116: Simon Sebag Montefiore on the History — and Future — of British Jews

Summary

Podcast Summary: Ask Haviv Anything, Ep. 116: Simon Sebag Montefiore on the History — and Future — of British Jews
Release Date: May 17, 2026
Host: Haviv Rettig Gur
Guest: Simon Sebag Montefiore, historian and author

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Episode Overview

In this rich, urgent conversation, Haviv Rettig Gur sits down with acclaimed historian Simon Sebag Montefiore to trace the epic, often perilous story of British Jews—from their medieval beginnings to the crises facing the community in 2026. Their discussion covers nearly a millennium of Jewish life in Britain: expulsion and return, struggles for emancipation, the transformation triggered by mass immigration, the community’s role in the British Empire, and the golden age of integration—all culminating in a frank, sometimes somber conversation about the alarming rise in antisemitism and whether the community’s security and belonging are once again conditional.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins and Medieval Experience

• Jewish Presence Begins with the Normans (05:45–09:06)
  • Jews arrived with William the Conqueror after 1066, speaking a unique Judeo-French language. Their early positioning was as outsiders: legally restricted, economically essential (money lending and medicine), yet always vulnerable.
  • Montefiore: "The Jewish presence in Britain has always been tiny. In the Middle Ages it was 5,000 people… so we’re talking about…a tiny community with all that entails." (05:49)
• Medieval Successes and Persecution
  • Despite individual wealth and influence (e.g., Licorice of Winchester), Jews were scapegoated, particularly during the Crusades, and became targets for the first-ever “blood libel.”
  • Montefiore: "The blood libel starts…in 1144…that has rebounded through the ages." (09:14–12:43)
• Expulsion in 1290 (09:06–14:47)
  • Rising financial pressures and antisemitism culminated in Edward I expelling all Jews—a pattern later repeated throughout Europe.

2. Return and the Modern Era

• Cromwell and the Puritan Legacy (16:12–23:08)

  • Jews were not formally readmitted until the 1650s under Oliver Cromwell, driven by Protestant Biblical romanticism and utilitarian policy. Early modern Jewish Britain was primarily Sephardic, with small numbers and legal ambiguity regarding rights.
  • Montefiore: "[Cromwell] said, fine, we won’t actually come to a conclusion. We’ll simply ignore the ban and pretend it doesn’t exist." (16:43)

• Gradual Emancipation and Integration (23:29–33:47)

  • The story of emancipation stretches over a century: Jews slowly won access to professions and Parliament, often through gradual “don’t ask, don’t tell” British policies.
  • First Jewish MP: Lionel Rothschild (after extended campaigns), 1858.
  • Moses Montefiore, central family in the rise of Jewish prominence.
  • Montefiore (on British ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’): "Much of it is done by don't ask, don't tell…there's no constitution in Britain." (23:29)

• Integration and Philanthropy

  • Despite restrictions, prominent families not only flourished but became deeply philanthropic and patriotic, often helping in causes beyond the Jewish community (Irish famine relief, abolition of slavery).

3. Mass Migration and Internal Tensions

• The Russian Pogroms and Ashkenazi Influx (39:45–44:02)
  • Late 19th-century pogroms drive Eastern European Jews to Britain, overwhelming established, mostly Sephardic/German communities and triggering snobbery as well as new anxieties among British society.
  • This triggers the 1905 Aliens Act, the first restrictive immigration law in British history.
  • Montefiore: "There's a huge kind of backlash…the old Jewish families…welcomed this Jewish community and of course, give huge amounts of money and found schools for them…" (39:56)

4. British Jews, Zionism & Empire

• Ambivalence toward Zionism (44:02–50:59)
  • Elite families split on Zionism; many fear it will stoke antisemitism and threaten their acceptance as British.
  • Montefiore: "The idea of Zionism is like throwing a grenade into this group." (48:53)
• Role in Middle Eastern Politics
  • From Disraeli buying the Suez Canal to the Balfour Declaration: British policy toward Jews and Zionism was driven by a mix of religio-cultural affinity, strategic calculation (especially during WWI), and realpolitik.

5. World Wars & Refusal

• Mandate Palestine and Peril at Home (65:11–79:01)

  • Between the wars: Jews blocked from British immigration even as many are waved into Palestine. Political Zionism both embraced and opposed at the highest levels.
  • British betrayals: In 1939 the UK floors the Jews, closing Palestine’s doors even as the Holocaust begins.
  • Rettig Gur: "So the British decision was to rescue kids on the condition that those kids would be orphaned." (78:56)

• Post-War Scuttle and Jewish Revolt

  • After WWII, dreams of a Jewish state are opposed by British authorities, with anti-Jewish riots even in England after attacks by Jewish militias in Palestine.

6. The Modern Golden Age

• Prosperity & Integration (1948–2020) (80:06–81:38)
  • For decades, British Jews experience what Montefiore terms a “golden age”: integrated, prosperous, represented in every field.
  • "It’s a golden age… it goes right, totally comfortable. It’s comfortable, it’s integrated." (80:06)

7. Turning Point: Corbyn, Decolonization, and October 7th

• Resurgence of Antisemitism (81:53–98:40)
  • The 2000s see a rising ‘decolonization’ ideology originate in British universities, recasting Jews as “white oppressors” through the prism of Israel/Palestine.
  • Montefiore: "There was…this idea that Jews were a wealthy white community who therefore could not face racism themselves and who were extremely suspect because of their…alliance to Zionism." (86:59)
• Corbyn Era
  • Under Jeremy Corbyn, antisemitism becomes mainstreamed in the Labour Party; this is a “completely new” challenge as antisemitic tropes are justified by anti-Israel rhetoric.
• October 7th and After
  • The Gaza war triggers weekly massive “pro-Palestinian” marches, unprecedented in their size and focus. Jews are vilified en masse with ancient libels re-packaged (“genocidal, baby-killing”).
  • Overt attacks: vandalism, synagogue fortification, and physical violence. The golden age, Montefiore admits, is over.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• On Jewish fragility:
  Montefiore (14:47): “You could be there for hundreds of years and the politics goes wrong, the finances of the kingdom goes wrong and your whole life is…conditional on those conditions.”

• On attempts at Emancipation:
  Montefiore (33:47): “…the British Jews, of whom there is, you know, 35, 40,000 now can enter Jewish life. And they do so with great enthusiasm.”

• On anti-Jewish backlash to success:
  Montefiore (63:02): “The very fact of that increasing success and assimilation and acceptance leads to the backlash that we see. We saw in France in 18 France and Austria in the 1890s…”

• The duality of Zionism and antisemitism in British policy:
  Rettig Gur (65:11): “They’re allowing mass immigration of Jews to Palestine at the time when they’re still not allowing mass Jewish immigration into Britain.”

• Jewish vulnerability returns in the Corbyn era & after
  Montefiore (86:59): “For the first time…the Labour Party…treated, who treated Jews as outriders for Zionism and who believed that the Jews were a wealthy white community who therefore could not face racism themselves…”

• On the post-2023 change:
  Montefiore (98:40): “For 170 years, British Jews were the luckiest Jews in the world ... But we also have to realize that the golden age is over…when you have tens of thousands of people walking through Jewish cities, threatening Jewish communities on a weekly basis, then you have to realize the golden age is over.”

• On the dilemma of the future
  Montefiore (104:06): "Most Jews are now beginning to wonder, how Jewish can we be in Britain?...But I think very few Jews are really discussing whether to leave Britain...But that said, the world is darkening."

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Intro and Guest Bio – (00:05–04:18)
• Medieval Jewish England: Arrival to Expulsion – (05:45–14:47)
• Blood Libel and Its Echoes – (14:47–16:12)
• Return Under Cromwell and Early Modern period – (16:12–23:08)
• Quest for Emancipation – (23:29–33:47)
• 19th-Century Philanthropy & Integration – (33:47–39:45)
• Pogroms and the Ashkenazi Influx – (39:45–44:02)
• Establishment Families and Zionism – (44:02–50:59)
• WWI, Balfour Declaration, British Mandate – (50:59–65:11)
• Mandate Palestine, Antisemitism, WWII – (65:11–80:06)
• Golden Age: 1948–2020 – (80:06–81:53)
• Corbyn Era, Decolonization, New Antisemitism – (81:53–98:40)
• Golden Age Over? Community Reckoning – (98:40–104:06)
• Closing Reflections – (104:06–104:19)

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Tone and Style

The conversation is richly detailed, often witty, but increasingly somber in its final chapters. Both speakers combine a historian’s precision with the emotional weight of personal stakes. The rapport is nuanced and fond, frequently peppered with knowing Jewish humor in the face of adversity.

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Final Thoughts

This episode gives listeners an unsparing, highly informed historical context for the present-day crisis facing British Jews. It challenges the idea that “it can’t happen here,” showing how even the most integrated, accepted Jewish minority may suddenly find its security and belonging questioned. Yet the episode also celebrates Jewish resilience and tenacity, urging listeners to understand the past to strengthen the present.

Montefiore’s parting caution: “The world is darkening.” (104:06)

Rettig Gur’s reflection: “…context gives strength.” (104:19)

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Summary prepared for those seeking in-depth understanding or context for contemporary debates on antisemitism, Jewish belonging, and the shifting fortunes of minorities in British and Western society.

