Take a step back and the moral of the question becomes simple. A jihadist group is committing perhaps the worst terrorist atrocity in history against the civilian population of a liberal democracy. Faced with an existential threat, this country, which has provided the enclave with electricity and water for nearly two decades while its leaders spend their funds on terrorist infrastructure, is launching defensive military action.
Civilians are dying in the crossfire fire; such is the hell of war. A nation can only withstand a limited number of beheadings.
However, a YouGov poll showed that the great British public is divided in its sympathies. Of those surveyed, 21% support Israel, and 17% support the Palestinians. Even this level of support is likely to crumble in the coming weeks as Hamas gains momentum in its propaganda war. Mass rallies are taking place on the streets of our major cities, and hashtags such as #palestiniangenocide are popular on social networks.
The BBC refused to call Hamas terrorists until a few days ago; it reported an explosion at a hospital, strongly suggesting that Israel was to blame, based on information from officials believed to be from the same gang that reportedly beheaded the babies. Over the past few days, evidence has emerged that it was an Islamic Jihad missile that misfired. Despite this, 91% of respondents to an X/Twitter poll of more than 710,000 people continued to insist that they were Jews.
The National Jewish Assembly protests the BBC's refusal to call Hamas terrorists. Photo: Guy Smallman/Getty Images Europe
This is partly due to modernity. No conflict in the world is as thoroughly documented as that between Israel and its enemies, and nowhere are such materials used more extensively as weapons. In the Gaza Strip, Hamas ensures that foreign journalists only have access to killed or wounded civilians and not terrorists, giving the impression that Israel only kills innocents.
Cameramen are also not allowed to film military action; In 2014, some Indian journalists managed to film Hamas terrorists firing rockets from a densely populated civilian area near their hotel. This caused a sensation, since Hamas usually suppressed such footage.
The scenes of civilian suffering in the Gaza Strip are heartbreaking. But the sad truth is that they are being exploited by an organization that places as little value on the lives of its people as it does on the lives of Jews.
Hamas is known for its use of human shields. This week he reportedly blocked civilians from leaving the conflict zone. It works on a mutually beneficial basis; losses on one's own side also make a valuable contribution to the war effort in shaping public opinion against the enemy.
The flow of footage coming out of the Gaza Strip is part of this project, released with the knowledge that it would be reinforced by armies of useful idiots in the West. Indeed, the force of this flow is such that it is quickly drowning out British sympathy for the victims of Hamas terror, which marked the beginning of this tragedy.
These useful idiots are usually found on the political left. While 39% of Conservatives support Israel, only 9% of Labor voters share the same opinion, a YouGov poll found. Support for the Palestinians, by contrast, attracts 27% of those on the left and only 6% of those on the right. Among young people aged 18 to 24, 39% support the Palestinians, while only 11% support Israel.
Needless to say, supporting the Palestinians is a completely respectable cause. But when the context is a jihadist massacre perpetrated by Palestinian fanatics, and when such support is accompanied by open expressions of sympathy for Hamas, it becomes murkier.
Palestinian citizens certainly deserve our sympathy, but we cannot let that blind us us in relation to reality. It is their fanatical leaders who have brought destruction upon themselves, as Israel can no longer tolerate such a threat on its borders. Its first duty is to protect its own civilian population, like any other state.
“Jews are responsible for their own massacre”
The scale of disinformation is staggering. At the heart of the wave of ambiguity that the Hamas killers have unleashed is the suspicion that Israel somehow pushed them into it. We are told that Gaza is an “open-air prison” under “siege” and “occupation.” Murder, rape and mutilation are, of course, ugly, but how else were these people supposed to react.
None of this reflects reality. In a desperate bid for peace, Israel unilaterally withdrew from the area in 2005, leaving the infrastructure intact. It was subsequently captured by Hamas, leaving the Jewish state with no choice but to close its border to avoid massacres like the one we are now tragically witnessing in southern Israel.
Hamas continued to destroy the economy, neglect infrastructure, and devote most of its funds to creating mechanisms of terror. Often he attacked his neighbor. However, Israel continued to supply Gaza with water, fuel and other supplies. Fast forward to the last two weeks, however, and in many quarters Israel is blamed for the atrocities it suffered. Once again, the Jews are responsible for their own massacre.
