Dov Forman

Historic truths, modern storytelling | TIME100 Creator: 2.2M+ followers | NYT & Sunday Times bestselling author of Lily’s Promise.

[Dov Forman @DovForman]

I’m humbled to be on the inaugural @TIME 100 Creators list, recognising the “most influential people on the internet”.

What began as a lockdown project sharing my great grandma’s holocaust testimony online has become something far beyond what I ever imagined.

Thank you ❤️

[Dov Forman @DovForman]

82 years ago today, my great-grandmother, Lily Ebert, arrived at the gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Within hours, her mother, youngest brother and youngest sister had been murdered in the gas chambers. More than 100 members of her extended family were murdered that day. They have no graves. No final resting place. Their ashes were scattered across the fields of Auschwitz.

She survived the unimaginable.

For the next 80 years, she dedicated her life to ensuring the world would never forget what happened there.

Although she passed away in October 2024, her legacy continues to grow.

This morning, our family welcomed her second great-great-grandchild into the world. Lily only had the chance to meet her first.

Hitler lost. The Nazis failed. Lily won.

And the Jewish people are still here.

[Dov Forman @DovForman]

Three and a half years ago, I walked into Westminster as a 19-year-old to work for @RobertJenrick as a Parliamentary Researcher, helping, amongst other things, to run his social media and reach people across the country and the world on the issues that mattered most.

A resignation from cabinet, a general election (where Robert won his constituency seat against all the odds and every poll), a leadership election and a defection later, Robert now has over 500,000 followers across all platforms. Our team has produced some of the most viral political content in British history, including on fare dodging and tool theft, content seen hundreds of millions of times a year. We changed the way politicians communicate in this country. Just last month, Robert's content was seen by 46.2 million people.

Robert has been the best boss, mentor and an even better friend over the last three and a half years. He took me on as a 19-year-old, let me work full-time throughout my degree at UCL alongside everything else I was doing on the side and gave me a level of independence and responsibility a 19-year-old interested in politics could have only dreamt of, getting a front row seat to some of the most important political moments over the last few years.

Now, I'm moving on to a new chapter outside of politics (more to come soon) which means one of the hottest digital jobs in Westminster is up for grabs...

If you have the digital skills to edit, film and create politically relevant viral content every day, with a focus on the economy, I'd love to hear from you. If you’re good enough, you’re old enough. Send your bio/CV and examples of your work on email to [email protected]

[S Sebag Montefiore @simonmontefiore]

Today an observer might notice several signs of the crisis in British democracy and in the civil societies of the West played out in London: this morning, a prime minister is deposed just two years after his election to make way for the seventh First Lord of the Treasury in ten years, one of whom he know little. This afternoon, our great parliament is scheduled to seriously debate a motion that seems to echo the darkest recesses of anti-Jewish conspiracism.

Just over a century ago, operatives of the Okhranka, the secret police of Russian Tsar Nicholas II, forged a manifesto that they called the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which they had plagiarized from pamphlets published in 19thcentury France and Germany, and which promoted an antisemitic conspiracy that a clique of Jews were wickedly conspiring to control Western societies using secret power and money. The Protocols were believed by the Tsar himself to be real – after he was overthrown by the Bolsheviks, he sought explanations for his downfall – and soon after they were published across the Western world – until The Times of London revealed the astonishing story of the forgery. Nonetheless they were translated into German and other languages – promoted by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis during the Third Reich – while in the 1920s the book was translated into Arabic where it was propagated by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and widely believed, later quoted in Hamas’s 1988 Charter wherein Article 32 declares: "Their (the Jewish people’s) scheme has been laid out in the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion,' and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.”

Today E-Petition 752646 which has attracted 118,000 signatures and is scheduled for debate, is somewhat concerning because its careful wording has echoes of conspiracy theories under the guise of a scrutiny of lobbying and public debate that seems to propose witch-hunts and purity tests that have no place in British society.