Transcript

[A]

Hi everybody. Welcome to a new episode of Ask Khadiv Anything. Thank you for joining us. Simon Sivak, Montefiore is with me. He's an international best selling author historian. His prize winning books, both histories and novels have been published in 48 languages. Just a few examples that people certainly people who listen and watch this podcast know about Catherine the Great, Stalin, the Court of the Red Czar and of course Jerusalem the biography. I probably have three copies on my shelves. He's the presenter of five history series for the BBC and is someone who has the uncanny talent of bringing incredibly detailed history into vibrant color. He has a Doctor of Philosophy from Cambridge University and his new book the The Making of the Modern Middle East 1900-2026 will be coming out in the fall. We're going to invite him back, we're going to read it, we're going to talk about it. Very excited for that book. To today our topic is much closer to home. Today we want to talk about the history of British Jews. Who are British Jews? Where do they come from? How did they become the community that they became? How did this illustrious and old community find itself in its current situation of rising antisemitism, the sense of a kind of Catch 22 where British politics struggle so much to seriously grapple with what the community is going through? I'm very excited for this conversation. Before we get into it, I want to tell you this episode of Ask Haviv Anything is sponsored by the Frozen Chosen. That's how they describe themselves. It's a wonderful nickname. They are Chaviv's supportive community in Minnesota. It's dedicated by the community to the memory of Telet Fishbein who was murdered on October 7th at Kibbutz Be'. Eri. Khelet was just 18 years old. Khaled lived in Kibbutzorim. She worked as a babysitter in Kibbutz Be' Eri along the border with Gaza. When Hamas invaded, Be' Eri Khaled and her boyfriend Dol Rieder, 23 both sought refuge in the home safe room in a different home about 500 meters away where her mother and brother and 94 year old grandmother and the grandmother's caregiver all taking shelter inside a bunker. We know about Khalid, not only how she died, we know how she lived with an instinct to protect others. In the middle of that terrifying moment, she was warning people to stay safe. Her first impulse was care responsibility. In the middle of the turmoil, she sent an urgent message on the kibbutz WhatsApp group chat to her family and to everybody else, cautioning them. Residents of the area surrounding the Gaza Strip, known in Hebrew as the otaf, and Hamas terrorists disguised as IDF soldiers are knocking on doors. Do not open the doors. Protect your lives and share. From their bunker, her relatives witnessed neighboring homes being stormed and razed. They emerged unscathed. But Khalet and Dhar were kidnapped by Hamas and murdered en route to Gaza. She was beloved by many. Tekhelet and her mom were an important part of a layered communal support system for other people in their communities, including lone soldiers near and dear to the Minnesota community. As the family has noted, there are many more stories than we will ever be able to tell. Even if we spend a lifetime speaking names and preserving memories, there will always be voices interrupted, dreams unfinished, and lives whose full beauty we will never fully know. May Kheled Fishbein's memory be a blessing, and may we honor her and all those whose stories remain unfinished through the continuous work of being together and hearing one another. Thank you so much to the Minnesota Jewish community for that sponsorship, for that beautiful memory. I would also like to invite everyone to join our Patreon and subscribe to our substack. If you're interested in asking the questions that guide the topics we talk about, join us there. That's where those kinds of conversations are happening. You also get to take part in monthly live streams where I answer your questions live. That's patreon.com askhavivenything or or khavivgur. Substack. Com. Those links are in the show notes. Let's get into it. Simon, how are you?

[B]

I'm fine. It's great to be with you and, you know, great to talk. Finally.

[A]

It's an honor to have you. I have read you for many years and so obviously I have a great many questions about Catherine the Great to throw your way. But that is unfortunately not our topic today.

[B]

Let's do that another time. There's a Jewish aspect to that story, too, of course.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

Since Prince Potemkin was the first to arm the, you know, former Jewish regiment in his Russian army, bizarrely, it was an opening joke.

[A]

So I. But, but see, now, now it's real. Now I actually want to keep going, but let's, let's, let's, let's cover this really, you know, urgent topic. We're diving deep into history. That's what this podcast is about. We're not this isn't going to be news, but, but it's history that is urgent for this moment to understand where. Where what the significance is of everything that's happening to British Jews right now. So I just wonder if we can lay. Get the lay of the land here. The Jewish presence in Britain begins really with the Norman conquest in 1066. And there's that whole medieval chapter, right, of tremendous prosperity, horrific persecutions, and it ends in the expulsion in 1290. Can you tell us about that sort of very beginning of what it is to be Jewish in England?

[B]

Well, I think one wants to say that first of all, there were two Jewish kind of experiences in Britain, the medieval one and the modern one, which we're going to talk about both, of course. And I should just say that it's interesting that overall, again, I know we'll come to this, Habib, but the British Jewish experience is of course so different from the American Jewish experience, obviously. And the biggest difference is just the scale of it. I mean, the Jewish presence in Britain has always been tiny. In the Middle ages it was 5,000 people. In modern times, now it's 200,000 people out of 70 million. So we're talking about, you know, by American standards, and I know many of your listeners are American, this is a tiny community with all that that entails. So to go back to the beginning, yes, the first Jews to settle in Britain were, you know, probably arrive with the Norman Conquest, probably with William the Conqueror. There were already, you know, substantial Jewish communities in France and in Spain, of course, at that time. And they arrived with him. They were actually. I mean, what's fascinating about them is of course the Normans spoke French or, you know, a form of French. The Jews spoke Judeo French or Zartic sort of language, which is an intriguing concept, isn't it? And it had very little Hebrew in it. But it was a specific language that one of those fascinating languages that developed, like Ladino, like Yiddish, that developed in the Jewish Diaspora. And they arrived, they were a very small community. Obviously, as is well known, usury or money lending was supposedly banned by the Catholic Church. But Jews could conduct that business and therefore that was a natural business for them to go into. By the way, they could also serve as doctors. And of course in the Muslim world, you know, many, many, many of the sort of sultans, doctors like Moses, Maimonides, et cetera, et cetera, had been or would be Jewish. And that is also true in France and Britain and Spain at this time. And so they arrived very small community in tiny numbers at first, and then gradually over the next two, some members of that very small community became Very wealthy, lending to the kings and enjoying a sort of weird hybrid status where they were both despised as alien, suspected of being descendants of the killers of Christ, and yet at the same time protected by the king. As for serving a special purpose, mainly lending money and also of course paying huge, huge taxes when they were short of money, which like all governments was often. So that's the beginning of the story.

[A]

So that story ends in 1290. Why? Why does Edward I expel everybody?

[B]

Well, the story is fascinating. I mean, you know, the Jewish community really first suffers real antisemitism, or anti Judaism, as I think I prefer to call it at this stage with the coming of the Crusades. And the Crusades, which are in the 10 night start in 1095, immediately rebound on the Jews, because the whole point of the Crusade is to go and retake the Church of the Holy Sepulchre from evil infidels. And since there were no evil infidel Muslims nearby, to kill the Jews were the next best thing. And so this led to all sorts of attacks, particularly as the army, as the crusader armies headed out towards the Middle east, which is an extraordinary story in itself. But this led to huge pressures on the British, the English kings as well, because they were constantly raising armies, not just the normal armies to fight France, but also armies to go all the way, travel all the way to the Middle east to fight. And this led to higher taxes, higher loans, and all of these things put greater pressure on the tiny Jewish community. And so you have the beginning of the particular phenomenon that starts in England, I'm ashamed to say, which is the blood libel. And that's in 1144. The blood libel starts when, when an apprentice in Norwich, which was then a major city, William of Norwich, as he was called, a sort of teenage boy, was supposedly murdered by Jews for the purposes of putting drinking Christian blood, crucifying him like Christ, or putting blood into matzah biscuits for Passover. And that is really the beginning of a blood libel which has rebounded through the ages. And it resurfaced in 1255, 100 years later. And as usual, antisemitism appears when there's great instability, civil war, when society's under pressure, and of course, when there's huge shortages of money. And so in 1255, there's another blood libel, and this one is called the little St Hugh blood libel, in which the king, Henry III actually backed the blood libel and executed a whole lot of Jews. So it's an important moment because then you have state backing for the first Time of the blood libel, which sadly is something that we may talk about at the end of this conversation. But at the same time there were very, very wealthy Jews. There was, you know, one of the most fascinating is Licorice of Winchester, who was a woman who became the richest woman in England, certainly the richest non noble woman in England. And she lent money to Henry iii and she also, one of the big taxes she was forced to pay helped renovate Westminster Abbey and build the tomb of William of Edward the Confessor, which you know, we can still see today. So she's an interesting character, but she was murdered and I think at 1277 and that was a murder that was kind of. It may have been an anti Jewish attack, it may have been. She may have been murdered by retainers of noblemen who owed her money. We just don't know what it was. But it's just an interesting story. And then by the 1280s, by the 1260s, you have a phenomenon where Jewish loans are owed by many of the nobility. The nobility are fighting a civil war with the king which entail vast expenses of, you know, or to pay for armies. And this, this means that their loans are bigger and then they don't want to pay the loans. At the same time, the crusades have gone disastrously wrong. Jerusalem's been lost to Saladin and Edward I. The King has gone on a sort of minor crusade. And again the crusade is in peril. The kingdom is in peril. The nobles and king are in debt to the Jews. This is never a good place for the Jews to be. And this concatenation of issues leads to first of all, squeezing the Jewish community for as much money as you can. And once they've been squeezed, Edward I orders their expulsion to purify the kingdom and save Christians from supposed danger of conversion to Judaism, of which there was very little chance by the way. And so for 1290 the Jews are expelled. It's really the first of a series of major expulsions that culminate in the expulsion 1492 from Spain, which we all know about. And Jews don't really live in England again for over. For almost 400 years.

