I knew. In 2014, I knew. Something was coming. I felt it in the bones of me. I felt outside of my life. I didn’t trust a soul. I left London. It didn’t feel like I had a future there. Within six months of living in Los Angeles, Grazia asked to interview me about antisemitism in the UK. This was mere months before Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour party, and I agreed to be interviewed. The title of the article was bold. I didn’t write it. I remember when it was published I felt a mixture of relief and shame. I was ashamed. I thought people would find me to be hysterical, or overreactive. I wanted to hide. I thought they wouldn’t believe me, but I knew that I firmly understood and trusted what I was saying. I knew my own gut. I stood to gain absolutely nothing from making this admission, but I couldn’t keep it inside me.
There’s another two pages of this piece. It was the talk of Twitter. It was the talk of everyone I left behind in London. It was the talk of my small community where I grew up. There were many dissenters, even among Jews. In my industry… Well, my friend James, who isn’t Jewish, wrote this on Twitter yesterday:
Yesterday, in central London, 200,000 people marched through the streets bearing Palestinian flags and screaming death cult chants. Some areas of the march were segregated by gender such was the religiosity of those attending. One commentator on Twitter described London as Tehran on Saturday. In one underground train during Saturday’s demonstration, a TFL (Transport For London) Tube driver led a chant in a packed car, and gleefully all the passengers repeated according to his instruction: “FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA, PALESTINE WILL BE FREE!” I can’t imagine being in that train car. My blood would have run cold.
I remember the 7th July 2005 like I remember 9/11. On that day, 52 Londoners were killed by ISIS terrorists, during a planned attack on London’s transport system, specifically around Aldgate, Edgware Road and Russell Square stations. For months afterwards, people were terrified to get on the Tube. Scooters became popular as the new means of commuting.
And here we are, not even 20 years later, and a London underground driver is celebrating the same people who murdered our own citizens.
In 2014, I knew.
Not only are the scenes from London spine-chilling, not only were Jewish people all over the city cowering in fear, but the Metrolpolitan Police - the state apparatus in place to protect us - did absolutely nothing to secure Jewish life. In fact, the Metropolitan Police’s Twitter account instead decided to gaslight Jews who were calling them out for ineffective policing.
In tandem to all of this unsettling disturbance, more information was coming out from Israel about the massacre on October 7th, including autopsies that revealed even more heinous details of the torturing than what we were privy to before. (I will spare you the details here). They also revealed that the Hamas terrorists were high on amphetamines and cocaine, creating a sense of exhiliration during their chaotic spree. (Is Allah approving of this or…?) The terror we Jews as a collective feel right now cannot be put into words. Total utter despair. I spoke to friends on Saturday (it was my birthday, not the most fun one), and one of them described his feeling to me as “catatonic”. This was before a story broke about a female Jewish leader Samantha Wolf from Detroit who was stabbed to death outside her home early in the morning.
Something people still don’t seem to gauge is the frightening reality of the attacks in Israel; a place that was built to be the Jewish safe haven. The autopsies show that the victims of October 7th received worse barbarism than that inflicted in the Nazi concentration camps. The displays of support for this throughout the West are abjectly terrifying for every Jew. Personally for me, without explicit messages of reassurance from non-Jewish people, I cannot trust anyone outside my community. And when it comes to the accuracy of our most lauded media channels, I have lost absolutely all faith. CNN apparently don’t even know where Tel Aviv, or Sderot is…
What the antisemites marching through our cities or the editors of our antisemitic newspapers have failed to realize is the counterproductivity of their actions. All this achieves is a doubling down from Jews in our unwavering dedication to ensure that the threat of Hamas is eradicated for good. The divide between “us” and “them” couldn’t be greater. You want to accuse us of dual loyalty? Go right ahead. We are all first and foremost Children Of Israel right now.
And while these carnivals of hatred are happening on our doorsteps, the mainstream media and half of Hollywood are advocating for the hatred to just go underground and wait. They all want a ceasefire. Many A-listers have signed the usual meaningless open letters to urge peace love and truth like they’ve been doing since the 1960s, à la (wifebeater) John Lennon.