The petition might be reasonable if a vast and powerful state was clearly influencing British life in a campaign of subterfuge, bribery and espionage and it proposed an investigation of malign state actors. This happens to be true of Russia, China and Iran at this moment and hopefully we are investigating those bad actors. But this petition claims to be …“concerned about reported Israeli state-linked and pro-Israel lobbying activity in UK politics…” I have no problem with criticism of Israeli government policy being a critic myself - but the call for an investigation “to determine the scope” and “scrutinise how pro-Israel organisations, networks, and lobbying efforts may shape government decisions, party policy, and public debate” is alarming because beneath its framing in the familiar language of balanced inquiry and human rights lurks the hint of hidden networks or control of politics and public opinion that echo historic antisemitic narratives and of course the world conspiracy and cosmic evil of the Protocols of the Elders.

The idea of investigating (‘scrutinizing’) British people who either have relationships with a longstanding European ally and fellow liberal democracy or its citizens in any field, political commercial artistic academic scientific military or even social, or those who wish to hold free opinions and make judgements without the menace of an ideological witch hunt is concerning. After all most countries in the world have some institutional and personal relationships in other countries without allegations of secret influence. But the petition drops its mask when it ominously mentions ‘public debate’.

So what 'public debate' would be ‘scrutinized’? Against whom could this ‘scrutiny’ be aimed and who would do the ‘scrutinizing’? It would certainly cast a shadow over beleaguered British Jews for a start but also the many British people who have the right to those views available to everyone in our civil society and liberal democracy and yes public debate. In an age when everyone is anti-racist and all public discourse is couched in terms of universal anti-racism and human rights, it has been clear for some time that we need to be wary of intolerance and ideological racism itself masked by exactly this jargon. It is one of the reasons that I argue that we need to evolve a much more focused definition of what now constitutes antiJewish hatred and a new vocabulary to confront it.

Therefore this debate is a sign of our times, an alarming one but it is also an important test of the Government’s and parliamentarians’ commitment to tackling antisemitism and extremism and a chance to make clear that conspiracy theories about control of political life and public opinion have no place in public discourse. Following the recent summit on antisemitism, the Prime Minister pledged that “tackling antisemitism requires sustained leadership, accountability and resolve.” I have no doubt that our admirable Parliamentarians will use this opportunity not to legitimize or amplify such calumnies but to challenge them directly, to maintain the respect for facts and truth that are essential to our success. I hope they will acknowledge the risks posed by the petition’s framing, and reaffirm that antisemitic conspiracies and purity witch hunts (sorry, ‘scrutiny’), regardless of how they are packaged, have no place in British politics and society.

[The Jewish Chronicle @JewishChron]

UCL axes antisemitism officer post sparking fear of worsening ‘hostile environment’ for Jewish students

https://t.co/UK7OQqyho5

[Dov Forman @DovForman]

505 days.

That’s how long Eliya Cohen was held hostage, much of it underground in terror tunnels, by Hamas - taken from the Nova music festival on October 7, alongside his partner Ziv.

While Eliya was abducted, Ziv survived by hiding under the dead bodies of partygoers for six hours.

He didn’t know if she was alive. She didn’t know if he was alive.

I first met Ziv in March 2024 - six months into that nightmare. She was doing everything in her power to bring him home. Speaking at Parliament’s across the world and on television. Campaigning relentlessly, refusing to stop.

Eliya was released on February 22 2025, after 505 days in captivity. 

Tonight, I had the honour of interviewing him. Of hearing them both share their stories. Of seeing them together - now engaged, about to get married. 

There are no words for what they have been through. And no words for the dignity, strength and love they carry.

They are not just survivors. They are heroes. ❤️

[Dov Forman @DovForman]

The blood had already drained from Henry Nowak’s hands.

If the officers had been paying attention, they would have known he was telling the truth.

[Dov Forman @DovForman]

Free speech is a right, but entry to Britain is not - it’s a privilege.

