Soon after the horrific October 7 Hamas attacks on southern Israel exactly three years ago, I visited Kibbutz Kfar Aza, from where 30-year-old British hostage Emily Damari was snatched, and the site of the nearby Nova music festival.
asserted
Damari → visit → festival
Memories of the blood-stained walls of the modest homes of Israeli families dragged from their safe rooms and beds and ruthlessly mutilated, raped, murdered and captured still keep me awake at night.
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Memories → stain → night
The makeshift memorials to beautiful young people slaughtered like cattle at Nova, while they danced the night away at the joyous festival, still haunt me.
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they → slaughter → me
As we travelled into the area, we passed the burnt-out cars and the bus shelter where families, including young children, had sought refuge and were mowed down as they awaited rescue.
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they → travel → rescue
The senseless killing, the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust, saw 1,200 people murdered.
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people → see → Holocaust
In a country used to war, and which became the ultimate refuge to families who survived the Nazis, almost everyone knows someone among the dead – it's a small place of close familial ties.
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it → use → ties
The drama and images of those events are indelibly tattooed on their hearts.
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drama → tattoo → hearts
Even the United Nations, whose New York headquarters is so often the scene of anti-Israel propaganda, found graphic evidence of rape, gang rape, and sexualised torture inflicted on hostages taken on October 7 by Hamas.
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headquarters → find → Hamas
Yet, in a gross inversion of this reality, Hamas and violent Iranian-backed Palestinian factions have since become heroes of the Left.
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Hamas → back → Left
Across the globe, Jews have been targeted from Bondi Beach to Andy Burnham's Manchester.
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Jews → target → Manchester
Noa Argamani reacts as she and her partner Avinatan Or, not pictured, are seized by members of the Hamas militant group on October 7, 2023
Emily Damari, a British-Israeli former hostage held by Hamas for over 15 months following her abduction during the October 7 Hamas attacks
Here in Britain, the Jewish community has never felt more under siege.
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community → react → siege
The resolution passed at the Green Party conference, that 'Zionism is
Racism' – this from a party with MPs at Westminster – is nothing short of an abomination which flies in the face of 78 years of Israeli independence.
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which → pass → independence
It shows a profound ignorance of Britain's long involvement with the self-determination of the Jewish nation, which dates back to the Balfour Declaration of 1917.
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which → show → 1917
Where on earth do the Greens think that Israel's mosaic population of 10.3million people, including more than 2.1million voting Palestinian Israeli citizens, are going to disappear to?
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population → think → citizens
The idea that Israel is a racist state, when up to 50 per cent of the physicians, pharmacists, nurses and care workers working in the health system are Arabs is errant rubbish.
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cent → work → system
Yet, our socialist Prime Minister Andy Burnham has decided – for shameless political advantage – that sanctions on Israel would reinforce his position among the party faithful and shore up the Muslim vote, and so he implemented them.
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he → decide → them
Whenever I spend time among my fellow members of the Jewish community now, there is an awareness of the fragility of existence here.
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I → spend → existence
The contribution of our beleaguered community to British life on the High Street, in the art galleries, the cathedrals of theatre, music, the media and commerce have become unseen.
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contribution → become → theatre
It must have felt like this in the early days of Nazism in the 1930s.
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It → feel → 1930s
Ed Miliband's charges of 'ethnic cleansing' by Israel on the West Bank and 'horrific' policies in Gaza have unleashed unmitigated fury in Britain's Jewish community.
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charges → unleash → community
My Aunt Sussie, who recently died at the age of 98, regarded the UK as the most tolerant nation on Earth.
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who → die → Earth
She and her brother, my late father Michael, would have been devastated that Britain has become such a hostile environment for Jews and Israel.
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Britain → devastate → Jews
My gentle late aunt's story could not be more important in a world where Jew hatred is flourishing, a world where the butchers and torturers of Hamas praise the British Foreign Secretary's use of the words 'ethnic cleansing' to describe Israel's actions in Gaza.
uncertain
butchers → flourish → Gaza
She was among a generation of Holocaust survivors and refugees who regarded the British people with reverence for their bravery and stoicism in the Second World War in the face of the Blitz and seemingly insurmountable obstacles of Hitler's mighty armies.
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who → regard → armies
But those words 'never again', engraved on the hearts of survivors and embraced by those exposed to the horrors of the death camps, are being gravely erased in this country.
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words → engrave → country
Left to right are Sheindy, Rosie and Sussie who endured Nazi camps before reaching Britain
The main gate of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz I, Poland, which was liberated by the Russians, January 1945
Auntie Sussie was the last Brummer sibling of a family torn asunder by the Nazi horror of the Holocaust.
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was → endure → Holocaust
She was among a shrinking band of survivors in Britain able to offer first-hand testimony of the venal brutality and deprivation of the camps.
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She → shrink → camps
Margrit, Sussie to her family, was the youngest of nine children born to my paternal grandparents Farni and Sandor in the rural town of Tiszaujlak (Vylok) on the Hungarian border with Ukraine.
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Margrit → bear → Ukraine
The Second World War was to have a shattering impact on all their lives.
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War → have → lives
Those of them who survived Hitler, the march of fascism, murder, mayhem, the upheaval of war and the violent anti-Semitism of the age, ended up scattered across the globe.
My father escaped the Holocaust.
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father → survive → Holocaust
In 1938, as the grip of Nazi Germany tightened across Europe, he decided to come to Britain and join his elder brother Philip, who was by then a rabbi in Merseyside.
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who → tighten → Merseyside
Shortly before he left, he was beaten up by fascist thugs at the local railway station.
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he → leave → station
After making his way through a Europe already at war he eventually arrived at London's Victoria station – and, by accident, found himself in the women's waiting room.
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he → make → room
There, he was befriended by an 'elegant English lady' who helped him across the city and put him on a train for Liverpool.
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who → befriend → Liverpool
From that single act, he developed a lifelong admiration for British kindness.
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he → develop → kindness
Back in Hungary, as war spread across Europe, my grandfather Sandor's dairy business at least ensured there was food on the table and a small chicken for the Friday night eve-of-Sabbath meal.
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business → spread → meal
An orthodox Jew with a distinctive red beard, he was a gregarious figure who held pre-war drink-and-card evenings at the family home.
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who → hold → home
The younger girls in the family worked with the dairy cattle.
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girls → work → cattle
Sussie was tasked with carrying milk urns to the centre of the village where supplies would be dispensed in exchange for payment.
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supplies → task → payment
In 1944, though, this increasingly hardscrabble life ended abruptly.
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life → end → 1944
…and 44 more, not listed.
The Aporia
