The righteous were remembered because they were few. The rest were silent. Now history is doing what history does, it’s repeating itself.

Every so often, usually at the end of a long dinner or after a particularly bleak headline, I hear a familiar reassurance from fellow Jews. A delusional reassurance eating away at our community. One so entrenched, so comforting, and so catastrophically false that it may one day be remembered as the most fatal lie Jews told themselves in the West.

It is the belief that, when the darkness grows thick enough, the moment antisemitism reaches the threshold of becoming unbearable, a silent majority of ‘good people’ will rise up and defend us.

Jews, who long ago accepted that the tooth fairy doesn’t exist, that the Easter bunny is more Cadbury than canon. Jews who no longer believe in burning bushes or parted seas. Jews who accept that some biblical stories are metaphors, but who somehow still believe in the most dangerous myth in modern political life. Jews who can distinguish between realism and fairy tales, except for the greatest fairy tale of them all:

‘If things ever get really bad for us, the silent majority will step in.’

Ah yes, the silent majority. That ever-present, never-visible cavalry. Those mythical superheroes who, according to those who rely on them, are simply waiting for the most dramatic of moments to arrive. They’ll appear over the horizon, backlit for effect, descending just in time to rescue us. Fashionably late, quietly noble.

History has tried to correct this delusion over and over, but we refuse to listen. We insist on believing in heroes who never existed, a lovely story, shame it’s never been true. Yet while we wait, make no mistake, the danger grows.

History’s Loudest Silence

Let’s examine the record, not in ancient times, but in modern history.

When pogroms tore through Eastern Europe, did the silent majority emerge? No. Did a silent majority intervene in Soviet Russia? No. In 1948, when five Arab armies tried to annihilate the newborn Jewish state, did the silent masses stand with us? Still no. When the Nazis and their enthusiastic collaborators set about murdering six million Jews, did a quiet mass of good-hearted Europeans step forward? No.

And here lies the most damning evidence of all. The only reason we remember the righteous is because so few existed.

Yad Vashem, after decades of meticulous research, has recognised 28,707 individuals as Righteous Among the Nations, across 51 countries. These are the non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.

Let’s sit with that number. 28,707 people across 51 nations. An average of less than 550 people per country who stood up for Jews during the single greatest industrialised massacre of a minority in human history, while it happened in full view of their neighbours and governments.

That is not a silent majority, that is a microscopic minority of moral courage.

And their very rarity is why we honour them, not because the world rose up for us, but because almost no one did.

Show me where this cavalry exists. Point to the moment the silent majority saved us. You can’t, because it never happened.

2025 Britain: If This Isn’t ‘Bad Enough,’ What Is?

Yet somehow, in Britain today, the myth persists. Maybe believers in the silent majority think the British public is merely dozing, that they’ll awaken at some final, intangible threshold. So, let’s ask the only question that matters:

How bad does it have to get?

Would it take political movements openly built on the destruction of the only Jewish state? Check. Cultural boycotts of Jewish creatives and Jewish-owned companies? Check. A national broadcaster proven to be systemically biased against Jews? Check. Two-tier policing applied against the Jewish community? Check. A major UK city becoming a no-go zone for Zionists? Almost there. Jews murdered on British streets for the crime of being Jewish? Check.

If none of this has roused the mythical majority, then let’s be brutally honest: They aren’t sleeping. They aren’t waiting. They simply aren’t there.

The Data: The Majority Isn’t With Us

Emotion aside, the polling is unequivocal.

A poll carried out in June 2024 showed that 50 per cent of 18–24-year-olds blame Israel for the Gaza conflict, while only 25 per cent blame Hamas, the perpetrators of October 7. A majority – 54 per cent – agree that, ‘The state of Israel should not exist.’

A further poll carried out in October 2025 showed that over 20 per cent of Britons agree with four out of five antisemitic statements, a figure that has doubled over the last decade. Over 25 per cent believe Jews control the UK media, while over 50 per cent acknowledge a significant rise in antisemitism in the past year.

Distilled into one unavoidable truth, we can now see the following. The majority sees the rise in antisemitism, the majority shrugs and the youngest, fastest-growing demographic blames Jews for their own massacre.

Where, in any of this, is a silent majority hiding?

It isn’t silent, it isn’t a majority and just like the Easter bunny, it isn’t real.

Stop Relying on Fantasies

Those who have spoken out, those righteous few, must be honoured, protected, and supported. But they are exceptions, not evidence of an invisible army.

They are your list, that’s it. Because anyone who hasn’t spoken up by now either doesn’t care, doesn’t see or stands with the other side.

We must stop outsourcing our survival to the goodwill of strangers, because the only people who can stem this tide are us. And ask yourself honestly, why would anyone else put their head above the parapet on our behalf if we won’t do it for ourselves?

So What Do We Do?

If the silent majority isn’t coming and it isn’t, then the path forward becomes brutally clear.

Stop being afraid.

Stop being afraid of people discovering you’re a Jew. Stop being afraid of being known as a Zionist. Stop being afraid of what it might mean for your finances, your safety, your friendships, your future.

Because here is the truth, cold, hard, unforgiving.

You don’t have a future unless you take back control of your narrative.

We repeat ‘never again’, but the Holocaust teaches one lesson above all others:

Hiding will not save you, silence will not save you, lowering your head will not save you or your children.

The next generation needs us now, not when things get worse, not when the winds shift, not when the fairytale cavalry fails to appear for the hundredth time.

Now.

They need us to step up and call out hate every single time we see it.

So go, show up.

Join a counter-demonstration with the brave souls who’ve been carrying this burden for years. Write another letter to the BBC. Tell your colleague what you love about Israel. Tell them Chanukah is coming and you’ll be celebrating it proudly. Wear a Magen David big enough to catch the light and blind the haters when you walk into a room. Reclaim your story before someone else rewrites it.

And most importantly: tell your children to be proud.

Proud of who they are, proud of where they come from, proud of what Jews have given the world, proud to stand tall, even when it’s hard, especially when it’s hard.

Because they are not alone, they have us and we have each other.

If others want to join us, amazing. If others want to stand with us, welcome. If others want to support us, thank you.

But we will not rely on them, not anymore, not ever again.

Our future depends on us.

And never again means now.