1457 - 5th Feb 2026

Lofty ambitions Familiar

Bat-El brings her inspiring story to the London stage Page 27

Football stalwart Wolff mourned P10

When it comes to hostility against the BBC within the Jewish community, there are three di erent factions. Put simply, there are those who hate the BBC, those who believe that the BBC hates them and those who hate the BBC because they believe it hates them. In the last few years, the latter two groups have grown significantly. Regrettably, an institution which receives billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money annually to communicate ideas to the public has done relatively little to convince British Jews it isn’t something of a bigoted cesspit. Has anyone reminded them that “antisemitism training” isn’t intended to make you better at committing antisemitism?

In the last week, the BBC has written Jews out of the Holocaust and Cable Street and celebrated the chance to debut new music from a band of cranks describing Keir Starmer as “Netanyahu’s b**** in genocide armour”. We’ve reported on one senior employee who last month described how “Jewish backed” MPs a ected the shambolic situation in Birmingham which led to the retirement wof a police Chief Constable.

Continued on page 2

‘Making Jews invisible’: BBC at it again and again

The BBC faces further criticism about its attitude towards the Jewish community after a series of further failures in the space of a week, writes Daniel Sugarman.

The failures included omitting mention of Jews in Holocaust Memorial Day coverage and not being able to confirm if an antisemitic Hezbollah backer would still be invited on the Arabic channel

The corporation was condemned for broadcasts on Holocaust Memorial Day repeatedly describing how “six million people” were murdered, without saying they were Jewish.

Similarly, the BBC omitted mention of Jews from reporting on a musical about the 1936 Battle of Cable Street, despite Jews having been central to the historic fight.

Former US antisemitism envoy Prof Deborah Lipstadt posted on Twitter: “This is not a mistake but a pattern that the BBC is perfecting… Make Jews invisible: Holocaust w/out Jews, Mosley Blackshirt attacks w/out Jews.”

The BBC also premiered a song by anti-Israel band Kneecap, which accuses prime minister Keir Starmer of being “Netanyahu’s b**** in genocide armour”.

Writing for Jewish News , film and music producer Leo Pearlman described how “this wasn’t an unfortunate booking [by the BBC], it was editorial enthusiasm”.

A senior BBC broadcast engi -

neer, Tom Poole, described the condemnation of the BBC’s HMD omission as “hysteria” and “a Jewish pile-on”.

He also expressed a belief that “Jewish-backed” MPs led to the retirement of the West Midlands Police chief constable amid concerns the force mismanaged a decision to ban fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv from Birmingham for a football match.

The BBC told Jewish News while it “cannot comment on individual staffing matters … we take

it extremely seriously if someone does not meet … [our] standards”.

It showed less certainty about a recurring contributor to its BBC Arabic channel, who last appeared in December.

Lebanese academic Ali Mattar repeatedly celebrated Israeli civilian deaths, described “the fear and cowardice of the Jews”, glorified former Hezbollah and Hamas leaders and supported attempts to murder author Salman Rushdie.

The corporation responded: “Late last year we introduced a

new process for conducting additional journalistic due diligence on contributors. This is being used extensively by BBC News Arabic teams covering the Middle East…

The last time this contributor was interviewed, his opinion was challenged on air.”

In response, former director of BBC television Danny Cohen said “many in the Jewish community have lost faith in the BBC’s ability to uphold standards and ensure that anti-Jewish racists do not appear on its services”.

Shun Jews, says terrorist Butt

A convicted terrorist running to become a councillor in Birmingham told an interviewer last year Muslims should not have Christians or Jews as friends.

Sharon Osbourne has now said she is considering standing as a candidate against him.

Shahid Butt was jailed in Yemen in 1999 for his part in a terror plot to attack targets including the British consulate. He returned to Britain in 2003.

As reported by the Mail on Sunday, Butt was featured in a Youtube video in 2025 in which he said: “Allah says in the Koran do not take the Jews or Christians as your friends and protectors.”

Questioned about this, he said he was quoting the Koran, that he worked with local churches and that he was “not antisemitic as I believe Jews are my cousins”.

Butt vehemently opposed the Maccabi Tel Aviv match against Aston Villa which took place

last year in Birmingham, urging “every local Muslim” to attend protests against the match but not to bring knives, guns or machetes. He also said “you don’t need to hide your face – unless you’ve got a bit of a sensitive job and you’re worried about epercussions”.

The 60-year old, who has previously worked as part of the Home Office Prevent scheme and sat on the West Midlands AntiTerrorism Steering Committee, was announced as a candidate last week by Ahmed Yakoob, founder of the “Independent Candidate

WHAT THE LICENCE FEE BUYS YOU...

Continued from page 1 Oh, and let’s not forget the antisemitic, Hezbollah supporting celebrator of Israeli civilian deaths, whom the BBC seems unwilling to confirm won’t appear again on its Arabic channel.

To say the BBC “has lost its way” is an epic understatement.

If BBC executives had left Egypt 3,000 years ago, they’d still be wandering the Sinai desert now.

If this broadcaster can’t sort itself out, how can it possibly be fit for purpose any more?

Alliance”. In 2024 Yakoob ran for election in Birmingham Ladywood, the constituency held by Shabana Mahmood, receiving 12,137 votes to her 15,558.

Mahmood has since become home secretary, while Yakoob is due to stand trial in 2027 over allegations of money laundering.

Meanwhile, Sharon Osbourne, who was married to Birmingham rock star Ozzie Osbourne for more than 40 years until his death last July, announced she was considering running against Butt for the contested council seat in the Sparkhill ward in central Birmingham.

Sharon, whose father was music promoter Don Arden (born Harry Levy), was responding to a video which featured Butt . Osbourne said: “This has nothing to do with racism. I think I’m gonna move to Birmingham and put my name down for the ballot to be on the council.”

TATCHELL HELD OVER DEMO SIGN

Activist Peter Tatchell has said he faces a “nonsense” allegation he committed a public order offence after he was arrested for carrying a placard reading “globalise the intifada” at a pro-Palestine protest.

The human rights campaigner said he was held for an “unjustified and excessively prolonged” 12 hours without charge following his arrest at the march.

The 74-year-old has since been bailed under investigation, with conditions including a ban on attending Palestine protests, his foundation said.

Tatchell was seen carrying a sign that read “Globalise the intifada: Non-violent resistance. End Israel’s occupation of Gaza & West Bank” at the Palestine Coalition protest in central London.

In a statement released by the Peter Tatchell Foundation on Monday, the activist said: “From my arrest at 1.26pm to my release at 1.40am the next day, I was in police custody a total of 12 hours without charge, including 10 hours in the cells for what is a minor alleged public order offence. It was unjustified and excessively prolonged.” The foundation said Tatchell has been accused of a “racially aggravated offence” under Section 5 of the Public Order Act

u MP condemned for protest speech, page 4

Polanski: Green Party has Israel ‘obsession’

Green Party leader Zack Polanski openly complained party members were “obsessive” in their condemnation of Israel, newly-leaked audio obtained by Jewish News reveals, writes Lee Harpin.

Polanski, 42, also admitted being left “deeply disappointed” as the Greens failed to back a motion at party conference that would have demonstrated an internal culture that was friendly and welcoming to Jewish people. In the newlyunearthed interview, Polanski also criticised former leaders of the Greens for failing to devote enough time to a debate at the annual conference on antisemitism, as he pushed a motion recognising the IHRA definition.

“I’m deeply disappointed it was rejected,” he said then. “I don’t think it’s a controversial motion.”

In an interview on the tiny Kingston Green Radio online station in October 2018, Polanski said of the anti-Israel current within the party:

“I would say it feels a bit obsessive at times”, while on the Greens’ failure to adopt a policy on antisemitism, he said: “I think in the future it would be absolutely shameful and incoherent not to have a policy on antisemitism.”

Former LibDem member Polanski has become a staunch antiZionist as the current Green leader.

His party is contesting next month’s by-election in Gorton and Denton by wooing Muslim voters with a hardline anti-Israel stance and claiming the government is “complicit” in a Gaza “genocide”.

The leaked interview reveals Polanski, born into a traditionally pro-Zionist family in north Manchester, held very different views on Israel as recently as 2018.

Assessing the anti-Israel mood within the Greens, he said at the time: “I think it’s important to stand up against Netanyahu – but I think it’s important to stand up against all oppression around the world.

“But it does seem that people get particularly angsty if they feel like you are removing their right to criticise Israel in particular.”

Speaking in the aftermath of the party’s 2018 annual conference in Bristol, Polanski, then a founding member of the Jewish Greens group, also expressed his disappointment at the party’s failure to

FEARS MOUNTING OVER PARTY’S ‘SECTARIANISM’

A Conservative shadow minister has warned “sectarian politics” could dominate the forthcoming Gorton and Denton by-election, as Green Party leader Zack Polanski courts votes by emphasising support for Palestinians, writes Lee Harpin.

Claire Coutinho raised concerns in the Commons on the eve of Polanski’s campaign visit over an endorsement from The Muslim Vote pressure group for the Green candidate in the forthcoming by-election.

The group cited the Greens’ opposition to “genocide in Gaza” as grounds for their support.

Shadow equalities minister Coutinho warned: “When we have sectarian politics, conflict and strife follows.” She accused Labour of being “unable to confront this problem” – referencing a 2024 incident when their candidate in Blackburn was threatened with beheading.

Meanwhile, it has emerged the newlyselected Green Party candidate for Gorton and Denton, Hannah Spencer, drew parallels between the atrocities of the Holocaust and Israel’s actions in Gaza in vile social media posts.

In one instance, above a photograph of Labour former deputy leader Angela Rayner lighting a candle for Holocaust Memorial Day, Spencer, 34, who leads the Greens on Trafford Council, wrote in a post on X: “‘Never again’ but still selling arms to Israel.”

In April 2025, Rayner visited the BergenBelsen Nazi concentration camp to commemorate the 80th anniversary of its liberation by British forces. The then-deputy prime minister was pictured with veterans involved in the freeing of the camp.

Spencer shared a post from Sharmen

Rahman, who was appointed the Greens’ national spokesperson for equalities and diversity last year, criticising Rayner’s visit as “performative” amid what it described as a “real ongoing genocide” in Gaza.

Tellingly, Spencer did not post any comments in response to the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October, 2023. In fact, her X feed contains no reference to Israel or Palestine until April 2024, when her criticism of the Israeli government began. She now frequently accuses the Israeli Defence Forces of committing genocide.

More recently, she mocked the government’s proscription of Palestine Action in a post on X, saying those who had failed to support the violent group should be called “Palestine Inaction”.

She subsequently called for an end to arms sales to Israel, and advocated for “targeted Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against those supporting Israel’s occupation of Palestine”.

pass a motion backing the IHRA definition of antisemitism.

He described the climate inside the Greens as being “very similar to the Labour Party” led by Jeremy Corbyn at that time, in regard to opposition to the definition.

At the conference, Polanski’s pro-IHRA motion was included in a debate that was allotted only 20

minutes on antisemitism.

He told the station: “I’m happy to criticise the Green Party … any fairminded person would look at the antisemitism debate and the time – 20 minutes – and say that isn’t a reasonable amount of time.”

Polanski then said he was going to rewrite his motion hoping it would pass at the conference held by the Greens the following spring.

Once a liberal Zionist who used his Jewish identity to build support in his party, Polanski now presents as a non- or anti-Zionist appalled by Netanyahu’s war in Gaza. A few years ago he was an enthusiastic advocate of the London Jewish Assembly, an offshoot of the Board of Deputies. Now, he calls the same body “the Board of Deputies for the Israeli government”.

Polanski is now under increased pressure from pro-Palestine activists to declare the party anti-Zionist and back a one-state solution in the Middle East.

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MP under fire for speech to pro-Iranian regime mob

Left-wing Labour MP John McDonnell has sparked renewed anger after giving a speech at a pro-Palestine demonstration in London, where dozens of activists openly carried banners in support of Iran’s Supreme Leader, writes Lee Harpin.

