For Jewish students in Britain today, university life exists in two realities. There’s the pursuit of education – lectures, exams, the familiar rhythm of academic life. But woven beneath is a constant, unsettling calculation: is displaying a Star of David safe? Will voicing an opinion invite hostility? Is today the day fear materializes in a demonstration outside the gates?
University, meant to be a primary focus, has become secondary for many. It’s squeezed in around the exhausting, full-time occupation of simply *being* Jewish on campus. A weight of vigilance, a quiet anxiety, permeates every aspect of student life.
My great-grandmother, Lily Ebert, arrived at Auschwitz at the age of twenty. In a single, horrific day, her mother, sister, brother, and over a hundred family members were murdered. Their ashes scattered, their memory denied a proper resting place. It was July 1944, a date etched forever in our family’s history.
She survived. She rebuilt her life in Britain, not merely enduring but thriving. She created a large, loving family – ten grandchildren, thirty-eight great-grandchildren, and even a great-great-grandchild. She believed Britain offered a sanctuary, a place where her family could live openly and proudly as Jews, a nation that had truly learned from the past.
For decades, Lily shared her story in schools, and later, through social media, warning that the Holocaust didn’t begin with violence. It began with words, with subtle shifts in atmosphere, with seemingly small acts of intolerance. She understood the insidious nature of hate.
In her final months, before passing away in October 2024, she was deeply troubled. Horrified to witness the country she had trusted seemingly failing at its most fundamental duty – protecting its Jewish citizens. Her fears, tragically, are now being realized.
British counterterrorism police are investigating a surge of arson attacks targeting Jewish sites in London – four in as many days. Synagogues and a Jewish charity were deliberately set ablaze, and an Iran-linked group threatened drone attacks on the Israeli embassy. These attacks followed the deliberate targeting of ambulances belonging to a Jewish charity.
Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has warned of a “sustained campaign of violence and intimidation” gaining momentum. While the Prime Minister expressed surprise, how can surprise be genuine when hateful rhetoric is tolerated? To ignore the seeds of hatred is to invite the harvest of violence.
Simply throwing money at security measures is not a solution. We cannot barricade ourselves behind ever-higher fences and barbed wire. This violence stems from ideology, and until Britain confronts that ideology head-on, the flames will continue to rise.
That means banning Iran’s IRGC, potentially responsible for these attacks. It means confronting the Muslim Brotherhood, actively radicalizing young people on campuses and in communities. And it means addressing the insidious hatred brewing within our own universities.
On campuses like mine, masked demonstrators routinely disrupt university life, chanting slogans that cross the line from political protest into outright malice. Jewish students are singled out, booed, and accused of unspeakable acts simply for their identity. Many now conceal their Jewish symbols and hesitate to speak in class.
A Jewish professor had his lecture stormed by masked protesters who screamed abuse, branded him a “war criminal,” and reportedly threatened his life. His only offense was being Jewish and refusing to be silenced. This isn’t debate; it’s intimidation.
The problem isn’t limited to students. Too often, academics themselves contribute to the problem. On my own campus, the medieval blood libel – the false and dangerous conspiracy theory accusing Jews of using non-Jewish blood in rituals – was presented as historical fact.
Beyond campus, an NHS doctor posted “gas the Jews” online with minimal consequences. Jewish artists are quietly removed from programs. Jewish events are canceled without explanation. Protests filled with hateful chants are allowed to continue unchecked. Each incident, taken alone, might be dismissed. But together, they reveal a disturbing normalization of antisemitism.
In the past year, the U.K. has recorded the highest number of violent antisemitic assaults per capita outside of Israel – one assault for every 2,500 Jews. Jewish schools warn students against wearing visible symbols on their commute. Jewish teenagers are assaulted on public transport. Every Jewish institution now exists behind security barriers, guards, and locked doors. We are, undeniably, a community under siege.
My great-grandmother dedicated her life to warning that these things begin not with violence, but with silence. With small compromises. With institutions that offer “context” and “balance” as if such things are possible when a minority is being targeted.
Britain stands at a crossroads. It can honor the lessons it claims to have learned from history. Or it can allow the silence to continue, and discover, too late, where that silence ultimately leads. Lily Ebert survived Auschwitz. She did not survive to see the country she fled succumb to the very hatred she escaped.
