For Brighton resident Adam Ma’anit the horrors of the last week have – as they have for many Jewish and Palestinian families in the UK – reprised previous tragedies.
Ma’anit’s 18-year-old cousin, Maayan Idan, was among the first civilians to be killed as Hamas’s attack unfolded last Saturday. Her father, Tsachi Idan, remains missing, presumably held hostage within the embattled Gaza enclave, 500m from the kibbutz from where he was taken.
Two decades earlier, Ma’anit had grieved another teenage cousin: 16-year-old Orly Ofir. She too was murdered in Israel, again by Hamas, this time by a bomb as she ate with her mother in a Haifa restaurant.
In Brighton, Ma’anit is anxious over a possible surge in antisemitism against the city’s Jewish community of around 2,700. Anti-Jewish attacks are spiking throughout the country.
Ma’anit, like many, feels isolated and vulnerable. On Friday the 49-year-old was interviewed by counter-terrorism police after a possible hate crime in Brighton linked to the war in Israel.
Palestinians in the UK can relate to the escalating tensions. Faced with mounting Islamophobia, thousands are also coping with the loss of contact with loved ones and friends in Gaza, their whereabouts unknown, their fate uncertain.
Londoner Salem Nusseibeh will spend today, like yesterday, fretting over his cousin in Gaza, who lives with his wife, nine-year-old daughter and teenage son. “Their son was about to start university,” says the 22-year-old. “That was his life, now it is ruined.” The daughter is diabetic, struggling to access vital medicines.
“I studied history, this is like a medieval siege,” said Nusseibeh, referring to Israel’s complete blockade of power, water and fuel to the narrow coastal strip.
Nusseibeh, along with others in Britain’s Palestinian community – which numbers around 20,000 – can only watch helplessly as friends and family in Gaza await the imminent Israeli invasion. “Their house is damaged, the neighbour’s house has been bombed.”
Almost immediately last weekend the violence in Israel and Gaza was being played out on UK streets, convulsing historical Israeli-Palestinian tensions.
By Friday Scotland Yard had confirmed a “massive increase” in suspected antisemitic offences. A day earlier, anti-Muslim cases were reported to have tripled in the days since Hamas attacked. Several Jewish schools closed on security grounds. Another 200 schools have been visited by officers to reassure teachers and pupils.
On the streets, thousands of police have been handed extra patrols. More than 300 synagogues and mosques have been briefed by officers over issues relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Communities say they have never felt more fearful.
Already, pro-Palestinian marches have prompted the intervention of the home secretary, Suella Braverman, who warned that singing a chant advocating freedom for Palestinians – and the abolition of Israel – may be a criminal offence.
In Ma’anit’s adopted city of Brighton, attendees of one pro-Palestinian protest last weekend overstepped the line with police making an arrest over comments allegedly supporting Hamas’s attack.
A sense of powerlessness is increasingly paralysing UK Palestinians. Most have extensive family connections within Gaza. Maintaining contact is increasingly fraught.
Londoner Abdurrahman Tamimi lost contact for 36 hours last Thursday morning with his cousin Riyad, who lives with his wife, son and two daughters in northern Gaza. As the Israeli army issued mass evacuation orders for their neighbourhood, Tamimi began to despair.
“As a human, you fear the worst. But Palestinians are hopeful people.”
By Friday night, Tamimi managed to reach his family by phone. Riyad had heard rumours that convoys heading to south Gaza were being targeted by Israel. A potentially life- defining decision had been made.
“My cousin and his family have decided they will remain in their home and not leave,” said Tamimi.
Had the family moved from their Gaza home it would not have been the first time Tamimi’s family has been displaced. In 1948 his paternal grandparents were ejected from the West Bank, fleeing to Kuwait and then to Jordan.
His father came to the UK in the 1970s as a student, the family settling permanently in London in the 90s. “The UK is my country now,” says Tamimi’s mother. “It’s a place where you can be free.”
Like many in the diaspora, Tamimi has a deep connection to Palestine, feasting on stories about his family’s history.
As a student at London’s City University, Tamimi identified strongly with his Palestinian heritage and had begun advocating for the rights of Palestinians, knowing it might lead them to contact with the UK’s principal counter-terrorism programme.
“We were always fearful of the threat of Prevent being used against us by the university. We were already facing numerous restrictions and false accusations of glorifying terrorism.”
Inexorably, anti-Muslim hatred became part of Tamimi’s life. “Islamophobia is always there. There are specific times when it is more visible: something will happen and people will say things about Muslims or Palestinians that you didn’t realise they thought.”
Increasingly, Tamimi is concerned that freedoms of expression are shrinking in tandem with an increase in Islamophobia.
“We face increasing restrictions. We constantly feel targeted just for speaking out about injustices faced by the Palestinian people.”
Back in Brighton, Ma’anit feels similarly targeted, just for being Jewish. The East Sussex city has a sizeable leftwing community that he says has left him exposed to antisemitism.
“It was very fashionable on the left to hate on Israel, a kind of shibboleth to mark your progressiveness, how right-on you are. I’ve experienced a lot of hostility, just by virtue of being Israeli.”
Born in Jerusalem, Ma’anit moved to Rockaway, New York, aged seven and quickly experienced his first taste of antisemitism. “I got beaten up by Nazis. I got stabbed in a playground. I know what it’s like to be attacked because of my identity.”
Ma’anit moved to the UK in 2002. Would he consider leaving if anti-Jewish hate became too much?
“Yes, if my daughter at school was getting abused and bullied, which thankfully she hasn’t.”
Yet when violence erupted in Gaza in 2021 the family was alarmed by the response of those around them.
“There was a lot of outpouring of [pro-Palestinian] solidarity, social media posts from her friends at school. She felt really isolated and really afraid,” said Ma’anit.
The killing of his teenage cousin Orly Ofir by a Hamas suicide bomber in 2002 haunts the family: she was just a few years older than Ma’anit’s daughter is now.
In Israel, another cousin, a father of two young children, is among the vast build-up of reservists deployed to the border of Gaza for a likely ground invasion.
Meanwhile, Ma’anit, a digital communications officer, must wait for news of Maayan’s father, Tsachi, while hatching plans to evacuate relatives back to the UK.
Tamimi has no such choice. His cousin’s decision to stay put in northern Gaza underlines a lack of genuine options.
Tamimi finds it challenging to sleep as he contemplates what lies ahead for his Gazan cousins. The entire family are praying for their safety. “My heart aches for my relatives in Gaza. But what breaks my heart is the plight of the children.”