The signatories are asotunding. Oscar Isaac: a non-Jew famous for playing a Jew. Andrew Garfield: a Jew famous for playing superhero Spider-Man. Again, I’m not sure that on Hamas’s top list of priorities post-genocide will be dealing with the aftermath of the SAG-AFTRA debacle and/or making sure Hollywood’s leading men and women are safe from AI technology. The only “strikes” Hamas are aware of involve drones.
For thousands of years the Jews have been painted as bloodthirsty warmongering demons. Hamas have spun this so well that the entire media and now the power of Hollywood’s cowardly cabal are throwing their weight behind this imaginary ceasefire, while forgetting the genocidal threat that exists against Jews. And so anyone who objects to ceasefire looks like a fiend.
Let’s be clear. There will be no ceasefire. Jewish people will not debate or negotiate away our humanity. You can hate us all you want but we’re not the ones lying. We have watched this movie a hundred times before. It doesn’t have a good ending.
The protestors, the media, the actors, they will all say: Palestinian does not equal Hamas. OK then well where are the protests demanding release of the hostages, who include women, children and grandparents? Where are the Palestinian protesters urging “Hamas Does Not Represent Me”? Where is the Palestinian on the BBC who rejects the cries of “Free Palestine” as a respose to the atrocities of October 7th? If the Palestinians of Gaza do not support Hamas, then where is the uprising? Why is there no resistance against the terror regime? There are other incredible displays of rebellion in Arab nations. Why not in Gaza?
In 2014, I knew. And as soon as I came out as a Zionist, a decade of abuse began. And I became an expert at identifying a Jew hater. You only have to scratch and it’s right there on the surface. It’s easy for people to be bought by antisemitic rhetoric. You don’t necessarily have to be an ill-meaning person. Antisemitism works upon its victims like coercive control. Antisemitic people think they’re smart. Some of them are. Some of them code things quite well. They dehumanize Jewish people - or a token Jewish person - slowly and they won’t overtly describe someone as a Jew, but they’ll question motives, they’ll chip away at details, they’ll put doubts in unsuspecting people’s minds, they’ll minimize the things that are important to us and our culture – like our diet, they’ll describe us as greedy or money-orientated, as liars, they’ll invent that we’re capable of quite shocking / atrocious things. Stabbing our own friends in the back (we killed Jesus after all). That kind of thing.
Israel and the Jews are not a brand like these other social justice causes. We’re no good at it, and we have never had a reason to be, because we are never popular. We are the bastions of morality. We are people who live the truth, and we are the recipients of a pure envy and intimidation as a result. People in cities that don’t even have Jews left in them are discussing the war between Israel and Hamas because everyone’s obsessed with Jews. Obsessed. It’s all our fault. That’s what antisemitism is. That’s how it works. Is the world still talking about Ukraine? No. Are the elite talking about Sudan? No. Is anyone talking about the Central African Republic? No.
Antisemites have agendas. Whether they’re the people on the news, or marching in the streets, or sitting in a private room, antisemites are not reliable narrators. The only people who can tell you the truth are us. We have to keep resisting.
Golda Meir once said: If we have to have a choice between being dead and pitied, and being alive with a bad image, we'd rather be alive and have the bad image.
If you’re a bad Jew, good. Own it. For what it’s worth, I’m one too.
You are the bravest woman I know of (I wish I actually knew you) - you are so ahead of the curve and so open to saying what none of us wants to believe or accept is true. You are the sooth-sayer of our time and I wish that what you knew and saw was not true but we all need to listen to you and speak up more loudly and less politely than we have been. Thank you @evebarlow for screaming truth while so many only whisper it!
Fuck yeah EB, I am getting less and less sad and scared and more and more confident and brazen. Fuck these actors and activists. Israel will do what must be done now and nobody is going to stop it. I’ve seen you on a stage with Noa Tishby and she gave a belter of a speech the other day. Hope you saw it. I’m with you all the way Eve, I’m not being kind about it and I have no tolerance for the useful idiots like Glenn and Max who preach their anti Israel bullshit all the time but when they make a list of Jews guess what. Those 2 are on their and ain’t getting a pass. The devil knows who you are no matter how much equivocating you do.
I’m wide a awake and ready Eve. You are my people. Thank you love.
AA