This information war is having an effect in the real world. On Thursday, as a crowd surrounded a campaign van displaying photographs of Israeli hostages, police stopped the van, capitulating to the aggressors. Even some left-wing Jews are not immune and make louder noise about the unintentional deaths of Palestinian civilians than the deliberate slaughter of their own people.
In Tel Aviv, families of Israeli hostages mourn next to a set table surrounded by 203 empty chairs, awaiting the return of the missing from captivity. Photo: Heathcliff O'Malley
Judging by past conflicts, pro-Palestinian agitation will continue to have consequences until Western support for Israel fades. British Jews, who suffer a 1,350% rise in anti-Semitism in addition to massacres in Israel, according to the Metropolitan Police, are finding themselves increasingly isolated and alone.
It's disheartening that so many Britons are succumbing to the appeal of Israelphobia. We ourselves have felt the cold of the knife of jihad. Hamas shares a common ideology and history with both al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, which killed innocent Britons in New York in 2001, Manchester in 2017 and several times in London. Islamists have reportedly beheaded our men Alan Henning and David Haines. A beheading is a beheading, and the perpetrators were adherents of the same creed.
Like Israel, Britain responded to this threat by entering the war, joining the Americans to kill hundreds of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq. More recently, when the RAF defeated the Islamic State from the air in Iraq and Syria, many civilians, including children, were killed. Israel's war may be darker and deadlier, but it is closely linked to the fight against global jihadism that we in Britain know all too well.
What makes all this so ironic is that the left will be on equal footing degrees are in Hamas' sights. A recent Internet meme summed it up: a photo of a group of young people holding a sign reading “Fags for Palestine” was juxtaposed with an image of a rooster with the words “Chickens for KFC.”
'Queers for Palestine'
'Chicken for KFC'
😂 pic.twitter.com/ro348gUqiO
— Hananya Naftali (@HananyaNaftali) May 23, 2021
In a video last year, Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zatar could not have been clearer. “The entire 510 million square kilometers of planet Earth will fall under (a system) where there is no injustice, no oppression, no Zionism, no treacherous Christianity,” he said. No Christianity? As the late Rabbi Lord Sacks said: “The hatred that begins with the Jews never ends with them.” If only the left would realize that they are acting as the midwife of their own destruction.
“The oldest hatred has become Israelophobia.”
At the heart of the outrage is propaganda. It's an old-fashioned term, but it's the only way to describe the vast apparatus of disinformation and bias that has long surrounded the Israeli-Arab conflict, which was in motion before the blood was dry in southern Israel.
The themes are the same as they have been for centuries: the demonization of Jews as bloodsuckers, manipulators, traitors and thieves. Only the dictionary has been updated. Given the ancient history of antisemitism, it is perhaps not surprising that it persists; the only real surprise is the thinness of the new mask.
Anti-Semitism has always had the ability to appropriate the morality of the time and turn it into a means of inciting hatred. In the Middle Ages, hatred of Jews was respectful due to religion, since they were considered the murderers of Christ. In the 20th century, the same fanaticism was reframed into the language of pseudoscience, which viewed Jews as an inferior and evil race that must be exterminated for the good of humanity. In both cases, the anti-Semites sided with the angels. They never had the ability to look into their hearts.
Today, when crude racism has been discredited in the West by the Holocaust, the oldest hatreds have developed into Israelophobia. As the public clings to its old racial theory, it once again positions itself in opposition to the Jewish national home. This allows him to once again position himself as a virtue.
Israel has been falsely accused of all the major sins of modern times, including racism, colonialism, white supremacy, ethnic cleansing, genocide and apartheid. If you are against this evil, it whispers, you will be with us against the Jews. And again, ancient hatred beckons as a refuge for the righteous. Our values are turned against Israel and in the same movement are turned against ourselves.
