Last night, at around 1:30 a.m., something inside me broke. I had just returned from Porto. After a long day of travelling, I did what any parent does: I tidied the house, cooked for the next day, and tried to restore a sense of normality. By the time I was getting ready for bed, the house was finally quiet. And then the explosion came.
The Fear That Rushed Back
The blast shook the street. I ran outside and saw thick smoke, flames rising from the Hatzalah ambulances, and the terrifying sound of more explosions as oxygen canisters ignited. For one minute, I wasn’t in London anymore. I was back in Jerusalem on 7 October, standing with my family, feeling that same cold shock, that same instinctive fear that grips your whole body. And then another thought hit me — one I never imagined I would have in London.
A Painful Echo of Kristallnacht
What I saw wasn’t Kristallnacht. But the feeling — the symbolism — was impossible to ignore. The night when Jewish homes, synagogues, and businesses across Germany and Austria were burned, smashed, and destroyed simply because they were Jewish. It was a night meant to terrorise, to humiliate, to send a message that Jews were not safe.
Last night in Golders Green, watching Jewish ambulances — vehicles dedicated to saving lives — deliberately set on fire, I felt a faint, chilling echo of that same message. Not the same scale. Not the same era. But the same intention: to frighten, to intimidate, to make us feel unsafe in our own streets. And it worked.
A Community Left Exposed
Knowing that this was a targeted arson attack — carried out by people who came prepared, who poured gasoline, who wanted to destroy — made the fear even sharper. It wasn’t random. It wasn’t accidental. It was aimed at us. And in a community already feeling the weight of rising antisemitism, it felt like another step in a direction we hoped we would never see again.
When Those Who Save Lives Are Targeted
Hatzalah volunteers are the people who run toward emergencies when everyone else runs away. Seeing their ambulances burning felt like an attack on the very heart of our community.
It’s hard not to feel that the people who hate us are becoming bolder, while the sense of security we once took for granted is slipping away.
Even after the flames were extinguished, the fear stayed. The smoke cleared, but the unease didn’t. And the question that keeps echoing in my mind is one that no one in 2026 should have to ask: How close are we willing to let this get? Last night, in the middle of London, I felt a shadow of a night that should have remained only in history books.