Here’s what Hasan Piker really thinks…

[Eylon Levy @EylonALevy]

The Antizionist hate movement is dividing Jews into "good" and "bad" ones, but it attacks them all without distinction. 

Nobody persecutes the Chinese diaspora with political purity tests. 

@DovForman joins me on EylON the Record

[Dov Forman @DovForman]

An update from the @BritishMuseum who have now released an updated statement (below) and confirmed the event will go ahead early next month👇

[Dov Forman @DovForman]

There is a history lesson that the British Museum might usefully teach, were it still in the business of teaching history rather than surrendering it to the heckler’s veto.

It goes like this: when a society can no longer protect its Jews in the public square, cannot guarantee that a talk about ancient archaeology will not be shut down by a mob, it has already lost something foundational. The Jews are not the only ones who should be alarmed. They are simply the first.

Yesterday the British Museum, founded in 1753, repository of civilisation's deepest memory, cancelled a Jewish Culture Month event on the kingdoms of Ancient Israel and Judah. Not because the content was controversial. Not because the speaker, Dr Paul Collins, was provocative. But because a "significant number" of registered attendees had pre-planned to disrupt it. The bullies, in other words, didn't even need to show up. The threat alone was sufficient. The institution folded. A talk about archaeology, about pottery and inscriptions from a civilisation nearly three thousand years old, was considered too dangerous to host.

Let that sink in. This is Britain in 2026.

The museum's statement was a masterpiece of institutional euphemism. It spoke of its “responsibility to ensure that events hosted within the Museum can proceed safely.” It noted, with some delicacy, its commitment to "freedom of expression in a democratic society." What it did not say - what it could not quite bring itself to say - is that a group of activists committed to the erasure of any Jewish connection to the land of Israel decided that even academic archaeology was an affront, and that rather than face them down, Britain's foremost cultural institution chose to stand aside.

This is not a security decision. It is a political one. And it carries a clear message: that organised intimidation works.

Worse still, it is not even an isolated incident. Last year, the Russell-Cotes Museum in Bournemouth postponed an exhibition on Jewish life in the town, citing “security concerns” and what it called a “sensitive time.” The exhibition, funded by the National Heritage Lottery Fund, celebrating a century and a half of Jewish community life, was quietly shelved. It came after a Jewish man had been shot with an air rifle in Bournemouth's East Cliff neighbourhood and swastika graffiti had been painted on a local rabbi's home.

Then there was Edinburgh. Last summer, two Jewish comedians had their shows cancelled from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe after staff members raised "safety concerns". One of them, Philip Simon, said afterwards: "I am still processing the concept that in 2025 I can be cancelled just for being Jewish."

This is a story that Jews in this country have grown sickeningly familiar with. The language changes slightly each time - "security concerns," "sensitive period," "logistical challenges" - but the outcome is always the same: Jewish culture retreats and the mob advances.

And now the British Museum. The pattern is not coincidental. It is the incremental, bureaucratically managed exclusion of Jews from British public life - achieved not through legislation, not through violence, but through the quiet, cowardly calculation that accommodating the mob is less trouble than standing with the minority it targets.

"London is for everyone" - except, it appears, for Jewish Londoners who wish to attend a talk about ancient history without requiring a security cordon and police guard. "Antisemitism has no place here" - except, it seems, at public galleries, comedy and theatre venues, university campuses across London, and now the British Museum. When a city's most celebrated cultural institution cannot guarantee the safety of a lecture on ancient pottery, the mayor's solemn pledges ring not as reassurance but as insult.

The British Museum's statement said the decision was taken "to protect the event, not to diminish it." This is precisely the kind of sentence that tells you everything while appearing to say nothing. What the museum was actually protecting was not the event - which it cancelled - but itself: its staff, its management, its desire not to be in the newspapers for the wrong reasons. The result, of course, is that it is in the newspapers for the worst possible reason. The protesters won without stepping through the door. And the institution that holds the Rosetta Stone and the Elgin Marbles, that has survived the Blitz and two world wars and three centuries of global upheaval, has demonstrated that it cannot survive a vocal mob with bad intentions.

