'A birthright, not a burden': Leo Pearlman on reclaiming Jewish dignity post-Oct. 7 - interview

These past two years have been filled with immeasurable challenges and emotions for us Jews living here or there. The barbaric attack on Simchat Torah 2023, together with the worldwide rise of Jew hatred, has shaken us to the core. Will we recover?

Let me start off by saying that this project is both the one that I am most proud of in my entire career, and the one that I most wish I never had to make.

But to be clear, the BBC did not commission this documentary, nor did they invite us to make it. The decision to make this film was made by myself and Emilio Schenker, the CEO of Sipur. We were then joined by MGM and HOT. There was no distribution deal in place when we commenced production, and no agreement with any buyer.

From the outset, our motivation was simple – to ensure that the truth of what happened at Nova was told, preserved, and witnessed. However, we also knew that in order to counter the inevitable, insidious, and antisemitic claims that the film was a piece of propaganda, it had to be seen on the BBC.

Regardless of the fact that the BBC’s coverage, through both its news platforms and BBC Arabic, has been riddled with inaccuracies, false equivalence, the amplification of Hamas propaganda, and a general failure toward British Jewry, the UK’s national broadcaster still has the widest reach of any media network on the planet through its World Service platform, and it remains widely viewed as the most trusted and impartial news organization in the world.

No other platform would have afforded us the same opportunity to speak truth to power – to push back against the sustained attempts by antisemites and apologists to diminish and deny the true scale of the horrors Hamas and its proxies wrought upon the Jewish people on Oct. 7.

Nova was the very epitome of that horror – a place of peace, love, and music turned into a killing field. And that truth deserved to be seen and heard by the world.

My interest in Israel is ancestral, lived, and fiercely personal.

On my dad’s side of the family, my grandparents met during the siege of Jerusalem, were married in Israel, and then moved to the UK. They imbued me with a love for the country, a strength, and a deep-rooted pride that shaped everything I am. That pride took me back: I went on kibbutz and lived in Israel for a year after finishing high school; and some years later, I married in Jerusalem – with the Old City in view – because it is a place woven into the fabric of my family and my life.

On my mum’s side, there is a different but intimately connected story. My maternal grandmother escaped Nazi Germany and lost many family members in Auschwitz.

That loss sits beside the joy of statehood: These two halves of the modern Jewish experience – the Holocaust and the creation of Israel – are inseparable in my mind. They are why I speak out. Israel is our rightful homeland, yes, but it is also our protection, a guarantee that we will never again be stateless, that we will never be left without recourse, and that we have the means and the will to resist. That history, that responsibility, is what compels me to write, to argue, and to challenge antisemitism wherever it appears.

My reaction is one of anger and sadness. Anger that the world has once again shown its true colors – that so many have so quickly leaned into the same antisemitic tropes we prayed we had left behind in the 1940s. Yet here we are again, witnessing Jewish boycotts being called for on our streets and actualized across the entertainment industry and beyond. Never again is now!

And sadness, too. A deep sadness that support for our community feels so rare, that our historical allies on the Left – those who once stood shoulder to shoulder with us in the fight against racism and intolerance – are now not just complicit in these boycotts but are often the very people driving the antisemitic rhetoric that enables them.

But the most important thing is what we do with those emotions. Anger and sadness can be dangerous if they consume us, but they can be powerful if we harness them. We must channel them into action: to stand up, speak out, be proud, and use every platform at our disposal to ensure that hate and hypocrisy are not allowed to silence us.

And what have we been met with? Silence – or worse, condescension. Politicians and pundits telling us that we were ‘misconstruing’ antisemitism, that what we were witnessing and feeling was nothing more than ‘legitimate criticism’ of the Israeli government. No other minority in Britain would have been treated this way. And bluntly, no other minority would have accepted it.

Yet here we are. And now, for the first time in 300 years, there are dead Jews on our streets. That is the cost of complacency. That is what happens when a society excuses hate instead of confronting it.

Delegitimizing Israel doesn’t just create Jew-hatred – it is Jew-hatred. The attempt to strip the Jewish state of its legitimacy is the modern manifestation of the oldest hatred in the world. For centuries, Jews were persecuted for having no homeland; now we are vilified for having one. The language has changed, the actors have changed, but the intent is the same – to deny the Jewish people the right to self-determination, to safety, to normalcy.

When people chant ‘From the river to the sea,’ they are not engaging in political critique – they are calling for the eradication of the only Jewish state. When institutions hold Israel to standards demanded of no other nation, they are not pursuing justice – they are continuing an age-old obsession with the Jew, now reframed as an obsession with the Jewish state.

The line between anti-Zionism and antisemitism is not blurred; it is nonexistent. Delegitimizing Israel legitimizes antisemitism – it gives ancient prejudice a new vocabulary, one that is palatable to the progressive, the academic, the activist. And that is what makes it so dangerous. Because when the demonization of Israel is normalized, the demonization of Jews inevitably follows. It always has. It always will.

My message to young Jews today is this: Do not let a world that hates you decide who you are allowed to be. To be Jewish is to inherit 3,000 years of resilience – a story written in exile and survival, in faith and defiance. It is not a burden; it is a birthright. Wear it with pride.

