Reasons to be Cheerful

Writing and talking about antisemitism can be a depressing business. Whenever I give a talk about all the hate crimes, the terrorism, the levels of conspiracy theory belief across society and the mainstreaming of anti-Jewish stereotypes, I watch my audience’s faces getting longer and longer as the event goes on until, by the end, everyone is left thoroughly miserable.

It’s an unavoidable feature of the subject, but I don’t like to ruin people’s days, and as a natural optimist I always try to end my talks on an uplifting note. In that spirit, as we approach the end of 2024 - which has been an awful year for antisemitism, make no mistake - I thought I would provide some reasons for hope and positivity as we enter the new year. This is not to say that all our problems have disappeared - far from it, unfortunately - but is rather an attempt to identify some shafts of light within the gloom.

This is also a way of thanking you all for reading, subscribing, and sharing my posts throughout the year. I’ve had some lovely messages from readers, and some fascinating discussions in the comments. I wish all of you a happy festive season, whichever holiday you are celebrating (or not), and hopefully we will have some genuine reasons for cheer in the future.

Anyway, here are five reasons to be optimistic for 2025:

The protests have diminished

One of the main reasons for Jewish anxiety in Britain in 2024 has been the large, disruptive anti-Israel protests, on which you can always find antisemitism, extremism, support for terrorism and calls for Israel to disappear. I’ve written about them several times before, and when British Jews think of those protests, they tend to have in mind the massive, weekly marches - 100,000 people or more - that characterised the early weeks after October 7. That memory is like a permanent scar, but it is no longer the reality. Last weekend there were two anti-Israel protests in London: a gathering in Trafalgar Square that around 500 people attended, and a three-pronged car convoy, with separate starting points in South, East and West London, that featured a grand total of five cars and passed by unnoticed. The university encampments have largely disappeared as well. The set-piece marches through central London now happen monthly (at most) rather than weekly, and while the organisers ludicrously claim that over 100,000 people still turn up to them, in reality it is usually closer to 5,000.

These demonstrations remain a problem: the reason they are smaller is because the casual protestors have lost interest, leaving only the hardcore still marching, which makes the protests as a whole more extreme than before. The way they repeatedly try to march past central London synagogues seems deliberately antagonistic and ought to be addressed properly by the authorities. But still: for a Jewish community that for large parts of 2024 was avoiding central London at the weekend, the massive reduction in the size and frequency of these demonstrations is very welcome.

Police and government have improved their response

As those protests have got smaller, so the police have got better at dealing with them. The two may well be related: it is easier to identify people marching with antisemitic banners in a smaller crowd, and more practical to haul them out and arrest them. The police are now regularly arresting people for marching with swastikas on their placards (usually alongside the Star of David), which never used to happen before, as well as for other antisemitic slogans and images. This week, for the first time since October 7, someone was imprisoned for expressing support for Hamas online. It may feel like baby steps, and there is still a big problem with how smaller protests in London suburbs and other places are policed - just look at the failure to intervene outside JW3 in October. But when it comes to the central London marches, the policing has improved considerably.

Then there are all the things that haven’t happened at all. When the anti-Israel marches in central London end, everyone is forced to properly disperse and go home: the days of smaller mobs breaking off to charge around the city threatening Jewish people, as has happened in previous years, have not been repeated this time around. The antisemitic car convoys that characterised the protests during the previous Israel/Gaza war in May 2021 haven’t materialised either, and the police will tell you it is because they have intervened to ensure that they wouldn’t. Whether this is true or not is almost beside the point: what matters is that the police recognised that a repeat of those convoys would be hugely damaging and are happy to take credit for their absence.

The same goes for the government. This isn’t a political point, nor is it due to the change in government in the UK following this year’s General Election. There are large swathes of society where Jewish people are feeling squeezed out as a result of the extremist politics and hostile sentiment stirred up over the past 14 months. This is the truly damaging legacy for British Jews of October 7 and the subsequent war, and this week two different government ministers made time to hear about people’s direct experiences of antisemitism in the NHS and the arts. Whether this translates into action is yet to be seen, and this is how it should be judged: but ministers’ doors are open and they are listening. Let’s see what they do with it next year.

