golders Green – long a centre of Jewish life in London – masked attackers set fire to four ambulances belonging to Hatzola, a volunteer emergency service. Oxygen tanks exploded as the vehicles burned, forcing residents from their homes. Police are treating it as an antisemitic hate crime.
These were not symbolic targets. They were ambulances – vehicles used to save lives, staffed by volunteers who respond to medical emergencies day and night. For many in the community, the message was unmistakable: even those who exist solely to help others are no longer off-limits.
Thousands of miles away, in the West Bank, Palestinian communities are facing a different but equally intolerable reality. In recent days, Israeli settlers have reportedly torched homes and cars, attacking villages and forcing families to flee. Lives are being upended not in the abstract, but in the most immediate way – through the loss of safety, shelter and dignity.
These are not the same contexts. But they are connected by something dangerous and corrosive: the steady erosion of our willingness to see one another as human beings.
War does not stay contained within borders. It travels through images, narratives and identities, reshaping how people see each other, even far from the violence itself. In that distortion, hatred finds space to grow.
Responsibility does not sit only with those directly involved in the conflict. It sits with all of us watching, reacting and choosing how to respond.
Those whose instinct is to support Israel need to challenge the violence being carried out against Palestinian communities in the West Bank. Silence in the face of that reality is not neutrality; it is complicity.
Those who align themselves with the Palestinian cause must confront the growing number of attacks on Jewish people, communities and property in London, across Europe and in North America. Minimising or ignoring that threat does not advance justice; it undermines it.
If our solidarity depends on whose suffering we are willing to overlook, it is not solidarity at all.
Yesterday, while in Tel Aviv, unable to return to London, my colleagues at the New Israel Fund brought together more than 120 people for the second annual Vivian Silver awards. Established by the family of Vivian Silver – a lifelong peace activist murdered by Hamas on 7 October – each year the awards honour one Jewish and one Palestinian woman who refuse to give in to hatred and division.
This year’s recipients embody that refusal. Prof Yofi Tirosh, a leading Israeli legal scholar and activist, has spent years challenging discrimination and defending democratic values within Israeli society. Attorney Quamar Mishirqi-Assad, a Palestinian-Israeli human rights lawyer, has dedicated her work to protecting Palestinian communities from displacement, violence and the loss of their land.
Hosted by CNN host Christiane Amanpour, the event offered a rare kind of conversation – one that did not deny pain but refused to let it harden into something more destructive.
At one point, Sharone Lifschitz, whose mother was taken hostage and father was murdered by Hamas, said simply that she does not hate. Amanpour turned to Dr Jasr Kawkby, a consultant paediatrician based in London and originally from Gaza and asked if he could say the same. His response was as honest as it was heartbreaking. He said he could not claim to be free of hate. But he could say that he refuses to hold on to it. That is the challenge in front of all of us.
Hate, fear and the desire for revenge are natural responses to trauma and violence. They are understandable. But they are also combustible. We may not be able to eliminate these feelings. But we can choose what we do with them. We can refuse to let them shape how we see and treat others.
When we allow those emotions to take hold – when we amplify them, justify them or ignore where they can lead – we do more than respond to conflict. We import it into our communities in Britain.
The war in Israel and Palestine is already devastating enough. It does not need to be brought on to the streets of London, Manchester or anywhere else.
That man at the Tel Aviv lunch counter spoke to me with certainty about a city he does not live in, shaped by a story of fear that had travelled far. We face a choice about whether we do the same.
We cannot control everything that happens in this region. But we can decide whether we contribute to the spread of its worst instincts – and whether we resist them.
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