McDonnell used his platform to call for British citizens who fought for the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) to be “brought to justice for the war crimes they committed,” but appeared to turn a blind eye to the controversial displays among the crowd.

In his address from the stage at last Saturday’s Palestine Solidarity Campaign-backed demonstration in central London, McDonnell declared: “I’ll not forget what the

IDF has done and I’ll never forgive… You know, there were British citizens fighting for the IDF.”

He continued, “Before, the government said legal action couldn’t be taken against them because there was no other state that they were fighting against that was recognised. There was a technical argument based on legislation in the 19th century. Now the Palestinian state has been recognised and we expect those British citizens to be brought to justice.”

However, the MP appeared to ignore a significant number of protesters present who declared open support for Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei.

Some marchers displayed banners with Khamenei’s photograph and declared themselves to be on the “right side of history” as they made their way through London.

Social media images from the event also showed a man appearing to perform a Nazi salute, alongside banners calling for the de-proscription of Hamas and Hezbollah.

Labour MP David Taylor was among those to immediately condemn McDonnell’s involvement in a demonstration featuring proKhamenei supporters.

The MP for Hemel Hempstead

Israeli Jews and Arabs protest surge in crime

Nearly 40,000 Jewish and Arab Israelis protested in Tel Aviv against government and police inaction to counter violent crime within the Arab community, with an Israeli Arab MK saying the rally “should be a turning point” for Jewish-Arab relations.

The protest, organised by the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel, came after strikes in Israeli Arab towns. 252 Arab Israelis have been killed in the last year in crime-related violence.

Jamal Zahalka, head of the Committee and a former MK, accused the government of “fuelling crime organizations and criminals who murder, extort and threaten.” He accused Israeli police of practising a “policy of deadly restraint” .

In September, Firas Abu Fana, 29, was killed in Kafr Qara, Northern Israel. His mother told the crowd that she wakes each day mourning her child, who “did nothing wrong and was murdered in cold blood.”

No serving Jewish and Arab MKs present spoke from the stage,

to avoid making the protest party political.

Ayman Odeh MK, Chairman of Hadash-Ta’al, told Times of Israel “this should be a turning point, another important building block for the common struggles of Jewish and Arab society.”

Gilad Kariv MK, part of Israel’s The Democrats party, told the paper: “If a mother in Umm al-Fahm or Sakhnin feels [too] insecure to allow her child to go to the playground in the afternoon, it means we cannot be safe and feel secure here in Tel Aviv.”

posted on X: “John McDonnell yesterday, you spoke at a rally/march at which some of the protestors did Nazi salutes, called for Israel to be obliterated, and pro-Ayatollah, Hamas and Hezbollah placards, clothing and chants were seen/heard.

“And one organiser of the event appeared to be the so-called ‘Islamic Human Rights Commission,’ which The Times has reported is linked to Iran’s Supreme Council.

“Will you condemn these acts and apologise for speaking at the rally?”

Children’s author and long-time campaigner for Palestinian rights, Michael Rosen, also raised concerns about the support shown for the Iranian regime during the protest, writing on Facebook: “I’ve seen photos and clips of people on the march holding Iranian regime flags, and placards with pictures of Ali Khamenei with the caption ‘On the right side of history’...This is terrible...

people supporting the Palestinians should have no problem in saying so.”

Saturday’s demonstration took place against the backdrop of deadly repression in Iran. The rally did not address that slaughter, where it is estimated at least 30,000 people have been killed during weeks of protests against the regime.

McDonnell, who spoke alongside Jeremy Corbyn, Zarah Sultana, and trade union leader Andrea Egan, also called for de-proscription of

the Palestine Action terror group, saying he had visited imprisoned activists from the group, who had been on hunger strike. He paid tribute to what he described as “their courage and conviction”.

RENEWED CALLS FOR IRGC BAN

Middle East minister Hamish Falconer has come under sustained pressure from MPs to explain why the government has yet to proscribe Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in the current climate of severe repression by the regime in Tehran.

Falconer rejected suggestions the UK now looked “weak” in not following the lead of the EU, which proscribed the IRGC last week.

Answering an Urgent Question in the Commons, he claimed:”I don’t think that the Iranian gov-

ernment’s interpretation of the actions of the British government in recent weeks is one of weakness”, referencing “a far-ranging sanctions package announced on Monday”, which saw ten individuals - including the regime’s Minister of the Interiorand one organisation sanctioned “for their role in recent brutality against Iranian protestors.”

Responding to cross-party questions on the matter, Falconer said the government was treating proscription as “a matter of urgency” but stressed that, as Home Office legisla-

tion, it would need to go through parliament “in the usual way.”

The minister also claimed that further sanctions imposed on Iran, including against the entirety of the IRGC, represented a “swift” and tough response by the UK ahead of future proscription of Iran’s main political and military force.

Attempting to explain the delay, Falconer said: ”We think the Jonathan Hall review is important – it addresses itself precisely to this question of the difference between a state actor and a terrorist.”

REVIEW SPARKS EXTREMISM FEARS

An official government review into public order and hate crime laws has issued a “call for evidence” to groups including the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), and Friends of Al-Aqsa, according to reports.

The invitations are part of an independent review led by Lord Macdonald, the

former Director of Public Prosecutions, examining whether current laws adequately protect communities from intimidation and hatred while safeguarding the right to protest and freedom of expression.

The review was announced by Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, following con-

cerns about the impact of pro-Palestine demonstrations, including extremist chants and placards.

Documents seen by The Times reveal that officials reached out to the MCB, MAB, and Friends of AlAqsa. The MCB, Britain’s largest Muslim umbrella body representing over 500 mosques, schools, and charities, has been

excluded from formal government engagement since 2009 after a senior official was accused of supporting violence against Israel. Official policy still bars engagement with the MCB.

MAB has previously been highlighted in Parliament as a “cause for concern” under extremism definitions.

Pro-Palestine activists 'should pay for policing'

Senior Conservative MP Bob Blackman has intensified criticism of pro-Palestine protest organisers, arguing they should be responsible for the costs of policing their demonstrations, writes Lee Harpin.

As chair of the influential 1922 Committee, Blackman described anti-Israel activism as a “Trojan horse for antisemitism”, claiming such protests and accusations of genocide against Israel amount to “antisemitism, pure and simple”.

Blackman told the Commons he was abused online after raising concerns about the protests.

He called on the Ofcom watchdog to address hate speech and emphasised Parliament’s responsibility to prevent it.

The MP said: “It’s a disgrace, and Ofcom have to take action, and indeed it is our duty to ensure that hate speech is never allowed to continue.”

Blackman, MP for Harrow East, highlighted the financial burden the protests had placed on London,

with policing the demos costing the Met £82m since October 2023.

Taxpayers should not bear these costs and the government should make protest organisers pay.

Responding, Commons leader Sir Alan Campbell pointed out government funding for London’s police had increased.

In a debate on Holocaust Memorial Day, Blackman further condemned the protests, warning contemporary antisemitism often hid behind anti-Israel activism.

He made a distinction between legitimate criticism of governments and the rhetoric heard on the marches and elsewhere that demonised Israel, targeted Jewish individuals or institutions, or equated Israeli actions with those of the Nazis, which he said constituted antisemitism.

Community Security Trust data showed a rise in antisemitic incidents blending anti-Zionist language with antisemitic tropes.

In addition to the cost, officers

Bob Blackman MP

had to be "dragged in" from all over London to police the marches, Blackman said. “The council taxpayers of London are outraged we are having to pay.”

He asked for the government to “make sure that, if demonstrations are going to take place in this way, that the organisers of these demonstrations actually bear the cost of policing them, rather than the council taxpayers of London”.

He called for "unequivocal condemnation" of Holocaust distortion and the targeting of Jewish businesses and synagogues, labelling such actions as "clear examples of antisemitism".

Blackman continued: “We must all also confront the disturbing rise of Holocaust inversion, the grotesque distortion that portrays Jews or Israel as the new Nazis.

“This is not merely offensive rhetoric; it threatens and trivialises the Shoah, inverts reality and inflicts profound harm on survivors and their families.

“Equating the Star of David with a swastika or accusing the Jewish state of genocide is not historical analysis, it’s antisemitism, and we must be clear and unequivocal in condemning it.”

He concluded: “When we see demonstrations and attempts to blockade Jewish businesses, restaurants and synagogues, we must call it out for what it is – antisemitism, pure and simple.”

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NEW LFI CHAIR MAKES FIRST ISRAEL VISIT

Labour Friends of Israel’s parliamentary chair, Mark Sewards MP, has undertaken his first official visit to Israel in the role, meeting with senior leaders including Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Democratic leader Yair Golan.

During his trip, Sewards also travelled to Bahrain.

Reflecting on his visit, he said: “After two years of bloodshed and tragedy for Israelis and Palestinians, it’s never been more critical for the UK to deepen its engagement with longstanding regional allies and partners in pursuit of peace and prosperity.

“I was pleased to visit the Middle East to meet with Israelis, Palestinians, and Bahrainis to explore ways Britain can help build upon the renewed hope provided by the ceasefire in Gaza to advance a two-state solution and expand Israel’s regional integration.”

Sewards’ itinerary included meetings with Yesh Atid MK Shelly Meron, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel, Palestinian political activist Samer Sinijlawi, former Israeli ambassador to Egypt Amira Oron, British Ambassador to Israel Simon Walters, INSS researcher Raz Zimmt, and Gili Roman, brother of former Israeli hostage Yarden Roman-Gat. He also visited the Civil-Military Coordination Centre in Kiryat Gat, where he was briefed on the recent recovery of Master Sgt. Ran Gvili’s remains.

Tax funded arts venue cancels ‘pro-armed resistance’ event

A venue due to hold an event featuring some of the country’s most notorious peddlers of “Jewish supremacy” conspiracy theories has said it can no longer host the meeting – because it cannot guarantee a “safe space” for participants writes Adam Decker.

The Old Print Works in Birmingham was due to hold the launch event for the “Anti-Zionist Movement” on Sunday, featuring individuals such as David Miller, Rahmeh Aladwan and Latifa Abouchakra, all who regularly post on social media about so-called “Jewish supremacy” they say is in control of the UK.

Miller, who was sacked by the University of Bristol in 2021, has since become a producer for a show on Iranian regime-operated Press TV channel, which Abouchakra also works for. Aladwan was arrested by the police twice last year, including on suspicion of inciting racial hatred. In December, a medical tribunal voted to suspend her for 15 months while the General Medical Council conducted a full investigation into her conduct.

In a statement on Instagram to its 5,000 followers, the venue said:

“As a community charity The Old Print Works has limited resources available and under current circumstances cannot guarantee a safe space on the day for this event, its audience and our community.”

The venue adds that it is “committed to providing a safe civic space where topics of interest to our local community can be respectfully discussed. With the safety of our community in mind, we aim to put

measures in place so that we can continue to host events, including those that provide a platform for under-represented voices.”

parent about your f*** up and about which under-represented voices you are truly supporting.”

In a joint statement, grassroots advocacy groups Our Fight and Stop the Hate said they “welcome the announcement that The Old Print Works in Birmingham, that was due to host the launch event of the new hate campaign ‘The Anti-Zionist Movement’, has pulled out.”

The two had called for a public march to the venue, while the group Action on Antisemitism had encouraged people to write to the venue, the police and the Home Office.

Responses to the post include criticisms of how the venue has “bowed down to the Zionist lobby” and accusations of the statement being “deliberately vague … maybe it would be better to be more trans-

REFORM WITHDRAWS ITS SUPPORT FOR CANDIDATE

Reform UK has withdrawn support for one of its election candidates following allegations of antisemitic and xenophobic comments posted on social media, writes Lee Harpin.

Mike Manning, a former Royal Artillery serviceman, was set to be Reform UK’s candidate in a forthcoming by-election for Redcar and Cleveland borough council. He is alleged to have posted several offensive remarks on X (formerly Twitter) last November. In one post, Manning appeared to write: “Jews, Muslims … there is something about circumcision that goes to their heads.”