This demonization of Israel began long before the current war. Photo: Shafiullah Kakar/AFP
This demonization began long before that. current war. Indeed, this has been part of the debate since the birth of Israel, 75 years ago. Let's consider the way information is packaged. When a video of Israeli police brutality circulates online, it is used as a chance to smear the country itself as racist or white supremacist rather than condemn the officers responsible.
Our own police service is hardly flawless by comparison. Of the 3,000 children subjected to humiliating strip searches by British police over the past four years, black children were six times more likely to be targeted, according to data published in March. Last year, a black teenager said she would sue her school and the Metropolitan Police after she was pulled from class and forced to remove her sanitary pad in a fruitless search for drugs.
Meanwhile in France, President Macron vowed to reform police after four white officers were filmed beating an unarmed black music producer in his Paris studio in 2020. The tarnished reputation of American police speaks for itself. However, the foundations of these states are not questioned.
Destruction of the Jewish State
Propaganda has the character of demonization, and demonization has always called for destruction. After all, if you constantly denigrate the name of a race of people, the conclusion — their extermination — is obvious. This template has been widely used against Jews in different societies and times.
Take Nazi Germany. Old anti-Semitic stereotypes were mixed with a toxic cocktail of pseudoscience, conspiracy theories and superstition. Jews were dehumanized as rats, parasites and manipulators, simultaneously degraded and portrayed as omnipotent.
After years of exposure to such propaganda, the German public was ready to accept the “annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe,” as Hitler infamously put it. In 1941, Joseph Goebbels was able to write in an article: “The Jews face a fate that may be harsh, but at the same time more than deserved. In this case, pity or regret is completely inappropriate.” Few people turned their hair. How else could decent Aryans deal with such a dangerous and evil race among them? How should sane people deal with the dangerous and evil state of Israel?
These mechanisms of racial and religious anti-Semitism have been largely carried over into the political machine of Israelophobia that, as I write, is running rampant throughout our country. The same propaganda narrative goes like this: Israel is evil and must be eradicated.
Reflecting not only 20th-century anti-Semitism but also the medieval blood libel that began in England in 1144 and spread throughout Europe, Russia and the Middle East, modern-day Israelis are accused of unjustifiably killing Palestinian children and dehumanized as “descendants of apes.” and pigs.»
The myth of Judas and his 30 pieces of silver became the Jewish moneylender, who became the Jewish banker controlling world finance, who became the Zionists buying up politicians. The greedy Jew became an Israeli with his alarming predilection for a foreign land. The image of Jews with horns, cloven hooves and tails, popular in 11th-century Christendom, is reflected in the depiction of Israelis as Nazis, modern-day devils.
The old stereotypes are so deeply ingrained in many cultures that Israelophobia has easily swallowed them up. This is what has been swirling around the public discourse for the last two weeks. And it only gets louder.
An Israeli soldier stands next to a Hamas propaganda poster captured during a raid at an Israeli military base in Hebron. Photo: Jacqueline Arzt/AP
Among the many cartoons circulating online in recent days is an image of an Israel octopus wedged above the Capitol building or the Statue of Liberty. This is borrowed from a Nazi cartoon that depicts the Jew as an octopus holding the whole world in his hands. Likewise, the way today's Israelphobes talk about the «Zionist lobby» that holds Western governments in the palm of their hand has obvious antecedents in Nazi rhetoric, which asserted shadow Jewish control over international finance and politics.
In this post-war century, the time when people in the West could call for the liquidation of the Jews has passed. But it is perfectly acceptable to use the current jargon in which a demonized Israel is faced with smug demands for its destruction. If the Jewish state is truly committing “genocide” in Gaza, has it lost its “right to exist”? These concepts have become so ubiquitous that people rarely question why no other country in the world is deprived of this right.
As the Home Secretary noted last week, a popular chant is “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” «, which appears to be a slogan of resistance and liberation, demands the destruction of Israel, located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
In recent days we have heard this loud echo echoing through our streets. Even calls for a “one state solution,” which seem fair on the surface, are used as code for the destruction of the Jewish state.
Leftists “claim ignorance”
Too often the breadcrumbs lead to the left. But many of those who are amplifying this propaganda have no idea that they are doing so. They believe they are simply doing the right thing. Because it is the language of social justice that is so effectively used as a Trojan horse for ancient hatreds, well-intentioned liberals are the most easily co-opted into the Israelphobic movement.