Jewish community resilience

One of the most striking things about the past year has been how much the Jewish community has come together, when the relentless pressure and scrutiny could easily have forced it to crumble. All those Jewish WhatsApp groups that have sprung up in offices and professional sectors across society may have originated because people were withdrawing inwards, hiding within their own identities and seeking a safe space because they do not feel they can safely be fully, openly Jewish. But the positive consequence has been that Jewish people are finding each other, perhaps for the first time, and building networks of support and reassurance. This is happening in workplaces, in universities and schools, and in a myriad of other ways.

Amongst all the anxiety about the present and fear for the future, British Jews have found an inner resilience, quiet and understated (of course), but definitely there. There’s an often unspoken pride within the community in its history of standing up to antisemitism in past decades, whether that was at the Battle of Cable Street, the 43 Group and 62 Group, or the Soviet Jewry Campaign and the campaigns against Corbynite antisemitism. I see the same spirit now: CST has around 700 new volunteer security officers who have signed up and been trained since October 7 (you can join them here, it’s well worth doing), and they are increasingly young, highly motivated, and proud of their Jewishness. We need them, because the Jewish community is more active than ever despite the increased antisemitism. There are something like 130 public Chanukiah lighting events planned in Greater London and the South East during Chanukah this year. This is not a community that is hiding away.

I’ve even heard about new Jewish communities springing up in parts of the country that do not have a synagogue for miles around, because of the number of people reconnecting with their Jewish roots as a result of the antisemitism of the past year. I’ve never been a fan of the theory that the Jewish people ‘need’ antisemitism to keep going - I think we can get on much better without it, thank you - but it’s a fairly common phenomenon that when people feel their identity is under attack they often engage with it more deeply, even - perhaps especially - if it is a part of their identity they never gave much thought to before.

I also think that there has been an impressive and welcome unity amongst the main organisations in the Jewish community, and in wider society, who fight antisemitism. You would be forgiven for thinking that I would say that, given that I work for CST. However, it is genuinely my experience and it shouldn’t be taken for granted. People are more likely to fall out when the stakes are high and the pressure is even higher, but if anything the spirit of cooperation across different communal organisations has strengthened over the past year, including both long-established national bodies and newer grassroots initiatives. This is the case even amongst people on different sides of national politics, which does not happen in every Jewish community around the world. There will always be some who prefer to plough their own furrow - two Jews, three opinions is almost an organising principle for some in the Jewish community - but on the whole the community has hung together well. Long may that continue.

Iran weakened

I don’t normally write much about Israel or the wider politics of the Middle East on this Substack, but it is worth acknowledging, amongst all the devastation and disruption in the region, that Iran’s dream of encircling Israel in an Axis of Resistance is in tatters. This plan envisaged a military and political network of connections stretching from Iran, through Iraq and Syria, to Hizbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and further afield to the Houthis in Yemen. Israel has been attacked from all of those countries since 7 October 2023, and one outcome of the war has been to expose how flimsy Iran’s dream actually was. With Hizbollah dismembered by Israel’s ruthless assault, Gaza in ruins, and Assad deposed, the strategy that King Abdullah of Jordan dubbed a “Shia Crescent” is lost.

Iran is also a determined disseminator of antisemitism. Press TV’s Palestine Declassified show is regularly the most antisemitic media content of any given week and Ayatollah Khamenei is a dedicated, Protocols of the Elders of Zion-style conspiracy theorist. Hizbollah, too, plays its role, having been amongst the first to push the idea that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were an Israeli or Jewish plot. As for the Houthis, their slogan reads “God is great. Death to America. Death to Israel. God curse the Jews. Victory for Islam”, which is about as unequivocal as it gets.

How things will play out from here is impossible to predict, other than the likelihood of more instability. But if the greatest strategic threat to Israel had been Iran and its allies and proxies, and given the amount of antisemitism that is taken as normal in their ideology and global outlook, then any weakening of this Axis’s power and influence must be welcome indeed.

Bring Them Home

This is more of a wish than a prediction, but in many ways it is the most important of all: the return of all of the hostages, as part of a meaningful ceasefire deal. That would be the greatest Chanukah, Christmas and New Year gift of all.