Vanessa Feltz says Jewish people in UK are living in ‘fear’ amid Israel-Hamas war
‘It’s absolutely frightening here,’ presenter said
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Your support makes all the difference.Vanessa Feltz has said that Jewish people living in England are living in fear amid the Israel-Hamas war.
Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Israel was at war after Hamas terrorists and Islamic Jihad launched a “massacre of civilians” from Gaza.
More than 1,200 Israeli people were killed in the attack and hundreds more taken hostage, with Natanyahu warning that Palestinians would pay a heavy price.
In what has been called a “complete siege”, Israel has cut off water, fuel and electricity supplies to the Gaza strip, while tens of thousands of Israeli troops have massed at the border. The death toll in Gaza from Israel’s retaliatory strikes has passed 900, with around 4,500 wounded.
You can follow The Independent’s live blog for updates here.
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Appearing on This Morning on Wednesday (11 October), panellist Feltz shared her heartbreak at the situations in Israel and Gaza and the impact on people back home in the UK.
Leading into the discussion, her fellow panellist Tom Warbrick said that “people in Israel are scared”, adding: “There will be people in Gaza who are also absolutely terrified about the bombs that are going to be raining down.”
Feltz, who is Jewish, agreed, saying: “I have very close family members, lots of them, in Israel, lots of friends.” The presenter said that she knew families based in the UK who have lost family members in the atrocities.
“There are people in England today, fearful,” she said. “Fearful for their children who go to Jewish schools, fearful if they run a kosher restaurant, a kosher supermarket. Fearful if they live in what’s known as a Jewish area. People are scared just to go to the shops today, going, ‘Should I go to synagogue? Should I not go? I don’t know. I don’t want to risk my life in my own country.’
“It’s absolutely frightening here. But for people in Israel, and obviously now in Gaza too, it’s absolutely terrifying. I’ve got cousins sitting in bomb shelters even as I’m talking to you now.”
Feltz went on to brand the events in Israel as “unthinkable”, saying: “Hamas are terrorists. They don’t speak for Palestinians at all… It’s so inhumane and so appalling, I feel like I’ve got a stone in my heart… It’s all real and it’s frighteningly real.”
Feltz’s comments come after model Gigi Hadid, who is half-Palestinian, shared a statement condemning the “terrorising of innocent people”.
On Instagram, she wrote that her dreams for a free Palestine came not at the cost of Jewish people, and added that inflicting terror on innocent people is “not in alignment with and does not do any good for the Free Palestine movement”.
“The idea that it does has fueled a painful, decades-long cycle of back & forth retaliation (which no innocent civilian, Palestinian or Israeli deserves to be a casualty of), and helps perpetuate the false idea that being Pro-Palestine [is equal to] antisemitic,” she wrote.