Of course, you’re afraid. You should be. We all are. There is nothing shameful in that – fear is human. But do not let it paralyze you, and do not let it silence you. Let it drive you. Let it remind you that this is exactly what our enemies want – for you to hide your Jewishness, to renounce your Zionism, to turn your back on your people and your history.

When you deny who you are to fit in, you are not protecting yourself – you are betraying generations who fought, suffered, and died so that you could live in freedom as a Jew. Think of the six million, who had no voice. Think of those who fought to build Israel from the ashes of annihilation. How dare we, their descendants, denounce their memory just to be accepted by those who don’t deserve us!

Empathy for Palestinians and pride in being Jewish are not opposites. But when movements demand that you disavow your identity, your homeland, your people – that is not solidarity. That is surrender.

So, yes, be afraid. But be brave, too. Stand tall, speak loudly, and never apologize for who you are. Because if you let this hate go unchallenged, if you retreat into silence, it will not disappear – it will grow. And it will be the next generation of Jewish children who will have to fight what we were too afraid to confront.

What we’re witnessing in the UK right now is not a movement for peace – it’s a movement addicted to hate. The fact that the marches continue to grow even after the acceptance of the Trump peace initiative and the first steps toward the return of the hostages tells you everything. These people are not marching for Palestinians; they are marching against Jews. Because if peace were truly their goal, they would be celebrating this moment – not raging against it.

Israelis have done what so many said was impossible: They’ve signed on to a framework for peace, prioritized the return of the hostages, and offered a chance to begin healing.

And yet on the streets of London, Manchester, and Glasgow, the chants remain the same – ‘From the river to the sea; ‘Intifada revolution; ‘Globalize the intifada’ — slogans untethered from compassion, detached from reality, and united by a single through line: hatred of Jews and the Jewish state.

The watermark for the acceptance of antisemitic hate speech in Britain has risen, and the tide of hate isn’t retreating any time soon. One can only hope that the hitherto silent majority – and our government – are finally forced to confront the truth behind this hate-fueled movement. Because if a ceasefire and the first step on the long road to lasting peace result instead in the largest marches for months, with the screams of hate only rising in volume, then I genuinely fear for the future of British Jewry. Our days in this country may well be numbered unless courage, decency, and moral clarity prevail.

Israel will endure – it always has. But whether the Britain we thought we knew will, depends entirely on what happens next.

Yes – and the comparison is as chilling as it is undeniable. What we are witnessing today echoes the 1930s, not in form but in function. Then, as now, the world found convenient language to disguise its hatred of Jews. Then it was ‘national purity’ and ‘economic survival.’ Today, it’s ‘anti-Zionism’ and ‘human rights.’ The vocabulary has changed, but the intent – the singling out, the dehumanizing, the blaming of Jews for the world’s ills – remains precisely the same.

Oct. 7 should have been a moral reckoning. The barbaric slaughter of innocent men, women, and children – the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust – should have united the world in horror. Instead, it unleashed a tidal wave of antisemitism, much of it couched in terms that evoked and drew equivalence between the uniqueness of the horrors wrought by the Holocaust and the devastation felt by the innocent people of Gaza as a result of the legitimate war that Israel conducted. Jews were murdered in Israel on a Saturday morning, and by Sunday afternoon Jews were being targeted, harassed, and threatened in cities across the West. The speed of that pivot tells you everything. It was not anger at Israeli policy; it was hatred waiting for permission.

Like the 1930s, we are watching institutions – media, academia, politics – equivocate and rationalize antisemitism under the guise of ‘balance.’ We are seeing silence where there should be outrage, and cowardice where there should be moral clarity. Once again, Jews are being told that our fear is an overreaction, our pain is political, and our very existence is a provocation.

The difference today is that we do have Israel. We are no longer stateless, powerless, or voiceless. But that doesn’t lessen the danger – it simply changes the setting. The hatred that once sought to destroy the Jew now seeks to destroy the Jewish state. And if history teaches us anything, it’s that when the world turns on the Jews, we may well be the first, but we are never the last to be persecuted.

Of course we will dance again – and we already have. At weddings and bar mitzvahs, in Tel Aviv and in London, with tears in our eyes and defiance in our hearts. Never with greater need, urgency, or emotion than on October 13 of this year, when the remaining hostages finally returned home. Because that’s who we are – a people who dance even after devastation, who sing even through sorrow, who build joy out of the ashes of loss.

But we will never dance again without the added memory of this latest attempted genocide against our people. We add it to the list – the destructions of the Temple, the pogroms, the Shoah, and now Oct. 7. Yet another chapter in our long story of survival. And yet, paradoxically, another reason to celebrate with all our heart and all our soul. Because it is through those shared moments of joy that we strengthen the unbreakable bond that has carried us through 3,000 years of Jewish history and tradition.

So, yes, we will dance again – here in the Diaspora, there in Israel, and everywhere Jews stand tall and unashamed. Because for us, to dance is not just celebration. It is remembrance. It is pride. It is life itself.