As Winter Approaches, What it Feels Like to be Jewish in London.
Arthur S. Firkins London: November 2023
Another cold day in London, I am off sick from work, huddling close to an extremely inefficient bar heater , lamenting summer, feeling sorry for myself, perusing the room, spying a copy of Anne Franks’ diary on the bookshelf, the dusty shelf, where all the books for my English classes sit waiting their time.
This book hasn’t been needed for awhile, couldn't seem to fit it in over the last few years, among the crowded curriculum, pity though, the kids don’t seem to know about it anymore and definitely too mature these days to bring themselves to read about little Anne, too confronting, far too traumatic, best to keep it on the shelf. A miserable day, spent alone feeling poorly, but that book calls to me to open it, as though it is alive, with experience, calls to be taken down from the shelf, dusted off. The media play images of the pro- Hamas crowd outside the Sydney Opera House on the 9th October chanting ‘gas the Jews’, ironically on my 60th birthday and sadly in my home town.
I left the sunshine of my beloved Sydney some twenty one years ago to teach around the world to now end up in the city from which my Jewish ancestor, all convicts, departed from, some 236 years ago, another exodus. In fact, I am sitting now in a house close to Deptford, where convict hulks where moored, housing many of the convicts who were to make the perilous journey to Sydney, and dumped on the very spot which these Hamas supporters were now desecrating with their hateful tune, yelling and calling ‘to gas the Jews’. With an even greater stroke of irony, I am also a descendent of one of the tribes of the Sydney Cove where the Sydney Opera House now stands, named for Bennelong an Arora man.
The same tune has been repeated by the same huge crowds of protesters in Paris, New York, Berlin and as I have been experiencing over the last few weeks, London as well, the very city that my convict Jewish ancestors were transported from. One of them, Esther Abrahams arrived in Sydney in 1788 on board the Lady Penrhyn. Her crime was to steal some ribbon from a shop in Brick Lane London.
Esther was one of the founders of the colony of Sydney and was even the first lady for a short time, in the place where these Hamas supporters yell their mantra ‘from the river to the sea’. Poor Esther never saw that river they refer to, and the sea she looked out to was the Pacific.
The Mayor of London bangs on about Gaza and does nothing to curb the excessive number of protests of every larger crowds so the centre of London has become a no go area for Jews like me. The gutless politicians and police in London are similarly wishy washy in their response. It appears that the pro-Hamas mob keep very quiet when it comes to other countries China, Saudi Arabia, Burma and Russia but manage to gather around and tune their voices when it comes to Jews, never mind that there are two million Arabs who live in Israel and never mind that many of the 1400 victims and 200 hostages from the Hamas terror attack on the 7th October were also Arab and also international citizens, that is all conveniently forgotten.
In recent days there has been vandalism of Jewish businesses in the North of London and Jewish schools, such as the one I teach at, have a heavy security presence. Well I suppose I should thank the mayor for my over 60s free train pass, a welcomed 6oth birthday surprise, even though I can’t use it in central London as the flash mob now occupy railway stations at a whim, chanting the same call exercing their rights to free speech. Maybe I should just be happy with my free travel.
Perhaps my convict ancestors were right to piss off from here, they had free travel. Seems that London hates Jews, hasn’t changed, maybe I should have paid more attention to their exodus, never really cop a break, expelled from Spain, expelled from Portugal, kicked from Amsterdam, kicked from London, invited back to London again, then transported from London to Sydney, well at least they were given a choice, I suppose, at their Old Bailey trail, they could choose to die by hanging or take seven years to Botany Bay. It was an obvious no brainer, they all took the seven year option and ended up founding the city that is now called Sydney.
Unfortunately their clueless descendent, me, is back to freezing London, where the mob seems to be allowed to take over the streets on a weekly bases , where the hoards are allowed to march down the lanes while the army veterans are remembering. Armistice Day. desecrate the Cenotaph, burn the Union Jack, destroy paintings in Cambridge colleges and spray paint statues, all waving placards, Climate Change Justice for Terrorists, Old Gizas for Gaza, Drag Queens for Hamas …Queers for Palistine, all in good fun really.
All tolerated by those useless politicians, probably the same kind of gutless tofts that sent the convicts, my ancestors packing to Sydney Cove. Their solution is not to stop the mob, but for the Jews to keep out of the way of the mob, to hopefully just bugger off somewhere else. May as well be on a hulk on the Thames, might be warmer in any case. If the Islamist mob had their way the Jews will be now run out of town, from London, from New York, from Sydney, kicked from, Israel ‘from the river to the sea’. London is starting to feel uncaningly like 1938 Germany and the pro Hamas mob could easily carry on the fine old British pogram tradition. Hopefully there are a few hulks left in on the Thames River just in case we get the boot, again.
My ancestors were the founders of a country which has enshrined free speech, that is not evident anywhere in the Middle East, the very free speech that the Hamas Terrorists denies to the civilians of Gaza and the Palistinian Authority supress in the West Bank except for free speech to yell anti-semitic chants. Anne Frank had to hide in a house atic, but unfortunately where I live in London, we don’t have an atic.
My day off sick has not been wasted and I have started to read Annes’ dairy , for the tenth time, starting to sound very familiar, but this time I can reread it with a new found respect that comes from being a Jew in London in the long Winter of 2023.
Notes
The Pogroms of 1189 and 1190. English Heritage https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Pogroms-1189-1190/