[A]

It's an extraordinary story of the fragility of things or the instability of being a Jewish community. You could be there for hundreds of years and the politics goes wrong, the finances of the kingdom goes wrong and your whole life is dependent, is subject to, is conditional on those conditions. The blood libel specifically. Just. Can we dive a tiny bit deeper into that? A child is found dead, 12 years old, 13 years old, something like that, in a forest. And at first nobody assumes anything about it. And then suddenly a Benedictine monk writes a book, the whole thing becomes. And reading about, specifically about that blood libel story, first of all, a Jewish convert to Catholicism who becomes the source of the claim that the Jews are killing them for ritual purposes. And then priests all through Europe don't believe the story because it's nuts. And then they keep hearing the story because it comes back around and is heard of again. Once you're hearing it from three different sources, doesn't matter that the original source is the same. You've heard it three times in three sources, you begin to believe it. It's such an extraordinary path that libels take to becoming entranced truth without ever having anyone check them, no matter how fantastic they sound at the beginning.

[B]

But it sounds familiar, doesn't it?

[A]

It's amazing just how well that whole system works. So let's, let's get to Oliver Cromwell. As you said, almost 400 years, 360, 70 years, the Jews cannot come in and then suddenly Oliver Cromwell readmits them what happened there, why? And how many actually come back, or they're not the same Jews. How many choose to move to England?

[B]

Yeah, well, it's a very different community, of course, 400 years later, different. It's a different world. And the interesting thing is that there was a certain sort of sacred new attitude to the Scriptures, to Jews that was to work extremely well for Jews and right up to the Balfour Declaration, in fact, where it starts with Puritanism, it starts with Protestantism. Of course. Martin Luther was a insane Jew hater and he was no kind of champion of the Jews. But Protestantism, which he started, was really a return to the actual words and prophecies of the Bible, the Old Testament particularly. And it meant that they were cutting out the church, in effect, and the priests, the intermediaries between. Between man and God and returning to the actual word of the Bible. And that involved the prophecies that the Jews would return to Zion, to Jerusalem. And that's really why the Protestants and the Puritans now suddenly started to regard Jews as a positive thing, because they were harbingers of the second coming of Christ. And the second coming of Christ might not have been a great thing for Jews actually, but they weren't thinking about that yet. They were really thinking in the short term. And also the Puritans and the English started to think of themselves as rather like the Israelites as well. And so they started to identify with the Israelites as Did the early settlers in America, who also started to identify the idea of a city on the hill and so on. So all of this is to do with the new Protestantism. And so Oliver Cromwell, Protestant leader, almost king of England, Lord Protector, fascinating character, military genius, never lost a battle, extremely tough and complex person. In 1656, Manasseh bin Israel, rabbi in Holland. And Holland was much more liberal than the rest of Europe. And the most liberal places for Jews in Europe were Holland, parts of Italy, the Ottoman Empire and Poland. Traditionally, though, of course, that would change radically. So he started to correspond with Cromwell and the top British officials, and Cromwell started to raise the idea of allowing the Jews to resettle in Britain. There was quite a lot of resistance to this. And Cromwell, who was a sort of master politician, said, fine, we won't actually come to a conclusion. We'll simply raise. We'll simply ignore the ban and pretend it doesn't exist, and we will not challenge Jews settling here. And so in the 1650s, some Jews, mainly Sephardic Jews, because after all, the Dutch community, Holland, had been ruled by the Spanish Habsburgs. And so it was a very Sephardic community overwhelmingly. And certain members of those families started to settle in England in the 1650s. Charles II at the Restoration, after 1660 didn't challenge this. And so Jewish families started to resettle. They were overwhelmingly Sephardim with Sephardic names like Lopez and Medina and so on. And they were very small numbers. But as the 17th century went on, more and more came, and a big step for them was in the 1690s with the beginning of the wars against Louis XIV. Louis XIV under John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, who was the descendant of Winston Churchill and Britain's greatest ever general. Incidentally, his armies were funded by Solomon de Medina, a Sephardic Jewish businessman who organized the logistics of feeding these massive armies that won the greatest victories in British history, Lenin and so on. So he began to win access for the first time. And he was one of the funders of the synagogue, Bevis Marx, which I don't know if you know Havi, but it's the most beautiful synagogue. It's the oldest synagogue in Britain. And it was my family synagogue. It's where my parents were married. And it's a very interesting synagogue because it's actually built like a Puritan church. And it's got a. The look of it is unusual for a synagogue. It doesn't have a dome. It's built in a rather puritanical style. And it was partly funded by Solomon de Medina and as the 18th century goes on, more and more Jews arrive. Another important champion of the Jews was Samson Gideon, who was another funder of British armies. And he managed to get, in 1753, the Prime Minister Pelham, to put forward a Jewish relief bill that would remove the restrictions on Jews. And by the way, it's worth saying here, there were massive restrictions on Jews still. Jews could not go to Oxford and Cambridge, they couldn't be in the civil service, they couldn't sit in parliament, they couldn't own land. So all of these things would go right through much later into the 19th century than you'd expect.

[A]

How extensive is that? I mean, we are taught that emancipation, the ending of the ghetto laws and all these restrictive laws come with the French Revolution, spread through Europe by Napoleon. When the British. The British start taking those laws apart, start removing them before the French Revolution, they try to.

[B]

And they don't. And like a lot of things in Britain, much of it is done by sort of don't ask, don't tell sort of style of government, which is very British, because there's no constitution in Britain. So there weren't Jewish ghettos, because that's one thing. There were Jewish areas and there's an area of the City of London called Jewry, for example, where Jews lived. They mainly lived in the city of London. And so there weren't ghettos to abolish, as there were in Europe. And there weren't these single moments of Jewish liberation. The French Revolution that you mentioned in Napoleon and all that, which continued, of course, with the 1848 Revolution in France and spread through Europe. But that didn't happen in quite the same way in Britain because the numbers were also still very small. And so what's surprising is that these restrictions went on much longer. They were only finally abolished in 1858, which I'll come to in a second because it's an interesting story as well. And so early in the, in the late 18th century, sort of 1790s, families start arriving and they start to do business and they're allowed to do business and there's still not specific laws that allow them to own property, even though the wealthier of them start to buy, to start to buy property. And, and so you have families like the most famous, obviously, the Rothschilds. In 1798, the Rothschilds arrive and they come to Manchester where the industrial revolution is happening, and they arrive from the Frankfurt ghetto, which has now been abolished, and they start to do. First of all, they invest in, in the, in the textiles, which is the, the, you Know the huge, the huge industry of the, of the Industrial revolution is funneling the Industrial Revolution, fueling the Industrial Revolution rather. And then they start to lend to the British government and to fund the armies that are fighting the Napoleonic wars, which are vastly expensive. And the Rothschilds really fund these armies. And there's all sorts of amazing sort of COVID espionage where the Rothschilds are sort of smuggling huge amounts of money to pay the Duke of Wellington's army in Spain, for example. And they're responsible not only for making the loan but for getting it to the army. And so at the same time, families like my family arrive in the 1790s, the Montefiori family, and they don't come from Frankfurt, they come from Livorno in Tuscany in Italy. And they are Italian speaking, speaking Jews who probably also speak Ladino. A lot of their life is a Met, theirs is a Mediterranean life, very different life from the Rothschilds who come from, or the Dutch Jews who also are arriving. So the Montefioris arrive and as a young man, Moses Montefiore, my great, great, great uncle or something, starts to work in the stock market. And there's now a position for a certain number, a quota of Jews to work in the stock market and they're called the Jew brokers. And a certain, you're very lucky if you can get into the stock market. And Moses Montefiori is a young man, he's quite a sort of striking figure, as Queen Victoria later said about him. You know, he's what you, when you think of the perfect Hebrew, this is what you think of because he's like barrel chested, six foot three, blue eyed, blonde haired. So he looks like a sort of, he looks like what Queen Victoria thinks a Hebrew should look like. She writes in her diary.

[A]

Oh, you mean like a biblical Hebrew in the armies of King David? Kind of.

