As an international lawyer, splitting my time between London and Brussels, I dare say I might be considered one of Theresa May’s ‘citizens of nowhere’. Nonetheless, as the protests about the Israeli response to the atrocities committed by Hamas on 7 October have become more strident and legally problematic, I have also had cause to reflect on my heritage as a dual British-Israeli national.
Much of my mother’s side of the family arrived in Israel from Bukhara (then part of the Russian empire, now modern-day Uzbekistan) at the end of the nineteenth century. They were prosperous silk traders who originally settled in the Bukharan Quarter of Jerusalem, following pogroms in Russia. When I was young, I was taken to see a community building that my family had established in Jerusalem in 1902.
Most Israelis see it as calling, not only for the destruction of our country, but also for a genocide
The October Revolution of 1917, and the subsequent rise of communism, meant that they could never return.
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