In another post from the same month, responding to a comment about social benefits, Manning wrote: “We already pay the Jizya tax, it’s called Universal Credits. They are all on it.”

Jizya is an historical Islamic tax levied on non-Muslims in exchange for protection.

Manning also appeared to target African Americans in a separate post, when he replied to someone celebrating the festival of Kwanzaa by posting the comment: “Are you having the traditional stuffed Chimpanzee for Kwanzaa dinner?”

After being alerted to the posts by LBC, a Reform UK spokesperson said: “As soon as we became aware of these posts, we immediately opened a disciplinary investigation.”

LibDem deputy leader Daisy Cooper condemned the remarks, accusing the candidate

of “directing sickening insults at Jewish and Muslim communities” and described the posts as “abhorrent and utterly out of place in twenty-first century Britain”.

She added Manning’s “antisemitic and xenophobic views had no place in society today”.

A post on the Reform UK Redcar branch Facebook page states Manning became disillusioned with mainstream politics and believes it is time for real change.

Before Reform UK distanced itself from Manning was quoted as saying of the party: “Reform UK is dedicated to protecting our community, supporting the vulnerable, and investing in our youth; they are the only party speaking up for our traditions and values.”

Party leader Nigel Farage has pledged to improve Reform UK’s candidate selection process ahead of the May local elections.

Our Fight director Mark Birbeck said: “Just because we are committed to free speech doesn’t mean that we aren’t entitled to draw the venue and the public’s attention to the bigotry that the AntiZionist Movement is promoting. Their event announcement called on anyone who supports ‘armed resistance’ and oppose ‘Jewish supremacy’ to attend.

“We have seen on Bondi Beach

and at Manchester Synagogue what this means. They are calling for –and trying to justify – use of most extreme measures against Jews and anyone who stands with them.”

Stop the Hate founder Itai Galmudy added: “We believe that most British people, of whatever faith, will see the launch of such an extreme organisation as a sign of growing blatant and unapologetic antisemitism.

“We are pleased that so many people joined in the letter-writing campaign organised by AOA and answered the call to march from Our Fight and Stop the Hate.” Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “We welcome the news that the charity hosting this event has cancelled it. This event was for people obsessed with conspiracy theories about ‘Jewish supremacy’ and those who are ‘pro armed resistance’. This sort of rhetoric has no place in modern Britain, and we hope that other venues will be equally resistant to hosting those who spout it.”

The Old Print Works has not responded to requests for comment from Jewish News

Reform starts Jewish group

Reform UK has announced the launch of Reform Jewish Alliance (RJA) this month, with party leader Nigel Farage and deputy leader Richard Tice scheduled to speak at the opening event.

Jewish News also understands a separate Reform Friends of Israel (RFI) group will soon be announced.

Party sources say Gary Mond, a high-profile figure who defected from the Tories to Reform, is at the centre of the RJA group, aiming to

Apple has deepened its ties to Israel’s tech ecosystem after acquiring Israeli audio artificial intelligence startup Q.ai, in a move that underscores the growing importance of Israeli innovation to the global AI race, writes Candice Krieger.

The deal reflects Apple’s accelerating investment in artificial intelligence, particularly technologies that can enhance voice, audio and machine learning capa -

provide members with a programme of regular events featuring guest speakers, including senior Reform politicians and prominent figures from across the Jewish community.

Another aim of the group is to create a clear channel for members to share their views and help shape Reform’s approach to issues that matter most to the community.

Meanwhile, RFI is being

bilities across its product ecosystem.

Financial terms were not officially disclosed, but reports have suggested the acquisition could be worth over $1.5 billion, potentially making it one of the tech giant’s largest ever purchases.

The deal continues a long pattern of Apple turning to Israel, often dubbed “Silicon Wadi”, for deep-tech innovation.

Apple has steadily

established to work with election candidates and other party officials to promote UK-Israel relations, and will seek to emulate the success of Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel groups.

It is understood that Jason Pearlman, a former advisor to Israel president Isaac Herzog, could be appointed as the director of RFI.

expanded its R&D presence in the country over the past decade, building what is now one of its largest global research hubs outside the United States.

Apple’s Israeli engineering teams are closely tied to chip design and core hardware innovation, areas overseen by senior Apple executive Johny Srouji, who helped establish the company’s Herzliya research centre, now one of Apple’s largest globally.

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News / Detective sacked / Braverman’s visit

Met detective fired over online posts SUELLA TAKES A BOW AT JFS

A Met Police detective sergeant has been sacked after sharing “overtly political” online posts on the war in Gaza, including a comment deemed antisemitic.

In one post, Rebecca Collens, who was based in the Road and Transport Policing command, reshared an image of apparent victims labelled “Palestine 2024” alongside an image of victims seemingly from a concentration camp labelled “Germany 1945”.

The images were captioned “The world said never again and here we are again 79 years later.”

Alongside, a misconduct panel was told, she commented: “A classic case of the abused becomes the abuser… no?”

The panel said Collens had accepted using the word “abused” would refer to Jewish people rather than the State of Israel, which did not exist in 1945, and therefore the post fell within the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.

The posts were collectively deemed “overtly political” and, the panel found, “demonstrated a lack of impartiality and presented a one-sided view of the Gaza

conflict during a time of heightened public controversy” after the events of 7 October 2023 which led to the war.

Collens was said to have shared the posts on a private Instagram account with more than 100 followers, until she was reported anonymously to the force’s whistleblowing service in May 2024.

One post she shared stated: “Stop calling this a war. There is no parity of power ... this is genocide”, the Met said.

Another spoke of Israel bombing civilian airports, massacring families in Gaza and dropping white phosphorus on Lebanon and Gaza, adding: “This is the Israel that Western media tells you is a ‘victim’,” according to the force.

Collens said her intention was to highlight the “su ering and devastation in Gaza” and she had felt “guilt, helplessness, heartbreak and pain” about it.

She told the panel she had no intention to “hurt anyone or be disrespectful of the Jewish faith”.

On the post found to be antisemitic, the panel said it found the drawing of comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis to be relevant to the IHRA definition.

“The panel concluded that on the balance of probabilities the post itself is antisemitic, whether or not the o cer had appreciated at the time it would be considered so,” the panel added Collens said she felt “horrified about being called antisemitic; mortified and heartbroken”, the panel wrote.

Detective chief supt Donna Smith said: “DS Collens’ conduct was wholly unacceptable and I find it inconceivable that she did not think these posts could be seen as o ensive or overtly political.

“There is no room in the organisation for anyone who thinks this type of behaviour is appropriate.”

JFS welcomed Suella Braverman to the school to address Year 12 students in one of her first engagements since leaving the Conservatives and joining Reform UK.

An update on the school’s website confirmed the former Tory home secretary and attorney general spoke to politics and criminology students about her time in government.

She also found time to answer questions on her shock move to Nigel Farage’s party.

Braverman spent further time with a Year 12 criminology class Q&A session in which she o ered “her take on migration and other contemporary social issues, as well as ways in which we could go about reducing the crime rate”, the school said.

JFS has previously invited senior political speakers into the school to address students, including current education secretary Bridget Phillipson.

Braverman accused the Conservatives of “betrayal” as she became the latest MP from the party to defect to Reform UK.

She told a press conference following her defection she had felt “politically homeless for the best part of two years”, over differences over areas including Brexit and immigration.

Her husband, Rael, who is Jewish, also confirmed he had rejoined the Reform movement. Reform UK has threatened to sue Tory leader Kemi Badenoch unless she apologises to Braverman over the Tories’ claims about her mental health.

A statement after the defection said: “The Conservatives did all we could to look after Suella’s mental health, but she was clearly very unhappy.” The party later issued a corrected version, which removed the sentence, saying the original lines were a draft.

Jewish students urged to follow the Refuseniks ‘HATE CRIME’ AT SCHOOL

An academic who grew up in the USSR has told a London audience there is nothing new about the phenomenon some people are calling “the new antisemitism”, writes Beatrice Sayers.

Izabella Tabarovsky said Jews in the west were facing threats comparable in many ways to those faced by Soviet-era ‘Refuseniks’.

Jewish students needed to learn about the Russian antisemitism of the 1970s and 80s and emancipate themselves by employing some of the tactics the dissidents used.

“As in the Soviet Union, the campaign of anti-Israel demonisation and libel [today] is not organic,” she said. “It’s sleek and expensive. It’s designed to manipulate emotion ...

“This toxic ideology has captured entire institutions of culture, media and academia.

The aim of the strategy is the same as it was then – to change who you are, to destroy the foundations of your Jewish identity and to force you to submit to the anti-Jewish worldview, or face devastating consequences.”

Tabarovsky, a writer and activist who grew

up in Novosibirsk and is now in the US, was at the launch, organised by the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism (LCSCA), of her book Be a Refusenik

Her theme was while Jewish students in the West were not living in a dictatorship, the similarities in their treatment were too striking to ignore, facing anti-Zionism that was part of anti-western propaganda and echoed the USSR’s anti-Zionist campaign after 1967 and “harassed by mobs chanting recycled Soviet slogans”.

Goldsmiths, University of London sociologist and LCSCA director Prof David Hirsh chaired the event, which also featured Union of Jewish Students head of campaigns Samantha Cass.

French prosecutors are investigating a possible hate crime incident after unknown assailants targeted a Jewish primary school in Paris on 31 January.

Several windows were smashed, surveillance equipment damaged and a plaque clearly identifying the school’s religious identity removed and found later in a nearby park.

French media reported five people attacked the Beth Loubavitch–Beth Hannah building on Passage des Saint-Simoniens, a dead-end street near the Télégraphe metro station, in the city’s 20th arrondissement.

They did not enter the premises and no one was injured. No arrests have yet been made but authorities say an investigation has been opened for “aggravated damage”

France’s interior ministry reported 1,570 antisemitic incidents were recorded in France in 2024 and 889 in the first eight months of 2025. Full figures for 2025 are expected to be released later this month.

LIPSTADT AWARDED TOP ANTISEMITISM PRIZE

Deborah Lipstadt, a world foremost authority on Holocaust history, has been awarded the prestigious Jonathan Sacks Institute Prize for ‘Outstanding Achievement as a Public Intellectual’ from Bar-Ilan University for her leadership in combating antisemitism.

A distinguished historian and longtime professor at Emory University in Atlanta, Lipstadt is widely regarded as one of the most prominent and e ective figures in the struggle against antiJewish prejudice.

In addition to her scholarly contri-

butions, she has played a pivotal role in public service, including her tenure as US special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, service on the US Holocaust Memorial Council and, most famously, her successful legal defence against Holocaust denier David Irving.

Jonathan Sacks Institute academic director Prof Jonathan Rynold said in light of the dramatic global rise in antisemitism since 7 October 2023, the Prize Committee decided unanimously Lipstadt was an “exceptionally worthy and timely recipient”.

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News / David Wol / Expulsion threat

Football icon Wolff dies, aged 81

David Wolff, a towering figure of Jewish and grassroots football in Britain whose influence stretched across more than seven decades, has died.

Wol , who was 81, served as honorary life president of Maccabi GB, chairman of the Maccabi GB Southern Football League and honorary president of the London FA, and was widely regarded as one of the most important architects of Jewish football in the UK.

His journey in football began in the late 1950s with Ivri Maccabi in the Youth League. While still a young man, he was entrusted with managing the club’s Under-16s, foreshadowing a lifetime of service. In December 1963, he joined the Maccabi GB Southern Football League management committee as assistant secretary. He

became vice chair two years later and chairman in 1970, a position he would hold for more than 50 years.

Under his stewardship, the league evolved from a single division of 12 teams into the central pillar of Jewish adult football in Britain. At its height, it comprised 66 teams and more than 1,700 registered players.

Beyond the Southern League, Wol served on the National Maccabi Football Committee, first as secretary and then chairman from 1976-2000.