[B]

Exactly, yeah. Because they're all reading the Bible. They're all reading the Bible, of course, and they all know the Bible. And the Bible at this time is very important as sort of as you're suggesting. The Bible is really the national book of, you know, of Britain and many other Christian countries too, you know, with the American colonies too. Everybody knows every word of it, you know, and everyone knows every story of it. Everyone knows the name of all the places. So it's worth bearing that in mind as we go through this. And anyway, Moses Montefiori marries the sister of Nathaniel Rothschild, the sister of Nathaniel Rothschild's wife. So they become brothers in law and, and they move into the same house in the city of London, which is now in St Swithin's Lane, which is where the bank of Rothschild still is. And they live above the bullion shop and the Montefiore's and the Rothchilds live there. And they become very wealthy and very successful and they have access to all sorts of people. They have friends in the Royal family, for example, and they have enemies too who hate them and will never accept them. And as time goes ON in the 19th century, they become more and more important. They rescue the government at one point when it has a huge banking crisis, they fund the armies and they buy country estates which they are now allowed to own. And they become part of the English scene in many ways. They meet the royal family. Moses Montefiore is knighted in 1837. But it's very important to understand that there are still in Britain in this time huge restrictions on Catholics and Jews. And in 1829 the restrictions on Catholics are lifted after a huge debate, but they are not lifted on the Jews yet. And repeatedly people put forward the lifting of these restrictions and they can constantly fail. In 1829 and also in 1830 and also in 1834 there are debates on this subject. And the Duke of Wellington, by the way, is a huge enemy of the liberation of the Jews and speaks against it. And he really thinks that the liberation of the Jews could be an enormous menace to British society and politics.

[A]

Why? What's so scary about the Jews?

[B]

That's the thing. What is so scary about the Jews?

[A]

I mean, the Catholics, it's a multi century internal schism within Christianity. There are fundamental questions of, of power. I mean, the monarchy is defined as after Henry viii, the Protestant. But who cares about the Jews?

[B]

I think even though the Jewish numbers are tiny, and by the way, there are now something like between 20 and 40, about 25,000 Jews. More are coming. By the end of this, towards the end of the century, there are 40,000 Jews. Most of them are Sephardic, but not all. They're all either Sephardic or German and Dutch. So the sisters that Montefiore and Rothschild marry are Dutch Jews and they're the daughters of Levi Baron Cohen, who is a merchant of Amsterdam. So you have this kind of. These Jews are, these are not the Ashkenazi Jews from Russia, which we're going to come to in a minute. These are Western European or Mediterranean Jews. And all the families are, you know, are names that you would recognize immediately as sort of Spanish and Portuguese names. And so I think the, I think the Duke of Wellington's opposition to the Jews was that they shouldn't be allowed to sit in Parliament. It wasn't that he was. He. He knew the Jews extremely well. He knew Rothschilds extremely well. And in fact, he banked with the Rothschilds and his armies had been funded by the Rothschilds. And so he was very close to the Rothschilds. He just didn't think the Jews should be allowed into Parliament to legislate for Britain. And there's a huge debate in 1834 about the emancipation of British slaves. And at the same time, in the same debate, in the same Parliament, there is another attempt to raise the restrictions on the Jews. And while the emancipation and the abolition of British slavery goes through the restrictions on Jews, Jewish Relief act fails again. So it's an interesting moment. So they've actually abolished slavery and emancipated British slaves, but they haven't yet emancipated British Jews.

[A]

I remember reading about this, these debates in Parliament where the people opposed to Catholics sitting in Parliament, one of the major concerns they raised was, you'll have a very hard time keeping out the Jews if you let in the Catholics. And so it was people opposed letting in Catholics into Parliament because the Jews would then be coming in. It was powerful. It was a powerful argument made by the top leaders of British society in Parliament. Can we take a step back and just. We've been talking about the top of the top, the wealthiest, the most powerful, the most influential. What is the ordinary Jew like in England at the time? What is their life? How much is their existence restricted if they can't own land? You know, if the wealthiest of the wealthy can begin to buy country estates, does that mean that an ordinary shopkeeper can own some piece of London in some place? What is the life of ordinary Jews at this time? How does it change in the 19th century?

[B]

Well, it's a tiny community. I mean, by the standards of the millions of Jews who are now living in Poland, for example, in the Russian Empire, for example, by 1890, there are 40,000 Jews in Britain. So it's really pretty small. And they are now beginning to appear in society as they are in the rest of Europe. These restrictions do not restrict the daily life, except that they can't go into Parliament, they can't go to Oxford and Cambridge, things like that, which seem pretty basic. And it's only later when. Later in the century when one of the first universities is London University, that allows Jews and Catholics to study there, Which is a very significant moment. And of course, the old universities don't allow Jews yet until the 1850s. So their life is. It's a small community. They live it. They live in areas, you know, they live in areas where other Jews live. They are free to. They are free to worship and to live their Jewish lives. More synagogues are built, Beavis. Marxism is the. Is the sort of grander synagogue. But others are now being built, particularly funded by these big families like Rovchar Montefiori, Goldsmith and Samuel and others. And so it's not an oppressive life at all, but it's not a full life either. They're not allowed to enter. But in the 1830s and 40s and 50s, Rothschild and Montefiore begin this campaign to raise these restrictions. And so they campaigned for it, by the way, they also campaigned for the abolition of slavery. And they were very much part of that. They were abolitionists too, and they helped fund that. Again in the 1840s when you have the Irish, Huge Irish famine and millions of people died, all these Jewish families very proudly gave huge donations to feed the Irish in order to. Because it was Jewish tradition to give charity and give alms to people. So, you know, they were strikingly philanthropic and not just for their own communities. Finally, after many, many times of standing for Parliament, Lionel Rothschild, who is Moses Montefiore's nephew and the head of Rothschild's bank, is constantly elected to Parliament, but he can't sit because he can't take the oath. And finally, in 1858, Jewish Relief act passes and Lionel Rothschild becomes the first Jewish MP in Britain. And it's a sort of triumph because now the British can end. The British Jews, of whom there is, you know, 35, 40,000 now can enter Jewish life. And they do so with great enthusiasm. And, you know, they become close to the royal family. You know, I mentioned Queen Victoria. They receive peerages and they're able to sit in the House of Lords. Lord Rothschild, the Rothschild becomes a lord and considered Moses Montefiori receives a baronetcy. All these families suddenly start to thrive. They buy country estates, they build huge palatial mansions. Some people regard them as very vulgar. They become friends with a lot of other people and they have champions. They faced antisemitism. And there's the famous story of Moses Montefiori when he went to a dinner party in the 1830s and a very. And by the way, I think it was a royal dinner party given by the Duke of Sussex, who's one of the King's brothers or one of the Queen's uncles. And they start to. A rather sort of horrible anti Semitic lord starts to say, you know, you know, listen everybody, I've just been to Japan and the great thing about Japan is that there are no pigs there and no Jews. And so there's great awkwardness at this dinner party. And everyone looks at Moses Montefiori and Moses Montefiori, quick as a flash, says, well then, my lord, you and I should go there. So they'll have one of each. And so everyone loves. And it's very nice. It's regarded as a very good way of handling the, you know, anti Semitism by taking it straight on. And these guys, these Jewish leaders at the time were very aware of their position. They were very grateful to be in, in the liberal, sort of developing liberal democracy. They loved the royal family and they regarded the royal family as a sort of guarantor of their freedoms. A sort of a trend that we will see developed through the 19th and 20th centuries and to today. And with what we're seeing today with the King Charles iii, championing the Jewish community and helping protect the Jewish community is a tradition here. And by the 1890s and the early 20th century, big Jewish families like the Rothschilds, now the Sassoons have arrived from Iraq and from India and from China, the Montefiories and others become great friends with the Prince of Wales and Edward vii. And there are cartoons of him and his Jews arriving, the Jews arriving at court as friends of the royal family. But at the same time, in 1881, now we're in very familiar, we're in very familiar history.

[A]

Haviv Everyone in this podcast knows the death of Alexander ii, the rise of the third, the pogroms and the beginning of the mass flow west. So that changes everything, right?

[B]

Yeah. And some come to London, some come to England, a lot go to America, a lot go to Palestine. And suddenly there's this arrival of these impoverished Russian and Polish. Russian Polish Jews in London. And this creates a, this creates a new wave of a different sort of anti Jewish feeling that these immigrants are impoverished, they're going to depend on us for money, they're going to bring crime. When's this stopping? Where are these people going to stop? And so there's a huge kind of backlash. And the old Jewish families, Rothschilds, Montefueris, et cetera, welcomed this Jewish community and of course, you know, give huge amounts of money and found schools for them and try to protect them. And there's another thing happening here which is also important, which is that in the 1820s, British and Jewish and British Jews start to travel around the Ottoman Empire and they start to travel to the Holy Land. And in the Holy Land, Benjamin Disraeli, for example, goes. And he's played a big role in Jewish life. He's actually the child of a convert who converts when he's six after an argument with the synagogue establishment, which is very familiar to all Jews. And so Benjamin Disraeli actually can become a Member of Parliament, because though he regards himself as ethnically and culturally Jewish, he's actually technically a Protestant, so he can take the oath. And he, of course, is great friends with all these Jewish families like the Rothschilds and Montefiore, is virtually kind of. Benjamin Disraeli is virtually a family member. You know, he. He regularly goes there for dinner, he goes there for Shabbat, he's great friends with the families. And this becomes very important when in 1875, Disraeli becomes prime minister for the second time in 1874. And in 1875, he delivers the Suez Canal. He buys the Suez Canal for Britain. And this is really Britain's entry into the Middle east as a Middle Eastern past, very important moment. And he does this in a kind of very, very flamboyant way by going to his friend Lionel Rothschild and saying, we need whatever it is, £5 million to buy the French shares and the Egyptian shares in the Suez Canal. And famously, Rothschild sits there, spits out a pip that he's eating and says, you shall have it. And then Rothchild is able to go straight to Queen Victoria and say, we've got it. We've bought the Suez Canal. Now, of course, this leads to the. In 1881, to the effective, not annexation, but the sort of British control over Egypt. And that is really the beginning of the story, which. The real British presence in the Middle east, which leads to the Mandate and so on at the same time. Yeah, go on. Yeah. Sorry.