Public money flows generously to these institutions. If they cannot maintain a basic standard of intellectual courage in exchange for it - if they will cancel Jewish history at the first whiff of organised hostility - then serious questions about that compact are not only legitimate but urgent.

What is needed is not sympathy but spine. The British Museum should have taken the measures necessary - whatever they were - to allow the event to go ahead on the planned date. If it lacked the resources, it should have asked for them. If it lacked the legal tools, the Government should long since have provided them. The Director should have stood at the door, personally if necessary, and said: this institution does not negotiate with intimidation. Instead, it issued a statement of regret, rescheduled to a date yet to be confirmed and hoped the story would blow over.

My great-grandmother, Lily Ebert, survived Auschwitz. She spent the remainder of her long life trying to understand how a continent of supposedly civilised nations - with their museums, their universities, their cultural institutions - had permitted the systematic exclusion, humiliation, and ultimately murder of its Jews: one bureaucratic decision at a time, each supposedly reasonable in isolation, each contributing to a logic that ended in catastrophe. She did not ask future generations to simply remember. She asked them to act.

The British Museum will, no doubt, host the talk eventually. It will be rescheduled for a quieter moment, with more security, with fewer registered protestors, with a smaller Jewish audience too. It will be, in all the ways that matter, a diminished thing. And the people who believe that Jewish culture has no place in British public life will note that their tactics worked. And they will use them again.

[Dov Forman @DovForman]

You can read my full thoughts in @JewishNewsUK👇

https://t.co/6wS3UmCZZ4

[Dov Forman @DovForman]

https://t.co/tTIMYPR0FV

[Metropolitan Police @metpoliceuk]

We're now able to confirm that the fire at a warehouse in Golders Green is non-suspicious.

You can find more information below. ⬇️

[Dov Forman @DovForman]

The cause of the fire at Kosher Kingdom, Golders Green, is still unknown and may well be an electrical fault.

But the fact that many, myself included, immediately feared the worst as soon as we saw smoke and heard sirens is a damning indictment of Jewish life in Britain in 2026.

[Dov Forman @DovForman]

The moment the fire started to spread inside Kosher Kingdom, Golders Green’s largest kosher supermarket, this morning around 6.50am👇

[Eylon Levy @EylonALevy]

Do Jews have a future in Britain?

@DovForman up next on @eylontherecord

[Dov Forman @DovForman]

Another day, another violent attack on a Jewish person in London…

[Visegrád 24 @visegrad24]

🇬🇧 A 22-year-old man was brutally attacked in an antisemitic assault in London’s Golders Green

While speaking Hebrew outside his apartment late at night, five masked men chased him, dragged him across the road, beat him near unconsciousness, tore his clothes, and shouted abuses in Arabic.

A neighbor heard the commotion and called the police.

The attackers fled the scene, and police launched an investigation.

[Dov Forman @DovForman]

Very moving to read - and to hear from several members of the Jewish community - that His Majesty spoke with them about his friendship with my great-grandmother, the late Auschwitz survivor Lily Ebert.

[Dov Forman @DovForman]

“Aubrey Hersh broke into a prayer. It's the prayer we say when we have seen a King, he explained later. He and the King then discussed their mutual friend, the late Lily Ebert, one of seven Holocaust survivors whose portraits now grace the Royal Collection.”

[Robert Hardman @hardmanr]

Soft power in hard times. Walkabout beats whataboutery hands down in NW11 #kc3 #goldersgreen @DailyMail

[Dov Forman @DovForman]

@hardmanr @simonmontefiore @DailyMail Very touching to see my late great-grandmother, Lily Ebert, a Holocaust survivor who was close with His Majesty the King, mentioned in your article. Thank you.