He organised the Peter Morrison Trophy, often described as the Jewish FA Cup, and oversaw national junior competitions at Under-11, Under-13 and Under-16 levels.

Between 1990-1993 he was sports director of Maccabi GB and represented British Jewish sport at Euro-

Games, acting as a quiet but e ective ambassador. His reach extended well beyond Jewish football. Wol served the

London FA continuously from 1970, sitting on its cups, finance and disciplinary committees, as well as its Benevolent Fund. In 2004 he received the Bobby Moore Award as part of the Grassroots Heroes Awards, an honour he relished as a lifelong West Ham supporter. In 2022, he was appointed honorary president of the London FA, a rare recognition of decades of voluntary service.

Wol was also instrumental in advising and supporting the Maccabi Masters Football League, the AJY Football League and the Maccabi GB Junior Football League. He was particularly committed to encouraging younger volunteers, helping establish governance structures and mentoring future leaders.

His contribution has been perma-

nently woven into the fabric of the game. Divisional trophies bearing his name continue to be contested each season in the Maccabi GB Southern Football League. At the 2025 Jewish Volunteering Awards, he received Maccabi GB’s Lifetime Achievement Award and was inducted into the JVN Living Volunteer Archive. Just days ago, he was appointed honorary life president of Maccabi GB, a final tribute to a lifetime of service.

In a statement, Maccabi GB said:

“Everyone at Maccabi GB extends its deepest condolences to David’s family, friends and all those who had the privilege of knowing him.

“May his memory be a blessing, and may his legacy continue wherever Jewish football is played, organised or simply loved.”

UNION THREAT TO JEWISH SOCIAL WORKERS

The British Association of Social Workers (BASW), the UK’s largest representative organisation for the profession, is backing a move to expel its Israeli counterparts from the profession’s global body, Jewish News can reveal.

It is supporting a motion by the Irish Social Worker Union, seconded by the Hellenic and Spanish unions, calling for the “suspension and/or expulsion” of the

Israeli Union of Social Workers (IUSW) from the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) due to its alleged “silence on the genocide in Gaza”.

It cites Israeli social workers’ participation as “combatants” in Gaza, and the IFSW Statement of Ethical Principles which specifies that “social workers support peace and nonviolence,” and that this “requires all IFSW members to call on their gov-

ernments/authorities to make social workers exempt from military service,” and that “failure to do so would be a breach of the ethical principles and would result in action a ecting their membership status”

The hardline motion, which also calls for a wider boycott of “Israeli state, professional and academic institutions in the Occupied Territories”, will be debated at a union conference on 18 February.

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We Believe in Israel sets advocacy expansion plan

by Annabel Sinclair annabel@jewishnews.co.uk

We Believe in Israel has outlined ambitious plans to expand its advocacy work and coordinate national campaigns following its merger with the National Jewish Assembly, which took e ect formally at the start of the year.

The merger brought NJA’s membership base and activity into We Believe in Israel, with the combined structure being positioned by leadership as a platform for broader cooperation between pro-Israel groups, rather than a single standalone organisation.

Chair Simon Tobelem told Jewish News the move was driven by long-standing concerns on fragmentation within pro-Israel advocacy in the UK: “Each one is generally a one-or two-person show and therefore reduces our ability to be e cient, impactful and to represent promptly the voice of a community in support of Israel.”

The merger was intended to address what he described as a gap in the communal landscape, he added. “There is not one specific platform that addresses all the issues around a constructive, supporting narrative about Israel.”

Tobelem said the organisation now wants to

Jury

move away from a reactive posture towards sustained, proactive campaigning. “Historically, we have probably been reactive,” he said. “Unfortunately, that’s not good enough any more.

"We have to be very proactive. We have to start campaigns, increase social media activity and build a larger foundation.”

He confirmed the structure now brings together We Believe in Israel, the National Jewish Assembly and the Israeli British Alliance as an e ort to unite organisations that had previously operated separately.

“This is actually more than a merger,” he said. “Rather than creating new organisations

considers verdicts in synagogue terror plot

A jury is considering verdicts in the trial of a 16-year-old boy accused of planning a terror attack on local synagogues.

Counter terror police found what Leeds Crown Court heard was an “arsenal” of weapons, including a crossbow and knives, when they raided the teenager’s home in Northumberland.

The defendant, who cannot be identified due to his age, denies preparing acts of terrorism, being a member of a proscribed organisation – a neo-Nazi group called The Base – as well as possessing and publishing terror documents.

Images of items in his bedroom showed a replica of an SS o cer’s cap and a skeleton in a

mask. The jury was also shown online messages with members of white supremacist groups and violent journal entries and heard how the boy watched a video of an attack on a mosque.

Frida Hussain KC, defending, said the boy was “desperately lonely”, had been “plagued” with thoughts of killing himself and had created an online persona as a distraction.

During the trial, Hussain asked the defendant: “Writing in these terms about harming other people, was this anything you wanted to do in reality?”

The defendant replied: “Just thoughts in my head. I never intended to harm anyone.”

PALESTINE ACTION GROUP

Six Palestine Action activists have been cleared of committing aggravated burglary over a breakin at an Israel-based defence firm’s UK site.

Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio, Fatema Rajwani, Zoe Rogers and Jordan Devlin faced trial at Woolwich Crown Court over allegations they used or threatened unlawful violence and used sledgehammers as weapons after a prison van was driven into Elbit Systems’ Bristol factory.

All six were acquitted of aggravated burglary and jurors also found Rajwani, Rogers and Devlin not guilty of violent disorder.

The jury deliberated for 36 hours and 34 minutes but could not reach verdicts for charges of criminal damage against all six defendants.

No verdict was reached in allegations Corner, 23, inflicted grievous bodily harm on police sergeant Kate Evans, or on the further charges of violent disorder alleged against Head, Corner and Kamio.

The six activists hugged each other in the dock after the hearing as a dozen of their supporters cheered from the public gallery above.

Before the verdicts were delivered, the judge, Mr Justice Johnson, told jurors: “You said that you believe that you can go no further than you have got to already, and that no amount of time can make any material di erence.”

The jury foreman agreed, and Justice Johnson told them that in that case: “I’m not going to ask you to deliberate any further.”

or competing with each other, we are uniting di erent groups that are synergetic.” Under this approach, organisations would retain their own identities while drawing on shared resources and coordinated campaigning. “We would like to provide an umbrella,” Tobelem said. “Not to dilute anyone’s message, but to share resources, skills, content and access when it’s needed.”

Roger Walters, interim chair of the National Jewish Assembly during the transition, said the expanded approach was intended to exert influence beyond existing communal channels.

“We need to influence Parliament beyond the Jewish institutions, hold institutions to account and create a credible counterweight to extremist mobilisation,” Walters added.

Both leaders linked the organisation’s future direction to the climate following 7 October and the rise in antisemitism and extremism across public life.

Tobelem said this had left many Jews feeling unrepresented and unsafe.

“There is a missing voice – tens of thousands of people who don’t feel that the o cial narrative is properly representing them,” he said, adding that many people had become silent because they felt there was no framework they could identify with.

JW3 WELCOMES IVRIT FESTIVAL

Israel’s top theatre for children and young people is bringing five plays to London this month for the 2026 Festival of Spoken Ivrit, with 60 performances of The Tortoise and the Hare, The Ugly Duckling, The Heart, Simply Special and From Point to Point.

The festival, now in its eighth year, is at JW3 with the theme Love Your Neighbour as Yourself in partnership with the HaShaa (Hour) theatre and the World Zionist Organisation.

The festival was opened by Israel educator and public speaker Miriam Peretz alongside cast members with a gala evening featuring a special family celebration o ering creative workshops, Israeli food stalls and Israeli music.

World Zionist Organisation representative in the UK and Europe Matan Bar-Noy said that “at a time when antisemitism is on the rise and the challenges facing diaspora Jewry are increasing, the Festival of Spoken Ivrit in London is a Zionist, educational and valuedriven statement of the highest order.”

Mural to celebrate Scot murdered by the Nazis Ofsted: ‘No bias’ at Bristol school

Artwork for a mural dedicated to a Scottish missionary who was murdered by the Nazis after caring for Jewish schoolgirls in Budapest has been unveiled.

Jane Haining was the matron of the Scottish Mission School in the Hungarian capital during the Second World War.

Miss Haining refused to return to Scotland during the war and decided to stay with the Jewish girls in her care.

She was arrested in April 1944 and eventually deported to the AuschwitzBirkenau camp in Nazioccupied Poland where she died in a gas chamber a few months later.

The artwork was unveiled at a special event to honour Miss Haining in Paisley and to mark Holocaust Memorial Day on Tuesday.

The town was chosen for

the first wall mural in Scotland in her memory as she worked as a secretary at J&P Coats’ Ferguslie Mill for 10 years before moving to Budapest to take up her role at the Church of Scotland school.

Measuring about 9ft high and 65ft long, an image of Miss Haining surrounded by children reading a book is at the heart of the mural, with

portraits of her as a young woman and older woman on either side.

It is to be painted on a wall at Brown’s Lane and Shuttle Street, thoroughfares that Miss Haining used on her way to and from work.

The artwork, commissioned by the Renfrewshire branch of Unison, was designed by Paisley-based

artists Alexander Guy and Caroline Gormley.

They hope to start work on it in the spring of this year and estimate that it will take around 25 days to complete.

Mr Guy said: “I did not know the story of Jane Haining before we were asked to do this and I found it fascinating to research the information about her life.

“Initially I thought to myself ‘Why this woman, because millions of people died during the Holocaust’ – but the more I read about her, the more I realised how remarkable she was.”

He added: “Jane Haining was a true heroine and her story needs recognition, whether it’s in Budapest, Paisley or Dunscore and I’m very honoured and privileged to produce a mural that hopefully does her and all her relatives proud.”

The schools watchdog has found no evidence substantiating concerns of political bias at a Bristol school after it cancelled a visit from its local MP.

Ofsted said earlier this month it would inspect Bristol Brunel Academy, following reports that Jewish MP Damien Egan had been prevented from visiting after intervention from proPalestinian activists.

In the report, Ofsted said it was concerned the visit “may have been postponed due to co-ordinated pressure from sta , and external groups”, and therefore potentially in violation of Department for Education (DfE) guidance on political impartiality in schools.

“Inspectors found no evidence to substantiate these concerns within the school,” the inspection report concluded.

While the specific decision to postpone Mr Egan’s visit was “not the subject of the inspection”, the report said leaders told inspectors there had been concerns about the safety of children and sta because of a “threatened protest outside the school gates”.

The MP’s visit has been rearranged, and the school’s academy trust, Cabot Learning Federation, will commission an independent review at the request of the DfE, the report added.

When reports of the visit being cancelled first emerged, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said all MPs “should be able to visit anywhere in their constituency, schools or other places, without fear of antisemitism”.

The Ofsted report concluded sta , including those from minority groups “spoke of the harmonious and religiously tolerant atmosphere in the school”.

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Mutiny as shul members seek change in leadership

Twenty prominent and long-standing members of Western Marble Arch synagogue signed a furious petition to senior leadership on Tuesday, protesting at the way the historic shul is being run and calling for the exit of the trustees, board members, wardens and president, writes Michelle Rosenberg.

An astonishing letter seen by Jewish News calls for an emergency general meeting to address serious concerns at the Wallenberg Place shul, including “governance failure” and “loss of confidence” amid calls to modernise the voting process.

The Orthodox synagogue, built in 1961, recently saw the sudden departure of respected rabbinical couple Rabbi Daniel Epstein and Rebbetzin Ilana Epstein, who left for Australia towards the end of 2025 after five years in post, to lead Melbourne’s Mizrachi community.

Speaking at the time, they said they “were not looking to move but this was too big an opportunity to turn down”.