[A]

Well, this. This. Well, so we now. We're now having this sort of flood of poor Jews from the east, and it creates. You mentioned the anxiety and the 1905 Aliens Act. In other words, there's a real profound blowback, which is when very large numbers are coming in who are also very different kinds of Jews. Yes, yeah.

[B]

And there was great snobbery, by the way, among the Jewish community that will. Which won't surprise you.

[A]

Among Jews.

[B]

Among Jews. What snobbery? That's almost impossible. Unimaginable. Unimaginable. So, though, like families like the Montefiories, you know, the Rothschilds, they would marry German Jews and they would marry Spanish and Portuguese Jews, but there was initially a resistance to intermarrying with these poor Ashkenazis who'd arrived, which doesn't surprise one. But of course, in the end, that lasted about 20 years. But the point is, you're absolutely right. There's this huge backlash. And the person who's really kind of who has to deal with this backlash, this is Arthur Balfour, Prime Minister, 1902-5 or 6, and he brings in the Aliens act to ban Jewish immigration, which is an interesting moment. So at the same time as that, I just want to step back a little bit, because at the same time, as Disraeli becomes Prime Minister, et cetera, et cetera, Britain is becoming more and more present in the Middle East. And part of this is to do with British evangelical Christian belief. The evangelicals in Britain are the successors of Cromwell and the Puritans and the early Protestants in Britain. And they embrace the idea of a Jewish return to Zion or Jewish relationship with the Holy Land, because they are Victorian evangelicals who believe that the Jewish return is essential before the Second Coming. So you have these kind of very worldly leaders like Lord Palmerston and Benjamin Disraeli. At the same time, you have their friends like the Earl of Shaftesbury, who is a passionate evangelical, who have some of the same beliefs as American evangelicals do today and are pro Jewish and pro return to the Middle east for the same reasons. And so that is also going on at the same time. So in the 18. We're now reaching the 1890s, the early 20th century. And of course, everybody knows, you know, 1881, the assassination of Alexander II, the arrival of all these Jewish immigrants, the arrival of Jewish immigrants in the Holy Land, which is still an Ottoman vilayat. And in 1896, we have Theodore Herzl, of course, and the idea of a state of the Jews or a Jewish state, the Judenstadt. And this immediately causes some disquiet amongst British Jews because British Jews have got feel they have everything arranged. They're these slightly poor Jews who've arrived. But, you know, the act, the Aliens act, has kind of stopped that flow. But, you know, Jews like, Jews like these big banking families, which were known, by the way as the cousinhood, because they were all interrelated. They are now very well established. And in fact, you know, by the early 20th century, you have a British Cabinet where, you know, where you have several British Cabinet ministers who are Jewish, all of them from these banking families. Edwin Montagu becomes Secretary of State for India. Herbert Samuel, who we'll hear of later, becomes Home Secretary. So you have an extraordinary Thing now where Jews are so established that they can become cabinet ministers. But at the same time, the idea of Zionism is like throwing a grenade into this group. And there's initially and a split amongst these very establishment families. But one has to look back and see that really Zionism. One of the initial starters, precursors of Zionism, before it was called Zionism was Moses Montefiori. He had gone to, he went to the Holy Lands seven times and he'd first gone in the 1820s. And people often don't realize that Jerusalem was a completely impoverished, half empty city. When he went in the 1820s, there were only about two or three thousand people living in the Old City of Jerusalem. At that time, half the Old City was actually empty.

[A]

And there was only the Old City.

[B]

There was only the Old City. There was only the Old City and it was partly empty. It was a kind of monumental village with these amazing buildings, the Dome of the Rock and the Wall and so on, and the church. And he went there and he saw that the Jewish community there was tiny but totally impoverished. They were almost beggars. And so Montefiori, two things happened. He decided to help this community and to fund it. He also decided that he would become an observant Jew, which he hadn't been before. And so he had a sort of religious, a religious moment. And lastly, over his many visits, he decided to promote and sponsor the return of the Jews to the Holy Land, which he sort of saw as either a big Jewish community under the Ottoman Sultan. He went to see the Sultan or perhaps in the future, under the British Empire. And so he played a big part in that. And in 1860 he founded the first Jewish village outside the walls of Jerusalem, which became the new city of Jerusalem, West Jerusalem, and is still where he built the Montefiori windmill. So that was an interesting moment. And at the same time, the Rothschilds, particularly the French Rothschilds, Baron Edmond the Rothschild started to back the founding of small Jewish farming communities, moshavim as well. And by the way, they were quite friendly, all these big, these big Jewish backers of early Zionism, but they weren't best friends. They were all slightly jealous of each other again, which won't surprise you. They all want to do things their own way.

[A]

That's how big funders of Jewish organizations work today as well.

[B]

Exactly. It's exactly the same. So you know, Moses Montefiore wants his own thing. Then there's Baron de Hirsch who has his own thing, and then the Rothschilds have their own thing. And none of them want to do it with each other. So it takes a long time before they merge. But Moses Montefiori was dead by then. But one of the head of the Montefiori family, Abraham Montefiori, decides to back Zionism, becomes a Zionist. Other members of the family are very skeptical, and they believe that it will create anti Semitism and that it's actually not a good thing for the Jewish community. And it's the same in the Rothschild family. And in all these families, the Montefiories are Rothschilds, the Samuels, the Montagues, the Sassoons, all of them. There are Zionist members of the family, and there are anti Zionist members of the family. And that goes right up into World War I, when Zionism has become hugely popular. And I know you all have discussed this in endless podcasts, have ease. We won't go into it again. But for the British, this is terribly important, because when Herzl and the early Zionists were promoting the idea of a Jewish state or a Jewish return, their lawyer in one of these cases was David Lloyd George, a radical Welsh lawyer and liberal politician who later, as some radicals do, became one of the great imperialist statesmen of the British Empire. And another friend of this concept was Alpha Balfour. And the leader of Zionism in Britain was Chaim Weizmann, and who started, you know, became an academic, a chemistry professor, and was also a brilliant lobbyist, I guess we'd call it today, and became the Zionist leader in England. But at the same time, there was a Zionist movement based in Berlin in the German Empire. There was a Zionist movement in Istanbul. And for a while, David Ben Gurion was part of that. So in all of these big imperial capitals, there are these Zionist leaders trying to persuade these great powers to promote the idea of Jewish return and Jewish development of the Holy Land. But of course, an early idea promoted partly by Balfour, discussed with Balfour that the British had, was to have a Jewish settlement in El Arish in British Egypt. And obviously that was not a particularly attractive idea. Another idea was to have a small Jewish homeland in Kenya, Uganda, which was the Ugandan offer again, sort of discussed with British leaders like Balfour and Chamberlain, the father of Nether Chamberlain, which also didn't really catch the excitement of Jews around the world. And then, of course, World War I begins. And in World War I, a completely different game opens, because Britain invades the Holy Land and invades the Ottoman Empire from Egypt under Lord Allenby and starts to fight its way up. There are three battles of Gaza in 1917, and then they break through and they head towards Jerusalem. And at the same time, the British are discussing various promises to various powers. And all of these promises, which of course are terribly famous, they make promises to the Arabs, they make promises to the Jews, they also make promises to many powers in Europe, including the Greeks and the Italians, the Armenians and the Kurds as well. And all of these promises can only really be understood by looking at the British position in the war. In 1916, 1917, Britain was bleeding, hemorrhaging men on the Western Front and they were to lose. Millions of men were killed in that war and Britain was stuck, stagnated in a stalemate with the Germans on these trenches. And at the same time, millions of people were dying on the Eastern Front too. And so Britain was just desperate. British statesmen were desperate to find a way, anything that would move the dial in any direction. And so, first of all, they start to think about an Arab revolt in the Arab world, which of course was ruled by the Ottoman, the Ottoman Turks. And the Arabs had their own ideas of nationalism and hoped for autonomy, if not independence. And the rulers of the Turkish, the Ottoman Empire, the three pashas, were neo, almost neo fascist, racist Turkish ultra nationalists who were not particularly friendly to Arab nationalism. And therefore there was an opportunity for Britain. So the first thing Britain did was negotiate a very amorphous and blurred agreement with the Emir of Mecca, Hussein. Hussein, the Hashemite, a Hashemite Sharif descended from the Prophet, who actually only ruled the city of Mecca, Azemir, as his family had since Saladin, for a thousand years. But he had the great lineage of dissent. And so anyway, the British believed that this man could mobilize the whole Arab world, even though he had about 6,000 men at arms. And while the Ottomans had millions of people in their armies, including a vast amount of Arab troops who remained loyal to the Ottomans all the way through the war, incidentally, interestingly. And so they decided to, to Batkin. But he asked for an Arab empire that would encompass the whole Arab world. He asked for what would become the states of Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Jordan and Iraq. He asked for that as his empire. And this is a man who had this kind of tiny military presence and had never ruled anything more than the towns of Mecca and Medina. So the British, of course, negotiated with this and they deliberately, they deliberately blurred the agreement so that they kind of promised some sort of Arab state. But they said that they couldn't promise everything because they also had promised a lot to France, who was their chief ally. And this is the Sykes Picot agreement. But the SYKES Picot agreement should be called the Sykes Picos Sazonov agreement because it was also with Russia. And what they agreed, the French, the British and the Russians, was a sort of carve up of the Ottoman Empire all the way from Constantinople, which they promised to be an international, but under the Russians, a huge part of modern Turkey and the borderlands with Iraq, which would also be Russian, possibly Armenian, possibly Kurdish, and the Holy Land, which would be ruled by the Russians, the British and the French together. So that SYKES speaker Sazonov agreement. And of course that contradicts.

