'People don't like Jews and the world has never been worse' - Miriam Margolyes

Actress and comedian Miriam Margolyes says being Jewish has affected her whole life and that she thinks the world has never been worse than it is now.

Speaking at Hay Festival, Margolyes reflected on her upbringing, identity, antisemitism, and the polarised state of politics.

The 85-year-old said she thinks about Gaza "every single day when I get up", arguing that Jewish people "must hold themselves to higher standard".

Margolyes has faced criticism from members of the Jewish community for previous remarks, including in an interview about Gaza when she accused Israel of behaving like Nazi Germany.

Speaking at the Hay Festival in Powys, Margolyes, who was born in Oxford, said: "I was born Jewish and I think that affects your whole life - what your parents teach you and what you learn from the community you live in."

Reflecting on her upbringing, she described her mother as coming from a "criminal immigrant family", saying she was branded "vulgar, lower middle class, socially a climber".

"But she loved me and brought me up with good morals and good attitudes," she said.

Margolyes also spoke warmly about her love of Jewish food, saying: "Chopped liver, now it's not good for you, but it's one of the glories of the earth.

"Chopped liver, chopped herring, egg and onion, fried fish with olive oil and matzo meal.

"Darlings, you know it's worth changing your religion sometimes," she joked to the audience.

Addressing concerns around rising antisemitism, Margolyes said "nobody likes me to say this but I'm going to say it - people don't like Jews".

She said that after the Holocaust - when millions of Jewish people, and people from other backgrounds, were killed by the Nazis during World War Two - people "realised that they couldn't say nasty things about Jews because terrible things happened to Jews and they must be sympathetic so it stopped," she said.

However, she said that over time when "people with no morals who happened to be Jewish" appeared, "the knives came out again, and they have never been put away".

Margolyes also discussed her concerns around global politics, saying: "I don't know if everybody else feels like this, but I don't think things have ever been worse than they are now."

"But every single day when I get up now, I think about Gaza, and I think about the people who've had their homes blown up and then are told to move on and then when they move on they are shot and attacked and how does one respond to that?"

According to Margolyes, it was "wicked".

"I don't want my people to be wicked.

"We who suffered, we who were at the receiving end of nastiness and wickedness and destruction and death and cruelty. I don't want that."

"We have to be firm about what is good and what is bad, but nobody is facing the truth. What is the matter with everybody?"

"Jews must hold themselves to higher standards, I'm afraid, and we are not doing that."

She added that it is "our fault, too, that these things happen in Israel".

"My friends and my relatives in Golders Green and Dollis Hill and Radlett and St Albans, all full of very nice middle-class Jewish people, decent good people, but they won't speak against Israel and they're wrong, because Israel has become a rogue nation," she said.

About 1,200 people were killed in the 2023 Hamas-led attack which triggered the Gaza war and 251 others were taken hostage.

Israel responded by launching a massive military campaign in Gaza, which reduced much of the Palestinian territory to ruins and left many of its 2.1 million residents displaced.

Israeli forces have killed more than 72,800 people in Gaza, according to its Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures the UN considers generally reliable.

Previously, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said it struck "military targets only, in accordance with international law".

"In addition, the IDF takes extensive measures to mitigate harm to uninvolved individuals during operational activity and invests significant efforts in assessing and considering potential collateral damage throughout all stages of planning and executing strikes."

British Jews recently spoke to the BBC about a rising undercurrent of antisemitism across society in recent years. Police and policy experts tasked with tackling antisemitism believe this has helped create the conditions for the most serious anti-Jewish hate crimes in recent British history, including last year's Manchester synagogue attack that left two men dead.

In north London, recent targeting of Jewish premises has also heightened fears, including an arson attack in April on ambulances belonging to a Jewish charity in Golders Green and another attempted arson on a synagogue in Finchley.

The Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that provides advice and security for Jewish communities and monitors antisemitism in the UK, says it is receiving record numbers of reports of antisemitism.

As a high-profile Jewish woman, Margolyes has been criticised for her stance on Gaza by Jewish groups.

After saying in an interview that Adolf Hitler "made us like him", the Campaign Against Anti Semitism described the remarks as "repugnant", and called for her to be stripped of both her OBE and her Bafta, which she won for a supporting role in 1993's The Age of Innocence.