Speaking under condition of anonymity, one signatory to the letter claimed: “Rabbi Epstein didn’t leave. His position was made untenable by a combination of dysfunction and politics. And he was an excellent rabbi. Daniel did his level best. He’s a really, really

good guy, a hard worker, and they just stymied him at every possible opportunity.”

In a damning indictment, the signatory also claimed cronyism and nepotism were at the heart of the synagogue’s governance, with decisions made to “populate the boards with people that will do what you say, and then you basically get on with and rewrite the rule book if you want to do something which you normally need to go to the community with”.

Describing the general community variously as “wonderful, extremely nice”, “helpful” and “productive”, the signatory

lamented that “no one’s basically able to do anything because they’re blocked.”

Other allegations include a charge that “attendance has fallen off a cliff, sometimes they’re not even getting a minyan every day, and membership is declining rapidly”

The letter calls for a chair who is independent of the current board and the Western Charitable Foundation to preside over any EGM.

This, it says, is because “the business includes proposed removal of trustees (including the president and wardens) and related motions, [so] there is an obvious and material conflict of interest if any person who is the subject of a motion presides over it.”

Because board members of the synagogue are directors, any resolution to remove them engages the Companies Act 2006, meaning there is a legal requirement to respond to the call for an EGM within 14 days.

“They’ll probably try and wheedle out of it through a technicality initially,” the signatory said. “But the thing is, it’s going to be. This is going to come as a shot across the bows.

"They’re also not going to want it to go out of control. So they’re going to try, probably, to negotiate.”

Jewish News has contacted Western Marble Arch Synagogue for comment.

STUDY SHOWS HIGH JEW-HATE IN EU SCHOOLS

Antisemitism is being encountered in classrooms across the European Union on a scale described as deeply alarming, according to a major new survey published by UNESCO to coincide with Holocaust Memorial Day.

The study found more than three-quarters of teachers surveyed across the EU have witnessed antisemitic incidents between pupils, alongside high levels of Holocaust denial, Nazi symbolism and even physical attacks on Jewish students.

Drawing on responses from 2,030 teachers in 23 EU member states, the report – developed by the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education and conducted between August 2024 and May 2025 – is the first Europe-wide study to examine how educators experience and perceive antisemitism in schools.

According to the findings, 78 percent of teachers said they had encountered at least one antisemitic incident among students, while more than a quarter reported seeing nine or more such incidents.

Nearly two-thirds (61 percent) said they had come across Holocaust denial or distortion in the classroom, with one in ten saying this occurred frequently.

Hertfordshire

shuls cast historic 99% vote to merge

An overwhelming 99 percent of members of The Liberal Synagogue Elstree and Radlett Reform Synagogue have voted for the shuls to merge to become one of the largest Jewish hubs in the UK, writes Michelle Rosenberg.

The new Hertfordshire community will boast a membership of more than 1,100 households and operate initially as one entity across two campuses, with a long-term plan to establish a single site.

The decision, taken at an EGM (extraordinary general meeting) last month, merges two established synagogues serving Reform and Liberal Jews living in and around Bushey, Elstree, Borehamwood, Shenley and Radlett.

A statement described hopes for the final hub to be "a centre for Jewish and Jew-'ish' life, to offer opportunities for daily engagement, learning, culture and connection".

Radlett Reform chair Spencer Grant said: "It has been clear to us since we started conversations just under a year ago that coming together provides the strongest foundation for long-term sustainability and

growth. Pooling resources, expertise and leadership will enable greater reach across the region and allow engagement with those who may not currently belong to a synagogue or feel disconnected from communal life."

With the two communities having been successfully collaborating for over six months, Grant added that "formally merging is the next logical step. We are at the start of an exciting journey".

TLSE chair Leigh Renak noted: “Our area of Hertfordshire is recognised as having one of the fastest-growing Jewish populations in the UK", adding that this "gives us a unique opportunity to evolve how we meet the needs of Progressive Jews, whether they

consider themselves Liberal, Reform or just not quite sure."

Movement for Progressive Judaism co-leads Rabbi Josh Levy and Rabbi Charley Baginsky, who attended the EGMs, called the vote "a real expression of what Progressive Judaism makes possible" saying the decision "to build something new together... without asking anyone to give up who they are, is the kind of confident, generous leadership our Movement supports."

The combined community will continue to Shabbat and festival services using both Liberal and Reform siddurim.

The merger is expected to be completed formally by January 2027, with final ratification at each community's AGM in May.

After HMD, certain MPs can now stop pretending

DANIEL SUGARMAN DEPUTY EDITOR, JEWISH NEWS

Today is not Holocaust Memorial Day. It is the week after Holocaust Memorial Day, which seems like a good time to ask certain politicians a few very straightforward questions.

First, now that you’ve tweeted, or posted, or even turned up at an event to mark Holocaust Memorial Day – what exactly are you doing today, following on from that?

And second, are you able to show the Jewish community in the UK that your words or sentiments were not just a tickbox exercise – simply an item on your calendar, to be publicly noted and filed away again until you tweet or post a very slight variation on the theme next year?

My apologies to those Members of Parliament who do regularly speak up for British Jews – this piece is not aimed at you, and if you feel the need to close this paper and carry on with your everyday business at this point, I understand.

But there are, regrettably, politicians who never seem to take any sort of interest in British Jews in everyday life – or far worse, who seem obsessed with making our lives in this country harder – who, on Holocaust Memorial Day, can be seen – bold as brass – tweeting utterly meaningless pictures of themselves signing a book of remembrance.

This past year, the rise in antisemitism in this country claimed lives, in a terror attack on a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur. The security services, as we learned about in considerable detail during a terror trial, managed to prevent a hideously evil plan to slaughter hundreds, of British Jews.

Hardly a week goes by without another doctor being referred to a Medical Practitioner Tribunal for publicly expressing sentiments that would not have been out of place in Der Stürmer.

Where are these MPs after Holocaust Memorial Day? Are they condemning the antisemitism that runs rampant within the rallies they speak at?

The Jewish community is full of people’s accounts of having been shunned by those they once considered friends, frozen out by colleagues, and feeling the need to hide their faith due to the levels of hideous hostility directed at us. Insofar as such MPs address this hatred at all, they prefer to blame Israel for it – as if a bitter war halfway around the world is a justification for people to express

bigotry towards Jews in Britain.

Are they reaching out to Jewish communal organisations to listen – really listen – rather than to a handful of obsequious yes-men from the fringes of British Jewish society who tell them exactly what they want to hear, and which they subsequently tokenise? These are rhetorical questions, of course. We all know the answers.

So next Holocaust Memorial Day, after you’ve spent yet another year ratcheting up your rhetoric in a way which endangers British Jews, spare us your nauseating

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hypocrisy. We’d have more respect for you if you simply led with your chests and stopped pretending that you care even in the slightest about the victims of the Holocaust – other than to use them in your rhetoric attacking us for having ‘not learned the lessons of the past’, of course.

No one is falling for it – it’s a waste of your time and ours. Ditch the tweets, stop the photos. You’ll feel better not having to hide your true selves and we’ll feel happier not having to see you pretend to care to score political points on the backs of murdered Jews.

‘TLSE have voted to get together with Radlett Reform Synagogue, resulting in the biggest merger with Reform since the Tory Party.’

‘THIS BOOK WAS ONE I DIDN'T WANT TO PUT DOWN.’

NETGALLEY REVIEW

WHEN A BODY IS DISCOVERED IN A SYNAGOGUE, DCI JACK MADISON IS DRAWN INTO A WEB OF JEALOUSY, AMBITION, AND INTRIGUE. AS HE UNRAVELS THE MYSTERY, HIS GROWING ATTRACTION TO A SUSPECT THREATENS HIS PROFESSIONALISM, HIS CASE AND, WORSE, HIS PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH...

BBC crisis is beyond bias – it’s cowardice

LEO PEARLMAN CO-CEO, FULWELL 73

Institutions reveal the health of a society long before politicians do, so let’s start with everyone’s favourite, good old Auntie, the BBC. In the past week alone, we’ve seen just how incapable this unwieldy organisation has become of reforming itself, or even of recognising the depth of the problem it faces.

On Holocaust Memorial Day, not one, not two, not three, but multiple BBC presenters and commentators chose to omit the mention of Jews when describing what Holocaust Memorial Day exists to commemorate. This was not a slip of the tongue or an isolated mistake, it was erasure by omission.

Holocaust Memorial Day was created to ensure the remembrance of the systematic murder of six million Jews by the Nazis. That fact is not controversial, nor is it political, it is historical. To avoid saying the word “Jew” is not sensitivity, it’s distortion. So the real question isn’t whether this was

o ensive, it clearly was. The real question is why? What drives a fear of stating a fact that only a Holocaust denier would take issue with?

I do not believe the BBC as an institution, nor the individuals involved, are Holocaust deniers or diminishers, but that only sharpens the concern. Because if this wasn’t denial, then it was calculation, a decision, conscious or otherwise, that it was safer to omit Jews from the Holocaust than to risk upsetting someone else. Who, exactly, are they afraid of?

Less than 24 hours later, with huge excitement and a “world exclusive”, BBC Radio 1 debuted a new track by Kneecap, attentionseeking provocateurs who have built their notoriety on deliberately courting controversy and being proudly opposed to the existence of the only Jewish state. Not just debut any track – the song admonishing the Prime Minister for being unduly influenced by Israel, with bonus allegations of genocide.

This wasn’t an unfortunate booking – it was editorial enthusiasm.

Then, as if on cue, we learned that yet another senior BBC employee was posting

some fairly egregious antisemitic tropes on his social media. He had no issue with the omission of Jews from Holocaust Memorial Day coverage. In fact, he blamed “Jewish hysteria” for the complaints.

From there, the descent was depressingly familiar: Jewish financial influence, Jewish political power, and the implication that Jewish concern is manipulation rather than legitimate grievance, all deployed to explain the “fuss” about Jewish football fans being banned from attending a match in Birmingham.

Three examples, one week, adding up to tell us a lot about our national broadcaster.

Perhaps the BBC’s much-heralded 30-minute online antisemitism training simply hasn’t yet reached the on-air presenters and production teams who couldn’t bring themselves to say the word “Jew” on Holocaust Memorial Day. Perhaps it hasn’t reached senior editorial sta either.

Or perhaps those involved genuinely believe that politics, ideology, and even lyrics can be neatly separated from art, provided the track is, in their professional judgment, a “real banger”. A principle that,

one suspects, is applied rather selectively.

Either way, this is not about one DJ, one producer, or one careless tweet – it is about an institutional culture that has learned to mistake silence for neutrality and omission for balance.

This pretence that the BBC – or any media organisation – can still operate as a neutral, impartial force in an age of polarisation, socialmedia pressure and limitless alternatives, sits at the very heart of the wider problem.

It is also why the debate about the BBC’s funding model is so broken and deeply disingenuous. We are watching the slow normalisation of a culture in which truth is trimmed to avoid backlash, minorities are protected only when convenient and institutions meant to steady us in moments of fracture instead mirror the chaos outside their walls.

That is not a healthy society, neither is it resilient nor sustainable.

History does not judge societies by how carefully they avoided o ence, but by whether they had the courage to tell the truth when it mattered. The cost of failing to do so will be borne by our children, the generation that will inherit our silence.

Returning to Nir Oz after the horrors of 7 October

MICHAEL NEWMAN CHIEF EXECUTIVE, AJR

If you’ve been to Auschwitz, you should also come to Nir Oz,” my friend Yuval told me. That was how I found myself travelling to the kibbutz where I had volunteered for six months in the mid1990s, wondering how what I would find would contrast with my memories.

The timing of my original stay at Nir Oz was significant, coming as it did in the middle of the two Oslo peace accords. At that time, it was normal to see Palestinian workers come to the kibbutz to earn a living and to help the kibbutzniks with farming the land.

The devastation of 7 October 2023 was particularly brutal at Nir Oz. One quarter of its 400 residents were killed, abducted or taken hostage. Only six houses remained untouched. As Yuval, who was born on the kibbutz and lived there while I was a volunteer, described, it was Russian Roulette as to who survived.