[A]

Makes perfect sense.

[B]

Makes perfect sense.

[A]

I don't know why it didn't work.

[B]

Yeah. And so that made. Well, one reason it didn't work because the Russian Revolution happened, which meant the Russians were knocked out of the agreement. So that left the French. So already the promise to the Arabs was kind of contradicted with the promise to the French. And at the same time they promised the Italians and the Greeks huge swathes of what is now Turkey. And then they turned to the Jews, as your viewers will know very well, the Jews in Russia there were several million, there were 6 million Jews in Russia, there were now millions of Jews in America and America was now entering the war and Russia was. They were trying to keep Russia in the war. So they believed, as statesmen did at that time, that the Jews had a sort of mystical power and were very powerful in those countries, which wasn't completely true, but they believed it. And so part of this, part of the reason for the Balfour Declaration was this belief in the power of the Jews in these two key allies at the same time. People like Balfour, Churchill, Lloyd George were the successors of 19th century statesmen like Palmerston. And also they weren't religious themselves, they weren't evangelicals, but they were successors of the evangelical tradition. And as Lloyd George said, I know the names of the places in Judea better than I know the names of the places on the Western Front, which was an interesting comment. And so they believed, for all these different reasons, a third reason was empire. Empires never do anything out of philanthropy. And they believed that they were going to give independence to a lot of Arab countries. They were going to have to deal with the French and the Russians in the Middle east. And they believe that the Jews, a small Jewish entity there, would be supportive of the British Empire and back the British Empire in the Holy Land because they wanted the Holy Land, they didn't really want to share it with the French and the Russians. So for all these reasons, they promised, along with promises to the Kurds, the Armenians and all these other promises they promised to the Jews in the Balfour Declaration, which we all know about, which really should be called the Lloyd George. The Lloyd George Declaration, since he was really the driving force. But they agreed that they would create a homeland by some definition, in the Holy Land, as we know well.

[A]

So all of this, the Jews are central to the story. So we have this mass wave of Jewish immigration. It lands in London, it is impoverished, it's forming. Americans will know the Lower east side. Right. It's forming these little informal ghetto type communities. There's a big debate in Britain over whether they're even assimilable. At the same time, the Jewish question is now front and center on the world stage. Fundamental to how the imperial ordering of the Middle east, what is happening to British Jews in the 1900s, tens, twenties, thirties, as they go through this period where the question of the Jews overtakes European politics, but also is a fundamental imperial question for Britain, as we discussed.

[B]

First of all, the Zionism thing is a division. And in the Cabinet, in the Cabinet that.

[A]

Within the general community, in other words.

[B]

Yeah, but in the Cabinet that. That gives. The Balfour Declaration. Agrees. The Balfour Declaration. There are Jewish cabinet ministers who are supportive of it. Herbert Samuel, who is Home Secretary. Liberal Home Secretary. And there are Jewish cabinet ministers like Edward Montague, who is also a powerful cabinet minister, who are entirely opposed to it. So it's an interesting split. That split goes through in the community, but the community is now beginning to thrive in Britain. But the very fact of that increasing success and assimilation and acceptance leads to the backlash that we see. We saw in France in 18 France and Austria in the 1890s, for example, and the beginning of a fascist movement in Britain under Oswald Mosley in the 1930s. So we're jumping ahead now to the 1930s. Britain has, Britain has created. Britain now rules a substantial swathe of the Middle east, incidentally. And Sykes Picot, contrary to popular belief, was never activated. What happens are the treaties of Sevres and San Remo, which give mandates, League of Nations mandates to Britain and France to rule. Britain gets Palestine, a large version of Palestine, which includes Jordan and what they call Mesopotamia, which they rename Iraq. And the French get Syria and Lebanon. And within that entity, as you all know, they allowed substantial Jewish immigration to. To Palestine. And they name the Holy Land Palestine. It's the Mandate of Palestine. And that's where Palestine becomes an official name for the region for the first time since the Byzantines.

[A]

Yeah. So they're allowing mass immigration of Jews to Palestine at the time when they're still not allowing mass Jewish immigration into Britain. That's correct. And the doors to the United States are closed in the early twenties. Right. So. So it's an interesting, you know, there's an anti Semitism to the pro Zionism of some of the members of the British elite. That's correct in that regard.

[B]

That's correct. And of course in the early, in the 20s, though, you know, even though there are kind of crises, the, you know, in 1929, 21, the Nabi Musa riots, the Jaffa riots and so on and so forth, culminating in 1929 in the massacres in Hebron and Sfat and in Jerusalem. But at the same time the British mandate is allowing in huge numbers of Jews to immigrate to create what may be some sort of definition of a Jewish homeland, alongside which at this time, by the way, is a binational concept. Really. There's not much hope of a Jewish state. The idea is that there'll be a kind of Palestine with these joint communities united at the top in a legislative committee. That's the idea of the British idea for Palestine. But at the same time, back in

[A]

England

[B]

there's minimal, there's minimal immigration as there is in America. And there's beginning to be a rising feeling against Jews. And of course in 1933, Hitler comes to power and that changes everything. Suddenly there is a copycat fascist movement in Britain, the Black Shirts, under Oswald Mosley, a former Labor Cabinet minister, incidentally, who is this kind of slick, very good looking, sort of glamorous and very wealthy aristocrat who leads this movement really aimed at attacking Jews. And there are sort of terrible scenes in the Jewish East End, which is where all the poor Jews live. And this is a period of kind of rising alarm for British Jews. And at the same time Britain is beginning to struggle with ruling Palestine. And in the mid-30s, at the same time Jewish immigration suddenly starts to surge because of Hitler and Nazism. And this leads to a full blown Arab revolt in Palestine and an Arab civil war within the Palestinian, what became the Palestinian Arab nation, where half of the Palestinian Arabs want to negotiate a sort of agreement, a sort of compromise with the Jewish community in Palestine. And half of them under the Mufti of Jerusalem, Amina Al Husseini, want to drive out that community and see Palestine as an Arab Muslim ethnostate sacred territory in which in which only a tiny demi Jewish community would be acceptable. And so they launched this, they launched this kind of, this revolt, this insurgency against the British but also against the Jews. And at the same time, there's this struggle between the Nashashibi family that leads the sort of compromise, the pro compromise Palestinian Arabs and the Husseini and his gangs who want to wipe them out. And it's a brutal war. And in the middle of it, the British offer the Peel Commission idea, which is the first idea for a partition. But interestingly, that partition offers a Jewish entity alongside a Palestinian Arab entity, which would be ruled by Abdullah, Emir of Jordan, which has been hived off from the Palestine Mandate. And he's backed by the Palestinian Arab leader, Nashashibi, who's mayor of Jerusalem as well. And the failure of this is a sort of tragedy because it's one of those kind of ideas that could have worked and could have created an entirely different. A different world than the one we know today. There wouldn't have been Israel in the same circumstances and there wouldn't have been a Palestinian movement that we see today either. But anyway, it failed. A huge Arab insurgency exploded and the British brutally put this down while at the same time training Jewish armed commandos for the first time, including people like Moshe Dayan, who becomes the heart of the Haganah and the future Jewish militia. And at the end of this war, they've absolutely crushed the Arabs and really destroyed the Palestinian Arab community. The general in charge, by the way, is General Byrd of Montgomery, who says he thoroughly enjoys the war. A typical British imperial, tough British imperialist commander. By 1939, the British have decided that they've had enough of Zionism and the Balfour Declaration and they reverse it completely. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain says world war is coming. We'd prefer to fall out with the Jews than we would with the Arabs. And we're going to back the Arabs and we're going to reject the Jews. And they reverse the entire Balfour Declaration and that policy, and they offer the Mufti, Jerusalem and the Palestinian Arabs a Palestinian state, a full Palestinian state. It has one problem for them. It has to have a Jewish entity in it because there are more than 400,000 Jews now in Palestine. And amazingly, the Mufti of Jerusalem rejects this offer of a full Palestinian state called Palestine, called the State of Palestine. And all he has to do is. All they have to do is acquiesce in the existence of a large Jewish community within this land, and they reject it regarding that as unacceptable. It's interesting because the word ethnostate is often cited towards Israel now. But only an ethnostate would be acceptable, and a large Jewish community was not acceptable. In what he called the sacred land, sacred Arab land of Palestine. So an interesting moment. And the moment doesn't last long, nor does the offer because Neville Chamberlain falls. World War II has started and everything is put on hold. And the Jewish community, by the way, during World War II is very threatened. There's a real possibility in 1940 that Britain will be invaded by the Nazis. There are Nazi lists of well known British families who are to be arrested and executed. And among them are the Montefiore family and the Rothschild family of course, and so on and so forth. And I remember my father telling me that many members of the Montefiori family had discussed what to do if the Nazis had landed. And one of the things they decided they would do, some of them decided they would do, would be to commit suicide with their own children, with their families and children, rather than be captured by the Nazis. So it's just an interesting because one thinks that Britain was bound to define the Nazis and be on the winning side. But for the Jewish community there was a real possibility that they wouldn't. And so end of the war there's a new government, the Atlee government. And by now of course the Holocaust is known. You know, 6 million Jews have been killed in Europe and there is now real call among the Palestinian Jewish community for independence and Aviv. You've covered this many times. So we're sort of almost up to modern times. I mean the Attlee government has now decided to what they call scuttle from many of the British Empire's expensive colonies and provinces. And the biggest one they decide to scuttle from is the Indian Raj. But they also make a last ditch attempt to agree a Palestinian settlement with the Jews and the Palestinian Arabs. And they again offer in 1947 a Palestinian state, a Palestine state, to the Mufti of Jerusalem who despite being a major colluder and promoter of the Holocaust and Nazi Hitlerite ally, is still effectively the leader of the Palestinian Arabs. And they offer him a state again and again for the same reasons he turns it down in 1947, in which time Attlee and Bevin, the British leadership says we throw up our hands, we're going to give this to, to the United nations, the new international organization. And at the same time Ben Gurion and Menachem Begin launched the Jewish revolt against Britain which is preventing the arrival of Jewish refugees from the Holocaust camps into Palestine. And Menachem Begin in the Irgun blow up the blow off the King David Hotel, as you know, they hang British officers and that leads to anti Jewish riots in Britain in 1946 against the