We've seen this before. Last year, Eleven Days in May was a film about last year's conflict in Gaza. Kate Winslet's story deals with the death of 60 Palestinian youths in a highly emotional manner, while ignoring the threat to Israel.
Soon people began to notice inaccuracies. He suggested that Israel had «loaded its fighter jets» with bombs and missiles after «plastic bottles» were thrown at security forces in Jerusalem and a total of seven missiles were fired from the Gaza Strip.
In truth, Israel took military action against Hamas targets after 76 rockets were fired indiscriminately at its civilian population; the documentary makes no mention of the 4,360 rockets fired at Israel during the ensuing conflict, nor of the 13 Israelis killed. These numbers seem insignificant today, but it was a taster for the current carnage.
The more scrutiny the film was subjected to, the less it could withstand it. As it turns out, seven of the dead Palestinian youths actually died when Hamas's own rockets mistakenly hit Gaza, and several others were child combatants killed in attacks alongside adult militants. All this began to resemble stitching.
How could this happen? There were clues. Prominent British director Michael Winterbottom did not travel to the region to film the film. Instead, he trusted Mohammed Sawwaf, a Gaza resident, to obtain materials on the ground.
On social media, Sawwaf, described as co-director, celebrated the launch of missiles against civilian targets and said the map of Palestine should extend «from the sea to the river,» code for Israel's disintegration. Hamas presented him with an award for “opposing Zionist ideology.” Is it any wonder that the film turned out to be impartial?
When the controversy broke out, the actress pleaded ignorance. “It never occurred to me that my participation could be interpreted as standing up for the rights and injustices of one of the most tragic and intractable conflicts in the world,” she said. “War is a tragedy for all sides. Children have no say in the conflict. I just wanted to lend them mine.”
“Demonization requires destruction”
There is no reason to doubt Winslet's intentions or even her naivety. Observing the feelings of liberals, terrorist groups try to lure them into furthering their cause by using the language and themes of the social justice movement as a Trojan horse. In January, Deutsche Welle, Germany's state-funded international broadcaster, was forced to apologize after airing an interview with Hazem Qassem, a Hamas spokesman, as if he were a respectable commentator.
Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu has just formed a coalition government that includes several religious chauvinists and far-right ideologues, causing consternation in both Israel and Jewish communities around the world. The Hamas representative took advantage of this weakness.
Israel's new government, he told millions of Western viewers, was «terrorist, fascist and racist like never before.» So now Hamas is worried about terrorism, fascism and racism? The irony was breathtaking.
For an official in a repressive Islamist regime to use liberal buzzwords as a weapon to denigrate democracy was the epitome of chutzpah. It was even more astonishing to see that a representative of a terrorist organization took the German equivalent of the BBC World Service seriously. Here, in real time, the cross-fertilization of Western liberals and Islamist fanatics took place.
Thousands of people gather in San Francisco to protest and condemn the recent actions of the Israeli government. Photo: Anadolu Agency
The unsavory spectacle of Western progressives allying with the most fanatical, racist Islamist groups on Earth is responsible for turning public opinion against the Jewish state even as it tries to defend itself. In any other circumstances, regimes that enforce Sharia law carry out shootings and suicide attacks, execute homosexuals, imprison and torture their citizens — not to mention murder 1,400 civilians in the most brutal way imaginable imagine — will be categorically condemned by liberals. But not when they are against the Jews.
That this groupthink has been able to inject itself into the mainstream, especially on the left, is an amazing achievement on the part of the Israelophobia movement. His latest grim achievement will be to undermine Western governments' support for Israel in its hour of need, leaving the Jewish state more vulnerable to attack by Hezbollah and Iran and opening a deadly second front.
This is almost unthinkable. . But if this ever happens, then, God forbid, the narrative will be predictable: the Jews themselves are to blame for this. Demonization requires destruction.
Jake Wallis Simons is editor of the Jewish Chronicle and author of Israelophobia: The Newest Version of the Oldest Hatred and What to Do About It.
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