Four units of attackers infiltrated with such ease that they were able to call their

collaborators from Gaza to come and also perpetrate crimes. All together, about 900 aggressors committed atrocities there.

The perimeter fence was opened by simple car ramming. It enabled the attackers to take kibbutzniks as hostages, ripping them from their homes, families, and their very dignity.

Shiri Bibas and her two small children, Kfir and Ariel, whose images have been imprinted into our collective consciousness, are just three such victims of the bloodthirsty mob.

And alongside the murders, assaults and kidnappings, what is less reported is the destruction of the very fabric of the kibbutz.

The communal kitchen was torched, irrigation systems were destroyed, and the commercial paint company based there was torched.

While some kibbutzniks want to return – a new neighbourhood is being built – others find the idea too psychologically traumatic.

Yuval’s father, Alex Danzig, had been a renowned exponent of Polish Jewish dialogue who had previously worked at Yad Vashem. He was kidnapped and murdered in captivity, before the Israel Defence Forces recovered his body. He is buried on the kibbutz.

Yuval’s mother, Rachel, miraculously survived by holding the lever of the safe room door for eight hours. Yuval showed me a picture of the bullet hole that passed just under the handle and the corresponding pockmark on the wall behind where she sat. I knew it would be a devastating visit – and the contrast to my happy memories could not have been more stark.

Nir Oz is just down the road from Kibbutz Be’eri and the site of the Nova Festival Memorial, another harrowing monument, where the lives of so many young people were cut short.

There are many fault lines in Israeli politics, added to which is the very future of the kibbutzim. Nir Oz is less than 2km from Gaza; with a simple zoomed in picture phone image, you can see thedevastation of Khan Younis.

The attacks of 7 October have been described as the worst atrocity to befall Jews since the Holocaust.

There are indeed obvious parallels, not least that the attacks had all the hallmarks of the marauding Einsatzgruppen mowing down everyone in their sights.

Before visiting the kibbutz, I had shown Yuval pictures from my time there, including one of me playing football. The pitch was directly behind the huts where the volunteers lived and, curiously, also in the picture was Yuval’s father. The kibbutz had long stopped using volunteers but instead housed Thai workers, who lived in the same huts as we volunteers had.

Comparing the pictures with the destruction before us, I described it as “a di erent lifetime”. Yuval corrected me: “It’s a di erent universe.”

We stood together as the world moved on

EDDIE HAMMERMAN VIGIL CREATOR

Vigil Number One started with shoes. Adult shoes, but heartbreakingly, children’s boots, in echoes of the Holocaust – this time 1,200 murdered and 251 kidnapped by a death cult on 7 October 2023.

We stood in shock in a shopping park, hoping somehow the world would wake up to our trauma. But nothing.

Week two we tried teddy bears. I remember tying cable ties around teddy bear hands and blindfolding them for added impact. Still the world did not stir.

In fact, before Israel had fired a shot, the Jew-hate marches in London and worldwide had begun. The Israeli flag on our own council building was daubed with red paint. We were under attack for being massacred. Our world had turned upside down.

Next we lined up empty buggies. It felt like screaming into the void. And then on vigil seven, a breakthrough, where we were joined by Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis (who was with us from the start) and then deputy prime minister and our MP, Sir Oliver Dowden, who proclaimed the government stood ‘four square’ behind Israel.

Film crews descended, footage was beamed around the world. It felt we had done a thing.

Over the next two years, weekly speakers spoke of the hostages and connected with the families in Israel.

Friendships blossomed, consoling and fortifying each other in the darkness where it felt the war would never end.

We hosted hostage families and they were shocked in a good way when they heard us openly singing the Hatikvah in public, seeing faces of their loved ones held high. We

marked the birthdays of Kfir and Ariel Bibas with orange balloons and birthday cake; after Shosh discovered hostage Romi Gonen loved leopard print, Amazon almost sold out of leopard print clothing as we wore it every week and sent the photos to Romi’s mum.

We wore pink for hostage Inbar Hyman, as we remembered her vibrant life; vigil-goers provided a moment of comfort to the families as they saw videos of us speaking about their loved ones. And we celebrated and honoured each hostage who was rescued and released.

They knew of our vigil in Israel because we told them all about us. I showed every Israeli I met photos on my phone.

It makes me warm knowing we have put our little town on the global Jewish Zionist map.

We bore witness to survivors of 7 October with them showing us how to live after seeing death. We also honoured the fallen – 962 brave IDF soldiers, our brothers and sisters, heroes of Israel who died defending us all.

These are our people, laying down their lives for our future. And those Brits whose families we got to know, IDF fallen heroes Natanel Young and Benji Needham, we shared tears and hugs with their families.

We’ve learned through Dr Marc Wittenberg and his kids the stories of fallen IDF soldiers organs being donated to others in need … they protected lives in life and saved lives after their deaths. Truly remarkable.

And our very own Jake Marlowe, a hero of Israel, murdered rescuing festival-goers at Nova. We got to know the family here, Lisa, Michael and Jakey, and the three Israeli guide dogs we raised money for here, named Jake, Marlowe and Woody after the vigil, will continue their legacy of love.

We’ve also been inspired by a host of incredible activists who have encouraged us to stand taller, from social media creator Lee Kern to investigative journalist dynamo David Collier.

All denominations of Judaism have spoken here – modern Orthodox, Reform, Progressive and just plain old una liated Jews – a space open and inclusive to all.

We have created bonds of connection with other Jewish communities who are on the front line – notably Adam Ma’anit and Heidi Bracham and the Brighton and Hovian Heroes on the coast who, as Adam beautifully said, used the cracks to let the light in.

And my long-lost cousin Cynthia who has been standing on windswept beaches in Cornwall with Christian friends every single week in relentless pursuit of justice for our people. And Golders Green vigil, Hendon United, Belmont as so many more.

There may have been 119 vigils but we also gathered for numerous candlelit hostage havdalahs and giant yellow ribbon stunts in red road – and who could forget more than 1,000 of you came together in Meadow Park to mark 7 October 2024.

We’ve been honoured to welcome former ambassadors of Israel, eminent rabbis, our wonderful local councillors and mayor as well as peers of the realm – with Lord Pollack a constant supporter while representing the Jewish people in the House of Lords with speeches which lifted our souls.

But we have not been content with focusing only inward. We have connected with people of all religions and cultures and a few weeks ago stood in solidarity with the Iranian people.

From Christian Arab Yosef Hadad to Muslim peace activist Loay Sharif to powerful allies Rev Hayley Ace and Rev Tim Guttman, the wonderful sisters of Mary, Thekla and Glory, Christian vigil regulars David Mckee and Olive and the Bishop of Hertford, Jayne Mainwaring – the connections we have forged especially with our regular Christian friends will stay with us forever.

I sat in the Imperial War Museum last week in a Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony wondering who today would stand up against evil if we were faced with it. Look no further than our Christian friends here, the righteous people of our generation who stood defiantly with us when the world stayed silent or, worse still, turned its back.

All these weeks reinforced and elevated our love for Israel. Britain is our home, Israel

is our homeland, where, on 7 October 7, we saw a vision of what the world would look like without an Israel and realised what a blessing we have and a miracle we have witnessed.

That after 2,000 years of yearning for a homecoming, we have a strong and vibrant state which has our back as we have hers.

Which brings me to you … you beautiful people. I have seen a metamorphosis in British Jews since 7 October, from “keep your head down as this too shall pass”, to mighty warriors on our own front line.

Instead of asking others, you have just stepped in – identifying the need and getting stuff done, from knitting hats for the IDF in the Golan mountains to sending blood patches and medical equipment to units in need.

You put up banners, ribbons and posters which would be immediately be ripped down, thousands of small deeds, some we know, most not, but making a huge collective impact.

A special mention to meshugah runner, John White who took the Borehamwood vigil on tour – running more than 150 marathons for the hostages.

From seeing all this, I’d suggest a warrior diaspora gene has been reactivated. You are lions of Israel who, when the time came, stood up for our people.

To steal Lord Sebastian Coe’s line from the closing of the 2012 Olympics, when the time came, you did it right. Bring them home for us was not a slogan – it was a promise. Until the last hostage was not a hashtag, it was an oath.

Am echad, be’ev echad , one people with one beating heart. By being here, you have written an heroic chapter of Jewish history. Thanks to you, this circle of trust outside the former WHSmith in Borehamwood radiated positivity and strength and goodness around the world.

I have never been prouder of what we did and who we have become.

In the merit of Jake Marlowe and the shining example of positivity and kindness set to us by Lisa and Michael Marlowe may we merit to have the fortitude to continue fighting for our people, honouring those who gave so much, and in our time witnessing peace for our people and the world.

As President Herzog said, through Ran Givili’s path, we must rise to the next chapter of our existence as a people. And that’s exactly what you have been doing here. Thanks to you, Am Yisrael is very Chai. Am Yisrael Chai

1

BIRMINGHAM MACCABI VICTORY IN EUROPE

Reigning UJS Cup champions Birmingham Maccabi continued their remarkable rise in student football with a commanding 5–1 victory over Olami Madrid, another Jewish student team, in an international friendly that celebrated the enduring spirit of Jewish sport across Europe. Just months after West Midlands Police barred Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters from attending their side’s Europa Conference League fixture against Aston Villa on “security grounds”, Birmingham’s own Maccabi side travelled to Spain and made their presence known. Club president Harry Weiniger said: “The players carried Birmingham and Jewish student sport on to the European stage with courage, spirit and class. I couldn’t be prouder of what they’ve achieved.”

2 MINISTER AND CHIEF RABBI AT PAPERWEIGHT

Minister of state in the House of Lords for the Department for Work and Pensions Baroness Sherlock visited the offices of Paperweight to see for herself the support the charity delivers to the Jewish community. The baroness met members of the team, current and former clients and caseworkers and spent time in the Helpline area, speaking directly with operators about the calls they receive. Praising the organisation, she said: “Charities like Paperweight ... provide compassionate and practical help for their local community.”

3 STAMFORD HILL LEADERS

HONOUR FORMER PM

Senior representatives and rabbis from the Stamford Hill community hosted former prime minister Rishi Sunak at a special recognition event last week, where he was presented with the prestigious Tree of Life Award in appreciation of what was described as his “contribution, dedication and steadfast support for the Jewish community and for Israel” during his tenure at Downing Street. The event was organised in partnership between the Jewish Community Council and local Stamford Hill–based organisations and hosted by philanthropist Oscar Low.

4 SUPPER IN THE SUBURBS FOR HAMPSTEAD SHUL

Hampstead United Synagogue had a full house of more than 180 people at its annual quiz on Sunday 1 February. Fundraising for Dementia UK and MyIsrael, the mayor of Camden Eddie Hanson and new rabbinic team Rabbi Akiva and Batya Rosenblatt joined guests as tables pitted their wits against each other. Congratulations went to the evening’s winners, team ‘Here Comes Treble’, who have triumphed three times over the past four years! The supper quiz raised more than £4,000.

5 FIVE TREES PLANTED IN TU BISHVAT CEREMONY

Residents from Borehamwood & Elstree joined civic and faith leaders, children and young people to plant five birch, hornbeam, hazel, hawthorne and rowan trees in local Maxwell Park as a symbol of unity and community. Among those taking part were the mayor of Elstree & Borehamwood Dan Ozarow, mayor of Hertsmere Alpha Collins, local representatives of Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Hare Krishna faiths, Jeremy Newmark, leader of Hertsmere Borough Council, town council leader Richard Butler and youth councillors. Ozarow said: “Time and again we come together to look after one another in our town.”

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If you’re looking for love, should you try modern dating methods or traditional matchmaking?

By Brigit Grant and Caroline Friedman

There is a quiet assumption that once a certain birthday passes, love is something you should have already figured out or stopped hoping for. Yet for many people later in life, especially after divorce or bereavement, the desire for companionship, connection and romance doesn’t disappear.