[A]

British Jewish community, against the British Jewish community.

[B]

Which is an interesting precursor of what we are seeing today. But as you know, they are short lived episodes. And in 1948 the British scuttle from Palestine and Israel is established. Initially Britain is very, I'd say hostile to Israel and Israel is extremely suspicious of Britain for obvious reasons since really Israel was created in an anti imperialist, anti British revolt, so which is often forgotten today. And you know, it's only in 1956 that Britain becomes a sort of ally of Israel with the Suez camp.

[A]

The whole history, the whole story is extraordinary because the Arabs often talk about Israel being founded by the British to serve British imperial interests. The Jewish memory of all of that period was that everything the British did. Of course the Zionists tried to influence the British policy, use British imperial power to serve their agenda, their needs, their desperate need to create a refuge. This is. Ben Gurion is a man seized by desperation at the terrible fate that he thinks await the Jews of Europe. A view of what was about to happen that begins with Herzl. That's right, even before Herzl. But the Jewish memory of it is that the British Empire, everything it did for the Jews, never mind against the Jews, were evidence of the need for Jewish self reliance, for Jewish ability to control our situation. For example, the Kindertransport, which was this great act of moral kindness and generosity, except that all those kids were orphaned, right? 10,000 kids. I think it was allowed into Britain because war is coming that could be so catastrophic that we have to take in these 10,000 kids so they don't die. But the condition we nevertheless place on taking in the kids is that we don't take in their parents because we're not letting Jews in. So the British decision was to rescue kids on the condition that those kids would be orphaned. And the vast, vast majority of the parents who stayed behind were killed. And every year now Britain celebrates the great moment of its great generosity and kindness in the Kindertransport. The Jews remember that as a great symbol of never relying on someone else, of vulnerability, of desperate need. And it's true. In 1930, when does the British Empire turn on Zionism?

[B]

I mean really at the gates of Auschwitz? Yes, it did. 1939.

[A]

In 1939. So it's like, yes, okay, every small people will use every imperial power they can get their hands on. It's not like the Arabs weren't turning to the Ottomans, turning to the Russians, turning to anyone they could over the course of this history, but the idea that we are the arm of some kind of imperial project when in fact at the key moments it always backfired and in the end only self reliance works. And of course when the British public is angered at what the Jews are doing over in Palestine, riots against the Jews. It is an extraordinary moment of clarity, but also of how different things can look to different people. The same set of facts can just lead to very different conclusions. Let's bring it up to the present. What does the post war period look like for British Jews? There's obviously the deconstruction of empire. The British welfare state is built out, the Jewish community continues to grow. What does all that look like?

[B]

It looks, it's the golden age of. It's the golden age of Jews in Britain really. Maybe from 1948 we should say, but maybe after 1945, it's a golden age. You've got this amazing influx of Jewish refugees from Germany and from Austria. You know, people like Isaiah Berlin, Lord George Ridenfeld, who founded the publisher. You have this, you have an amazing, you have an acceptance of Jews in British society. And again, you know, they all looked to the royal families particularly there were Jews in boat, they were Jews were pretty, pretty many Jews were socialists in fact and were members of the Labor Party that this time. And you have a great sort of, you have a great prosperity and success that really comes all the way through to two years ago, three years ago. And you know, you have these, you have again, you have, you know, many Jewish cabinet ministers. They're represented in the, they're represented in the arts, they're represented in business, they're represented in, in business. It's still a tiny community, 200, 250,000 people out of 60 million. And it's a golden age. And you know, it goes right, totally comfortable. It's comfortable, it's integrated, it's integrated, it's very.

[A]

I listen to some British Jewish comedians. They don't sound like being Jewish is something exceptional that they have to grapple with in their day to day life. And then we come to October 7th, or does it precede October 7th? Something has changed.

[B]

There's something earlier which I think happens and in this case I think it's something that's in common with the discourse in universities across the Western world. And so here's a point where you have this Anglo Jewish community, as we call ourselves. And it's extremely patriotic, extremely English. We sound English, we live English. There are areas like Golders of Green and in Manchester where there are Orthodox Jewish communities, live in what are known as Jewish areas, but there are also a lot of Jews like myself who don't live in a Jewish area and are very proudly British and Jewish. And that's how we regard ourselves. And that is completely unchallenged, really, from the end of those small riots in the mid-40s to October 7th. But exactly as in America, there are in the universities, particularly universities like London University, for example, which ironically, many of the colleges there were founded as colleges where Jews would be acceptable Jews and non conformists could study when they were banned from being at Oxford and Cambridge, these very. What were then called progressive universities. An ideology of decolonization was becoming extremely fashionable, exactly like in America and in fact influenced by America. And I think it really started, of course, you can go back to the 60s and look at the real decolonization and the new radicalism, Mukuwama resistance in the Arab world, but also extreme radicalism in Western universities in its most extreme Red Brigades and Bar Meinhof and all of that. But that's really dormant. And in the early 2000s, you're at the beginning of this new decolonization movement in which the world is divided into goodies and baddies to oppressed and oppressors, and the oppressors are white settler colonialists who are engaged in the destruction of indigenous peoples. And it comes from, as you know, and I think you've discussed a lot, it comes from originally from Australian academics looking at Australian colonization. It's immediately applied through a new journal Founded in 1999, the Journal of Genocide Studies. And it's immediately applied and focused on the case of Israel. And there is an under. There's a. Without us re realizing it. And people like me knew about this and saw it in universities and just thought this was just a sort of, a, sort of a sort of slightly demented radical fetish, anti Israel fetish that really belonged in a small amount of. In a small number of radical professors in the academy. And not for a moment did I think that this would explode into becoming a movement among many young people and many professors across the Western world. But the worst signs of this, and this was when Jeremy Corbyn became Labor leader In, I think 2016 or around, and I forget the exact date now, even though I should remember it well, at that moment, for the first time, the Labour Party, which is, you know, one of the two main parties in Britain, was suddenly captured by a radical entryist group of progressives, as they were called, who treated, who treated Jews as outriders for Zionism and who believed that the Jews were a wealthy white community who therefore could not face racism themselves and who in fact were extremely suspect because of their economic opposition and their alliance to Zionism in Israel. And so this was, this was immediately recognized as real antisemitism. And in fact, Jeremy, the fight against Jeremy Corbyn, I mean partly he was extremely unpatriotic. He always supported anti Western dictatorships, you know, Putin or Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran.

[A]

And Iran, yeah.

