Jews are terrified - we keep our newsroom hidden

Jake Wallis Simons, the editor of the world's oldest Jewish newspaper, on a terrifying climate for his community and why he works from a secret London location

- Katie Strick

I FIND myself looking over my shoulder before I step into the Jewish Chronicle’s headquarters in central London. “We’ve always had to take security very seriously,” the paper’s editor, Jake Wallis Simons, tells me as we walk through a warren of anonymous white corridors to a small, nondescript meeting room with a modest Jewish Chronicle logo on the wall (the only branding in the whole building). It’s the room his colleagues would cry in during those first sleepless days after October 7.

Wallis Simons and his team have kept the location of their offices secret since they moved here two years ago for fear of antisemitic attacks and I’m shocked at first — but perhaps shouldn’t be. The 2015 shootings at the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris were horrifying proof of the threats journalists can face while doing their job, and attacks against Jews have escalated since then — even before Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and its response triggered a wave of antisemitic hate here in Britain.

Wallis Simons, 46, a smartly- dressed father of four, is realistic about the dangers he and his staff face, but this is their new normal. He struggles to remember what life looked like before October 7 — the day his role as editor of the world’s oldest and most influential Jewish newspaper changed forever — but he never used to look over his shoulder in the way he does now every time he steps out onto the streets of our capital.