Self-styled psychic Bev Mann has written a candid account of starting again as an older Jewish woman in the dating world.

“With Valentine’s Day approaching and its promises of romance, it’s easy to feel left out if you’re facing a quiet night in with Countdown rather than dinner for two” says Bev. “As a psychic I have helped to guide others to their ‘one’, but when it comes to my own relationships, there’s no crystal ball – just trial, error, and a fair amount of humility.”

After her marriage ended, she stepped back into dating for the first time since the 1980s. “Back then, you met people face to face, spoke on landlines and knew exactly where you stood if the phone didn’t ring. Today’s dating world – with its apps, ghosting and strange new language – can leave even confident women feeling unsure of themselves.”

as London-based Dassy Miller, matchmaker on hit Israeli TV dating show Vort, can confirm.

“More and more people are turning to matchmakers for help,” says Dassy. “In many ways it is harder than ever to meet a partner. It used to be that people lived in a tight-knit community and everyone knew each other but now people have jobs, they travel all over for work, and there is very little chance to meet new, like-minded people.”

Add Jewish dating into the mix – with communal expectations, unsolicited advice and a shortage of suitable introductions –and it becomes even more complicated.

She wrote Swipe Right to tell the truth about what dating later in life actually looks like. Not the polished version, but the real one – where faith, tradition and self-worth collide with modern reality.

“One date arrived at a restaurant looking far older than his photos, wearing a mask and plastic gloves – two years after Covid –before sanitising the table and demanding a highly specific three-course order. Another man, charming on the phone and full of promise, chose Mother’s Day morning to send me an unsolicited and deeply unwelcome photo.”

Beneath the humour is something more serious: the courage it takes to begin again in a community that values family, continuity and shared faith, while still searching for your beshert. “In an era driven by curated perfection, Swipe Right challenges the idea that love must follow a neat timeline or end in a flawless fairytale. It’s about resilience, self-respect and staying open-hearted even when things don’t go to plan.”

idea of the perfect partner for their child is not necessarily the right one.”

A kosher caterer, when her work dried up during the pandemic, she decided to use the time to do something different. Realising that people were finding it hard to meet and socialise because of the lockdown, trained social worker Dassy, who had worked in Israel counselling divorced couples, decided to try her hand at matchmaking. She felt that her own life experiences gave her an insight. Aged 18, she had an arranged marriage that ended in divorce.

Dassy charges £150 for her services and then nothing more unless there is an engagement, which prompts a fee of a further £1,500. So far she has arranged more than 60 marriages. “I see people of all ages from all over the world,” says Dassy, who speaks seven languages. People send her their résumé and photo on WhatsApp and she meets or FaceTimes them. “I don’t take on every client. There was one man in his 70s who wanted a young bride in her 20s or 30s. I told him I would not be helping him! And some people are time-wasters.”

There are about 20 Jewish matchmakers in London and they will sometimes reach out to each other if they do not have the right person on their database. Dassy’s clients span the full spectrum of religious, secular, Sephardi, Ashkenazi, single, never married, divorced and widowed people aged from 18 to 70.

“We find there are lot of women in their 30s and 40s – very successful with good careers who want to meet someone, but simply don’t have the chance to socialise. Also there are patterns. For example, divorced women tend to want to meet someone new, whereas the men are happy to stay single.”

Dassy’s approach is very pragmatic. “If someone is not attractive it does not mean they are not a good catch. I may not be able to change their physical appearance but I can help them to make the best of themselves. And

If you thought dating apps had put paid to matchmakers, think again. They are very much thriving in the Jewish community,

Traditional matchmaking, where the parents contacted the matchmaker, has changed. “I like to deal with the actual person looking for a match,” says Dassy. “After all, if you aren’t mature enough to deal with this, then possibly you aren’t mature enough to be thinking about marriage. And the parents’

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Children’s Mental Health Week

Small but mighty UK is tech haven

people must be honest and open about themselves. It just doesn’t work to hide anything!”

• Swipe Right – The Kosher Medium Goes Dating is available on Amazon, £9.99

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Growing minds, happy hearts

Children’s Mental Health Week is a time to explore the resources available for kids of all ages. By Debbie Collins

If children are given the language for their feelings early enough, maybe they won’t grow up believing they have to suffer in silence.” Powerful words from north London mother-ofthree Esther Marshall, author of two children’s books. Sophie Says ‘I Can, I Will’ focuses on empowerment and career aspirations and is based on the imaginary childhood friend ‘Sophie’ that she and her sister Rebecca shared.

Tragically Rebecca, who had long-su ered from mental illness, committed suicide aged 28. Losing her sister reshaped everything Esther believes about mental health, spurring her to write a second book, Sophie Says ‘It’s Okay Not to Be Okay’, about coping with emotions and getting rid of perfection, a pressure Rebecca always felt as a junior doctor.

talk openly about feelings, believing that

Books are a great way to connect with a child who perhaps isn’t quite ready to see a therapist, and Esther’s aim is to help children talk openly about feelings, believing that emotional education should matter as much as reading and maths.

“The books are very visual and feature Sophie’s sidekick ‘Bunny’, who hides on each page. For school visits, I bring a knitted Bunny and Sophie, which the children love to hold. It’s lovely receiving feedback from teachers and parents that their kids ask for the ‘finding the bunny’ book.”

Children’s Mental Health Week (9-15 February) drops into calendars with a powerful theme of ‘This is My Place’, supporting children and young people to feel that they belong. Whether that is at home, in school, in friendships or in communities, a sense of belonging is integral to mental health and wellbeing.

each page. For school visits, I bring a knitted health and wellbeing. to support children

Lead at Jami, says: “We set up the Dangoor Children and Young Person’s Service because Covid highlighted how much young people needed support. The pilot programme at JCoSS offered 1:1 support from mental health practitioners including occupational therapists, working on coping strategies like how to deal with anxiety.”

The scheme was successfully rolled out to JFS and Yavneh and o ered a Talking Therapies service at Jewish Care’s Amelie House. The service extended to children at non-Jewish schools, as well as carer groups for parents of young people with ADHD.

For a child not quite sold on therapy, Debbie Fine o ers coaching. “I realised from my time on Facebook that kids could benefit from something lighter than therapy. My

coaching skills help kids between 10-18 years old who come to me with challenges like petty friendships or weekend camp nerves such as ‘what if I get

– and Jami (Jewish who

There are many ways to support children with their mental health – and Jami (Jewish Association for Mental Illness) is an excellent place to start. Supporting hundreds of people each year who have been a ected by mental health problems, the service has never been needed more.

Hayley Aaron, Senior PR & Comms

“Social media is a huge plans because they’re not naturally good at replying to messages. These things are a big deal to kids and I give them the space to talk about it.”

Sharing that “even my own daughter sees someone”, Debbie’s approach is without weekly

requested) as she likes to the sessions to be “something they look forward to”.

Giving Me Anxiety is a guide for parents of anxious children covering topics such as separation anxiety, phobias and sexual identity.

The book also features over 100 ‘firework ideas’: quick, digestible strategies for parents to immediately work o . Saskia co-hosts the podcast Help! My Child’s Anxious with her mother, broadcaster Vanessa Feltz. “The pod allows us to respond in realtime to current a airs and the general field of parenting.

For a more traditional approach, Emma Cohn is a psychotherapist with over 25 years’ experience seeing patients from eight to adulthood. Her methods include play and some psycho-education for younger children, where she gently explains “the thinking brain” and “the feeling brain”.

“Kids are all about the feeling brain and we discuss this through play because that’s how they make sense of the world. I always tread lightly and avoid saying ‘you should’, going with ‘I believe’ instead.”

my period?’. a topic too: kids left o messages. These things are a and talk Sharing that “even my own commitment (unless sessions to be “something tional approach, pist with over 25 seeing patients from play and some psycho-education brain” and “the feeling brain”. brain and we discuss this through play because that’s how they make lightly and avoid saying ‘you should’, book Help! My Child’s Anxiety Is

Child therapist Saskia Joss’s Help! My Child’s Anxiety Is

“After Adolescence aired on Netflix (March 2025), there was a surge of parents searching for help and the podcast was immediately supportive. We’re currently the third biggest parenting podcast in Yemen! That tells us that parents all over the world are worried about their anxious children.”

Saskia and her husband Mark run the Mill Hill Therapy Hub with a team of therapists who see kids between three and 18 years old. There is also a children’s book in the pipeline for Saskia.

u For more information sophiesaysofficial.com jamiuk.org

emmacohn.co.uk

saskiajosstherapy.co.uk millhilltherapyhub.co.uk emmacohn.co.uk

The height of success

Standing just four feet tall, Israeli Bat-El Borenstein brings her story of resistance to London for one night only.

By Brigit Grant

The Annual Spiro Tribute Lecture celebrates the work of Robin Spiro, who together with his wife Nitza made a significant contribution to Jewish cultural life in Britain for more than four decades.

Nitza has shaped this year’s tribute (11 February at JW3) around a principle that defined her late husband’s work: “You don’t stop the struggle if the struggle is right. Robin never stopped in his determination to establish a centre for Jewish education,” says Nitza. “Even when others doubted there was a point – or quietly hoped it would fail.”

That is why this year’s tribute features I Am Bat-El – a one-woman show by Israeli performer, actress and lecturer Bat-El Borenstein that uncannily mirrors the spirit of the evening because Bat-El, 37, is just 48 inches tall – and has never let that hold her back.

“I’ve always been craving attention,” Bat-El says, without apology. “I was very young when I first studied theatre, ballet and voice development and was acting professionally at 11.”

Her first professional role still makes her laugh. “I was Beggar number 4 in Oliver Twist and my only line was, ‘Donation! Give me a donation!’ That role changed my life.”

Bat-El grew up near Haifa, but ambition pulled her south.

“Every day after school I’d take the train for two hours to Tel Aviv to rehearse until 10pm, then go back home,” she recalls.

“It was a lot of travel for an 11-year-old, but it was fabulous. I saw people I’d never seen in the suburbs – all this colour. I thought, this is it. This is what I want. This is what I need.” Her parents never discouraged her.

“My mum saw how much I loved it,” says Bat-El, who went on to study at the Nissan Nativ Acting Studio where one of her teachers was Adit, one of Nitza Spiro’s daughters. “She’s a great teacher. Even now – 12 years later before every show, I still do her practical work.”

Bat-El volunteered for the IDF despite being eligible for dispensation. “Because of my height,” she says. “But I wanted to do it. I thought, I cannot miss the experience.”

She is candid about another motivation. “I also really wanted to meet a hot soldier,” she laughs. “They’re very good-looking, you know?”

Bat-El wanted to join Lehakat Tzahal, the IDF entertainment troupe but was instead placed as a social worker for the paratroopers.

“I wasn’t good at it because I wanted to give them whatever they asked for,” she says. “Then I would cry because I couldn’t.”

Clearly unsuitable, she found her footing at Galei Tzahal, the IDF’s national radio station, where she eventually got to ‘perform’ as the host of a show taking song requests from soldiers and allowing them to speak to their mothers.

“That was good, but army radio is not like other parts of the military,” she says. “It’s not on a base, so you don’t have a place to sleep.” Living in the north while the station was based in Jaffa meant punishing hours. “Shifts from 5am to 11pm – so I slept on a mattress in the radio station.”

Hardy is one way to describe the diminutive star who now hosts TED talks and attributes her stoicism to a strict Russian upbringing that never framed her physicality as a disadvantage.

“It was never about being di erent,” she says. “It was about being unique.”

That belief continues to shape her work. “Even today, I don’t feel di erent to others.

politics. “Artists, models, musicians who talk about political stuff when they don’t know anything about it and have never set foot in Israel or the Middle East?” She taps the table. “Are they so bored that all they can talk about is Israel?”