[B]

And he always supported this against the British, the evil west and the evil America. And part of it was anti Americanism, but a lot of it was ident. A strong strain of antisemitism was recognized within this movement. And that was the first we'd heard of this idea that the Jews there couldn't be anti Jewish racism because Jews were rich and white. And this concept was completely new to us and was extremely alarming, particularly since it's completely ahistorical. And in fact this whole kind of ideology rests on a completely a factual ahistorical approach which is alarming. And I think its greatest danger is not only to the security of Jews, but actually as to British society. You know, societies that don't recognize and don't respect facts, sources, history and accept fabrications and conspiracies, societies like that ultimately fail. And so that is one part of where we are today. But what we saw on the day after October 7th was this movement resurged. Corbyn had lost the general elections, been removed from the Labour Party, and the Labour Party had purged itself of its more notorious anti Semites. And it seemed like that that battle was over and won. How wrong we were. And then October 7th, you saw this movement burst out of the universities and onto the streets and in an alliance of radical decolonializer ideologues and in an alliance with ultra Islamists from amidst the 4 million strong Islamic community, much of which by the way is assimilated, patriotic and thrilled to be in Britain. But there is also a strong minority, I hope it's a minority who are supportive of Islamism within Britain. And I say it's an unholy alliance. In fact, the movement is a sort of really a post Christian religious moral movement, a sort of moral hysteria. But that immediately exploded after October 7th in demonstrations calling for globalize the intifada, for calling Israel genocide and for calling British Jews who were supportive of Israel genocidal supporters. And out of that came a series of calumnies and libels in demonstrations that that Israel was a genocidal baby killing organization embarking on an attempt to exterminate the Palestinian people, while also pretending that the hamas attacks in October 7 had not happened at all and that the war in Gaza was actually just a massacre, not a war against, not an extremely, sadly brutal war against an extremely well armed and ruthless armed militia. So that's what happened. And I think British Jews then very quickly started to feel a change in their position here. And suddenly for the first time since in this golden age of being Jewish in Britain, which I said it really started in 45, but really it started much earlier. It really started in the 1850s and it went, started in the 1850s and it lasted right until 2023. And suddenly then you start to feel that Jews are being looked at differently. Jews are being challenged in the arts, in politics, on the streets, in their areas. And the effect of these calumnies and libels, when you're really accusing Jews of these demonstrations now happening every week and accusing Jews of, and accusing Jews of being party to cosmic evil, to cosmic evil, suddenly starts to rebound on Jews. And suddenly you find that, you know, Jewish synagogues have to be, have to be effectively armed into fortresses, Jewish schools, fortresses with high walls and guards all the time. In the 60s, a, a tough British business, British Jewish businessman Gerald Ronson had created the Community Security Trust to protect Jewish community buildings, schools, synagogues, et cetera, et cetera. And it was always a kind of, it was essential because, you know, there was terrorism against Jews in Britain, but it was very minor. By the time you get to, by the time you get to the Jeremy Corbyn era, suddenly there is a real danger to Jewish buildings into Jewish community. And after 2023, after October 7th, the Jewish community, remember how tiny it is, 250,000 people roughly give or take out of 70 million people, this community is suddenly battening down the hatches, you know, going to synagogue, you have to go through metal detectors, go through guards. The British government backs the cst. This community which we have, I don't know what your equivalent is in America, but we have this amazing, this amazing organization which once seemed kind of, you know, seems like slightly necessary, but not that important. Now it's absolutely central to Jewish life in Britain. This security Trust still run by the, the great Sir Gerald Ronson, who is now, and is now an octogenarian, but you know, this organization is now completely central. And as the two and a half years or three years since 2023 roll on with every week, these demonstrations accusing Jews of cosmic evil, of Genocide of baby killing, of blood drinking. And these calls for globalize the Intifada and From the river to the Sea, suddenly you see that these marches are being deliberately, being deliberately fueled past synagogues. And the police in Britain are quite innocent compared with the police in America, for example. And they're also.

[A]

What do you mean innocent?

[B]

They're innocent in the sense that they've been politicized to the extent in anti racial ideology and multiculturalism that they cannot believe that a minority of any sort could ever reveal malicious behavior to anybody. And there are all sorts of cases of Britain where we see that this view has now been radically challenged by events. And the Metropolitan Police and the Manchester police now have had to become suddenly change their approaches, by the way, British security forces and the British anti terrorist forces within these police forces have always been extremely good, by the way, and are not innocent, are in fact coldly realistic and an expert at stopping attacks by Islamists, few of which have got through. But what they weren't good at understanding was how these demonstrations, some of which were, some of these demonstrators of course were humanitarians, rightly criticizing Israel for things that Israel should be criticized for. And there's much to criticize in Israel, as we know. But they were very slow to realize that a large part of these demonstrations were hate marches accusing Jews of cosmic evil and really inciting rage and hatred and violence against Jews. They couldn't attack Israel, but they could attack Jews who were here. And those attacks then started inevitably. If you accuse people of, if you accuse an entire people of killing babies and drinking their blood effectively, in the end, fanatics and sort of vulnerable people in communities will attack them. And that is exactly what's happened. And so we have attacks by Islamists against Jewish communities. And we have the killing of Heaton, the Heaton Park Synagogue at Yom Kippur, we have the bombing of Jewish ambulances, the Hatzala ambulances in North London, we have the stabbings of Jews in Gold's Green just the other day. And everywhere we have attacks on Jewish buildings, threats against Jewish people, school children being threatened. And the government has been very slow, has been very slow at really recognizing this and doing anything about it. But what we've realized, and I know we've been talking a long time, so we must end this. But what's happened is a huge change in the Jewish awareness of Anglo Jews of who they are and where they are. For 150 years, more than 150 years, for 170 years, British Jews were the luckiest Jews in the world. We are still really grateful to be here. We still have many friends and allies and we still have the majority of the Jewish people who are the majority of the British people who are extremely, I'd say, pro Jewish and sympathetic to the dangers that Jews are now are facing. But we also have to realize that the golden age is over. And when you have tens of thousands of people walking through Jewish cities, threatening Jewish communities on a weekly basis, then you have to realize the golden age is over. And we are a small Jewish community in a large high population and we have to adapt to where we are today.

[A]

I want to finish with one very brief question. Given the attacks, given the marches, I keep telling people, just think about those marches a moment, sit with them. They are totally unprecedented in the history of marches, of British marches in Brazil, in the United States and Amsterdam, everywhere they have been, these marches over the Gaza war are totally unprecedented. And that means something because not even while the Gaza war was underway was the Gaza war the worst war underway, including wars funded by the west with Western allies and Western weapons. And so there's something here that isn't about specifically Gaza, it's about the countries where the marches are happening. It is an anti Western argument. It is a civilizational argument. It is an elite competition thing happening. So much is happening here that isn't just critique of the Gaza war. And the vocabulary being used is the Jews. The Jews are the way to talk about so many other things that people are trying to advance and the violence is beginning. One of the extraordinary things that came out in everything you have said over this conversation is that the Jews have always sought to contribute tremendously as much as they could. They tended to be corralled by literally British law into financial professions. And that was their contribution. But it was an immense contribution. And they were loyal and patriotic. And as soon as they could become part of Parliament and the House of Lords and the elites, they thrilled to the chance. And being British meant to British Jews something very profound, something very profound in their identity. And always, always, always until the 1850s and maybe a little bit after the 1850s as well. But certainly you could say the 1850s begins a trend in the other direction. Always they that it was all conditional, that it was all temporary, that it was all until the next great crisis. Britain is now going through a very great crisis. It's not quite a crisis of immigration. Maybe it's a crisis of integration, maybe it's a crisis of identity. It's some sort of crisis. The left and the right are debating and arguing about this, but there's no question that there's a sense of urgency to it. And in this moment of deep crisis, the Jews are the vocabulary somehow. And whether or not the immigration's happening or not, the violence ends up being about Jews. It's been a period of extraordinary patriotism. It's been a period of extraordinary integration and extraordinary loyalty and extraordinary gratitude by British Jews for being British. Is it conditional again? What's the future look like? Are we back? You just said something has changed. Where, you know, the golden age has ended. What does the golden age ending mean? Do British Jews have a future in Britain? There are, by the way, options today. Obviously, I'm talking about Israel, but I'm also talking about the United States. There are ways and places to go easily, more easily than in the past. Has Britain once again swung back that pendulum to the conditionality of Jews, the fragility of Jewish life? Do you think the future for British Jews is healthy and happy?

[B]

Well, I think that we're seeing a backlash against this, in part. And I think you'll see the King, for example, Charles iii, He offered to become the patron of the Community Security Trust. The government is bringing in measures against these terrorism and hate marches. The Metropolitan Police just put out a statement yesterday or today even really admitting that these are hate marches that threaten Jewish communities. So I do think that most of British society is sympathetic to Jews, but the question is, will they do enough about it? I think that for most Jews I speak to, they are talking about things like, should we have a mezuzah, should we wear our Star of David? Most of the attacks are against Jews who are recognizably Jewish and wear kippar and so on. But most Jews are now beginning to wonder, how Jewish can we be in Britain? But I think very few Jews are really discussing whether to leave Britain, and very few Jews are really discussed. I mean, they say it, and there is a regular conversation over Jewish family tables in Britain now, where would we go? I mean, I have not met a Jew in Britain who has not asked that question, by the way, even in a slightly. Kind of. Even in a slightly humorous manner, as Jews do, where would we go? And so definitely British Jews are asking that question. And definitely I think that Jews still have a future in Britain, and I am certainly planning to stay here. And I want to stay here. And I love Britain and I'm a patriot. But that said, the world is darkening.

[A]

Simon Sivaguante Fiori, thank you so much for joining me. This was absolutely fascinating. And unfortunately, we're giving context to darkening times. Maybe context gives strength. Thank you very much for. For coming on.

[B]

Thanks for having me. Lovely to see you.