The aftermath of Hamas’s attack on Israel has exposed the West’s moral collapse The protests we are seeing have nothing to do with Israel and everything to do with problems here at home Douglas Murray
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/10/20/israel-palestine-hamas-london-protests-anti-semitism/
There is a good rule about anti-Semitism. One reason it isn’t better known is because its best expression comes at the mid-point of the 20th century’s towering work of historical fiction: Life and Fate, by Vasily Grossman.
That novel, which takes the reader from the Battle of Stalingrad to the Nazi death camps, traverses the entire dark heart of the 20th century. Yet in the very middle of its 900 pages, the great Russian writer examines the question of anti-Semitism. He says almost everything.
Anti-Semitism is something which, as Grossman writes, can be met “in the marketplace and in the Academy, in the soul of an old man and in the games children play in the yard”. He describes it as always a means rather than an end, “a measure of the contradictions yet to be resolved”.
And here is the key point. “It is a mirror for the failings of individuals, social structures and state systems. Tell me what you accuse the Jews of, I’ll tell you what you are guilty of.”
I can’t tell you how many times in my life I have seen this. And never more than in the past fortnight.
Look at the protests against Israel that have erupted across Europe since the Hamas massacres two weeks ago today. There were no mass rallies in solidarity with the Jews who had been gunned down at a music festival, shot in the head at a bus stop, or decapitated in front of their parents.
Weirdly enough across Britain, Europe and the wider West, almost nobody had time for any such public expressions of sympathy. We did at the highest political levels. But on the streets? No.
The Jewish people of this country were effectively left alone, to try to mourn and suffer however they could. But wider sympathy of the kind we saw during the Black Lives Matter protests? Nope. Nowhere to be seen.
I happen to have been travelling across America and Europe this week, and everywhere I have been I have seen the same thing.
Mass pro-Palestinian protests in New York’s Times Square. Major protests in every European capital. In Lisbon, people waving Palestinian flags. In Norway, a protest of people showing their support for the Palestinians and their opposition to Israel.
In each place, I think the same thing. What are you doing? What has any of this got to do with you? Why are you silent about so much in the world and produce such noise on this?
There is an explanation for what, at the deepest level, is going on.
The Jews are – as Grossman says – attacked by anti-Semites whatever they do. If they are poor, they are criticised for being poor. If they are rich, they are suspected for being rich. If they are ultra-religious, they are accused of being outsiders. If they are secular, they are accused of being seditious.
Since the independence of the State of Israel in 1948, there is a new addition to this long list. Where Jews are stateless, they are attacked for being stateless. When they have a state, they are attacked for having a state. And for defending it, and their own people. How dare they?
The objections to Israel’s right to respond can be seen everywhere. On the day of the Hamas massacres, the BBC and other broadcast media reported some of the atrocities that took place. But they seemed very keen to move on, even while the horrors were still taking place.
Perhaps it was because they don’t regard Hamas as “terrorists” – despite using the world freely about other groups. But they did go straight onto their favourite subject: Israel’s response.
Israel has hardly responded at all so far. It is clearly gearing up to do so. But already the anti-Semites in our midst – all hiding behind “support for the Palestinian cause” – have made the usual blood libels against the Jews.
When a hospital in Gaza was said to have been attacked, everyone from the First Minister of Scotland to Labour MPs and the BBC all jumped to the conclusion that it was an Israeli war crime.
They claimed that hundreds of people had been killed – including hundreds of children. The BBC (which has the temerity to have a “verification” and “fact-checking” department) pumped out this fake news.
In medieval times, anti-Semites accused the Jews of poisoning the wells. In our own times, the BBC and others do what Jewish people were accused of.
As anyone who has ever covered a conflict should know, you wait when an event like this occurs. Sure enough, we now know that, firstly, it was the hospital car park that was hit. And second that it was probably a hit from a Palestinian rocket which “misfired”.
This happens in every Gaza exchange. Palestinian terrorists forever hit their own people. But the terrorists don’t care, for many reasons. Not least because they know that media like the BBC will blame Israel.
Sure enough, the BBC and others acted as stenographers for Hamas. So much for “verify”. So much for “truth”.
The truth is that there is a broader problem in Britain and the wider West. It has nothing to do with Israel and everything to do with the problems here at home.
Because one thing the West now knows with utter certainty is that it contains large numbers of people, many of whom we have imported as immigrants, who are not only instinctively anti-Israel, but openly anti-Semitic.
After the events of the last fortnight, it’s not a secret any longer. It’s not a secret in Sydney where crowds gathered outside the Opera House to chant “Gas the Jews”. It’s not a secret in Berlin where a synagogue has been fire-bombed and stars of David painted on the doors of Jewish houses.
Well, that’s not Israel’s problem, it’s ours. The pro-Hamas crowds who have filled our cities in recent days aren’t Israel’s problem. They’re ours.
Israel has a problem with hundreds of hostages being held behind enemy lines. But it is our problem that, in recent days, when British Jews have put up “missing” posters of Israeli children, they have been torn down by Muslims in the UK.
It is our problem that when a Jewish group tried to tour a van around central London with images of the abducted Jewish children on the sides, they were told to stop by the Metropolitan Police. Including for “their own safety”.
It is our problem that disgusting young women parade through the centre of London taunting Jewish people with paraglider motifs and the like.
And it is our problem that angry men can be seen insulting the Metropolitan Police in Parliament Square and telling them where to go.
Some people have got into a funk about a group of airhead celebrities signing a letter in support of Gaza. But I couldn’t care a fig what Miriam Margolyes gets up to between her “pee, poo, bum” turns on The Graham Norton Show.
What I do care about is that, despite the claims of our Government, our nation – and the wider West – is turning.
It is turning on the Jewish state, even as it suffers a grievous wound. As Grossman knew, it speaks not to the failings of the Jews. It reveals the failings of ourselves.
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