I Am Bat-El is also a musical piece, with three self-penned songs – including a ballad “about my deepest dreams and aspirations” –and a fourth song “which I sang at my Oliver audition, but it’s a surprise, so I can’t tell you”. The show, which Bat-El describes as inspirational stand-up, is drawn from the most painful parts of her life. “But when I read them back, they were hilarious and had the most meat. From pain you grow and prosper. Pain is what builds us – what we overcome.”

Bat-El says the past 25 years have brought a shift in attitudes toward what Israel calls little people, and it has been some time since anyone over the age of five has been rude to her. “If anything, it’s become too politically correct,” she says. “Some little people refer to themselves as dwarves – but not me. That’s the N-word.”

Having performed the show for 12 years, it has evolved as she has. “I started out single, talking about wanting to find love, and now I talk about my husband and children.”

She has two sons – David, six, and Yonatan, almost two – and her husband, as it turns out, was the hot soldier. They first met at a theatre summer camp when she was 14, crossing paths repeatedly over the years as timing failed them. “Every time I saw him, he had another girlfriend.”

In 2015, Bat-El celebrated the 100th performance of her show. Neil was in the audience. “He came up to me and said, ‘Wow, it was fabulous’,” she recalls. “He gave me a kiss – and he was holding the hand of a new girlfriend.”

“It was never about being different – it was about being unique”

I feel fabulous. My physicality is the base of my fabulousness and how I earn my bread and butter. What I’ve made of my life is very much based on how I look.”

Her show is not political, she says, but it is explicit about who she is. “You understand from the show who I am, what I stand for, that I’m Israeli, and proud of serving in the IDF. That I believe in God.”

She laughs at how language has been distorted. “The word ‘Zionist’ cracks me up — how it’s become so negative, Nazi-like, when all it means is that you love your country.

Zion is a word for Israel in the Bible. So yes, I’m a Zionist. I have no problem with that.”

Bat-El has no patience for performative

A year later, they met for a drink. “He was single for a change,” she says. “So I jumped like a cheetah on a gazelle.”

Neil is now her manager, and their trip to London for the show is their first without the children. “I’m going on holiday with my husband,” she says. “No babies. No laundry. No lunches. No early mornings.”

For an evening dedicated to the idea that you don’t abandon a struggle simply because it is di cult, Bat-El’s presence feels inevitable – as does the introduction by Annalie Huberman-Hertz, who refuses to allow Down syndrome to define her.

Her life, like that of Bat-El and Robin Spiro is proof that when the struggle is right, persistence becomes purpose.

 The Annual Spiro Tribute is at JW3 on 11 February. jw3.org.uk

COULD BRITISH TECH SCENE OUTDO SILICON VALLEY?

Catherine

Lenson,

COO at Phoenix Court, the platform founded by Robin and Saul Klein, explains why the UK is one of the strongest innovation economies in the world

Not only could the UK rival Silicon Valley,” says Catherine Lenson, “it already is.”

A bold claim, but one that carries weight. As chief operating o cer of Phoenix Court, Lenson sits at the centre of one of Europe’s most influential venture platforms.

Founded by father and son Robin and Saul Klein, Phoenix Court is home to LocalGlobe, Latitude and Solar – the funds that back companies from first cheque to IPO – and is the number-one investor in EMEA for backing both unicorns and thoroughbreds (companies generating more than $100m in annual revenue, from seed).

She is unapologetically bullish. “I’m sorry to break the bad news,” she tells Jewish News, “but despite everything that’s said about the UK, the reality is that we’re already one of the strongest

innovation economies in the world. We are pathologically optimistic.”

The Phoenix Court portfolio includes UK fintech giants Monzo, Wise and Tide, alongside AI company Faculty, the first UK tech unicorn of 2026 after its $1bn-plus acquisition by Accenture. “The [UK] narrative is often far more pessimistic than the reality,” she says. “When you look closely at what’s actually being built here, the picture is extraordinarily strong.”

Despite being only the sixth-largest economy by GDP, the UK is now the world’s third-ranked innovation economy. Beyond unicorns and thoroughbreds, Phoenix Court tracks “colts”: companies generating between $25m and $100m in annual revenue:

“We don’t need to chase Silicon Valley any more. We’re building something distinctive here,” Lenson says. She began her career in human resources on a graduate programme at UBS – “not the

most obvious destination for a Cambridge graduate eager to make her mark in the City”. She went on to spend years on trading floors before becoming the first female managing partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers, helping build the SoftBank Vision Fund into the world’s largest venture fund. “It gave me a way into financial markets through people,” she says. “And venture capital, ultimately, is exactly that – investing in companies through a lens of people.”

Venture capital, she explains, operates under what investors call a “power law”: out of dozens of investments, only a handful will generate the majority of returns. “You have to be quite sanguine about the fact that some of the founders you back will not succeed,” she says. “That’s not a crisis, that’s the job. It’s about spotting something in a founder the market can’t yet see.”

Inside Phoenix Court, that instinct has its own shorthand. “We talk about seeing around corners and about squinting to see the future,” she says. “You’re backing a human being for a 10or 15-year journey.”

Alongside its UK focus, Phoenix Court has built a growing presence in Israel and now ranks among the country’s leading seed-stage investors. “Israel has always been an extraordinary innovation economy,” Lenson says. “The depth of science, engineering and entrepreneurial talent there is exceptional.”

What struck her most is how that ecosystem continued to function through war. “It tells you something very profound about Israeli resilience,” she says.

Her own timing at Phoenix Court has given that connection unexpected personal resonance. “I joined in early 2023 with no idea what was coming in October,” she reflects.

“Sometimes I think a higher power put me in a Jewish-owned firm at exactly this moment. To be grounded in a firm whose values feel aligned, and to be proudly supporting Israeli founders through this period, has mattered enormously.”

For Lenson, that alignment between professional life, identity and responsibility has shaped how she thinks about leadership. She began her

working life on a highly male-dominated trading floor. While the dial has shifted, the numbers remain stubbornly low. According to the British Business Bank, only 13 percent of senior individuals on UK venture capital teams are women, and nearly half of firms have no women at all on their investment teams.

She has come to think of leadership life as a triangle. “You’re always managing three things: job, family and community.” She and her husband both hold senior roles while raising two children. “The juggle is real,” she says.

As one of a small number of Jewish women operating at senior levels in venture capital, she believes scarcity carries its own responsibility. “There are not enough of us,” she says. “And that creates a positive demand from the community to step up and use those skills.”

In recent years, that has meant serving on the board of Hadley Wood Jewish Community synagogue and as a trustee of the University Jewish Chaplaincy, which has faced unprecedented pressures since 7 October. “When moments arrive that test your community, you realise you have to show up,” she says.

For Lenson, leadership, whether in business or in community, is more about responsibility than position. And that sense of responsibility extends well beyond gender. For all her optimism, she is clear that Britain’s innovation story is still a work in progress.

“This government and the one before have taken meaningful steps,” she says, “but there is still more to do, to put the right capital in the right place and to make sure the value created here benefits people here.”

If Silicon Valley once represented the ultimate destination for ambitious founders, she believes that era is fading. “We don’t need to chase anyone anymore,” Lenson says. “We’re building our own model.”

For an investor accustomed to making decisions that will only truly be judged a decade from now, the conclusion feels simple.

“The future is already being built,” she says. “We just need to believe in it.”

MAKING SENSE OF THE SEDRA

In our thought-provoking series, rabbis, rebbetzins and educators relate the week’s parsha to the way we live today

RABBI STEPHEN DANSKY CRANBROOK SYNAGOGUE

Personal relationships foster love and connection

In the challenging financial times in which we live there is an increasing emphasis on personal relationships. This is not a product or a service that people buy into, it is interconnectedness, and the feeling of trust that it comes together with it.

Anyone who has waited many long minutes to get an appointment will appreciate the importance of the connection on the end of the line,after the grating elevator music.

With this in mind, this week in parashat Yitro we read the first and only public revelation of God to an entire people, when Hashem

presented the Jewish people with the Ten Commandments. The first of these is: “I am the Lord your God who took you out of Egypt, from the house of slaves.”

This announcement was more than acknowledging a higher being. It proclaimed that there was a God who intervened through the metaphysical wall to touch the lives of his people, Israel saving them from the clutches of Egypt. It expressed an intimate relationship between the ine able unknowable being, and the mortal and fallible.

Once the Jews at Sinai heard this first commandment, the ones

that followed were not just instructions to be followed, but rather keys to continuing the relationship between the omnipotent and humanity. “You should not have any other gods besides me,” emphasises the exclusivity of the relationship. There is no substitute for what was o ered at that moment; no protection, no care that could begin to compare to the God who expresses himself through the salvation of the Jewish people.

The word for Egypt is Mitzrayim , which is an amalgamation of two words – meitzar , meaning a narrow place, and yam , the bitterness of the sea. Put together, Egypt tells us that the essence of slavery is constriction of potential, the sucking out of creativity, which leads to bitterness and despair.

The first commandment tells us that the key to our freedom lies in unleashing our creativity and potential. Any release of potential within the human realm is finite, and subject to the laws of entropy.

The commandments, understanding their depths and fulfilling them provides the path to infinite potential and possibility – after all, God has no limits or boundaries that constrain him, and when we connect, we release the potential that has always been innate within ourselves.

“I am the Lord your God” – infinite, timeless, and not subject to any flaw, and through your connection to him, you have the potential to leave your house of bondage and anything that limits your potential to grow and develop in your lives.

This personal relationship is not

Trust comes through connection

only a promise to the generation who experienced leaving Egypt, but your journey and my journey as well.

We have lived through di cult times over the past few years. The atrocities of 7 October, the antisemitism that runs through the streets of London and Manchester. There are many reasons to feel despair.

The first of the Ten Commandments reminds us of that human customer connection – the love and the personal connection that took us out of Egypt, every generation, from that day to ours.

Progressive Judaism

LEAP OF FAITH

BY RABBI AARON GOLDSTEIN SENIOR RABBI, THE ARK SYNAGOGUE

There are moments in the year that I feel deep pride in being and being seen as a British Jew. Mitzvah Day provides a positive image of our community in local wider society and there are moments when the nation acknowledges our experience, such as the marching to the Cenotaph at the annual AJEX Parade and the significant marking of Holocaust Memorial Day.

I have always stated that Mitzvah Day is not for one day – rather we hope that it influences our behaviour throughout the year.

We equally do not remember or work for peace and reconciliation simply at the Cenotaph or on HMD. Through education, there is the belief that we can e ect change. At times, when faced by the enormity of humanwrought disaster, such as the World Wars and the Holocaust of the last century, there is also the hope that humanity will change. It might do but we observe that the idea of “never again” may be a long game, not one won in a generation. Continued education is vital, alongside civic classes

that aim to provide tools for disagreements between individuals to be non-violent, in the hope that nations may be built around this ethic.

I am minded by the words of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, who stated in 1948: “Where Jewish education is neglected, the whole content of Judaism is reduced to merely an awareness of antisemitism. Judaism ceases then to be a civilisation and becomes a complex.”

This is worthy of consideration for the education of our own young people and also for that of young people and adults in the wider world. We

know the beauty and wonder of Judaism and the positive force for good it can be in our lives. When we are confident and positive about ourselves we are most likely to integrate personally and professionally with those around us.

At The Ark Synagogue, Holocaust learning for young people culminates in a long weekend in the Czech

Republic. We visit the town where one of our Torah scrolls is from as well as Terezin deportation damp. It is powerful, poignant and memorable.

We also celebrate Shabbat with the Ej Chajim Congregation we helped develop, which is overflowing with young Jewish and Jew-ish people. We remember and

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celebrate at the same time. Similarly, annually we engage with approximately 2,000 local primary school children in our synagogue or at their school. While addressing their core national curriculum goals, these are value-added experiences with the celebration of life through Judaism at its core. Jews love food, making fun of ourselves and sharing joy with others.

It is more of a struggle with secondary schools but some of the private schools and the occasional state school with an enlightened teacher enable students to learn lessons from the Holocaust and that Judaism is a living, thriving and vital part of our nation.

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