When Jews get targeted in what should be safe liberal democracies, it doesn't quite see the same response as when Muslims or targeted or even the general populace. We all recall that, by and large, the Christchurch mosque attack saw universal outrage and condemnation. Muslims targeted for who they are. Utterly innocent, and nobody would utter that they had some fault because they hadn't condemned say the Taliban, ISIS, Iran or any of the multitude of Islamofascist terror or totalitarian regimes. Certainly had anyone wanted to protest against the actions of any such groups the very next day, it would have been frowned upon and scorned. However, when it comes to Jews, targeted by association with Israel and therefore the actions of the Israeli Government in Gaza, there is no thought around taste and sensitivity. The "pro-Palestinian" protestors (who range from people expressing concern over humanitarian conditions, to those wanting to wipe out Israel and "globalise the Intifada" (!) don't give a damn, after all it wasn't THEM doing it. Besides, "genocide". If you think that there is a deliberate campaign to wipe out an entire people, then a few Jews being killed by a jihadist are a mere detail.
Jews, you see, have a tryptych of groups who hate them. Traditionally their chief enemies were the (self-styled) Christian-aligned far-right, which of course inspired the Nazis, and are seen today in the actual far-right (you know, the Holocaust denying, "wrong side won the war", white power, big state type - not the current trend to call free-market liberal or traditionalist conservatives fascists). Their attacks on Jews are rare, thankfully.
The bigger problems are Islamists, often motivated by wanting to wipe out Israel, but also buying into pretty much the whole panoply of neo-Nazi conspiratorial Jew hate, and the far-left. The far-left, who also tout the anti-concept "whiteness" see Jews as "ultra-white". Jews are rich, successful in many industries and in politics, and of course are seen as "colonists" wherever they go. In the far-left's endless desire to categorise people under critical theory as "oppressed" vs. "oppressors", Jews get placed in the latter, so they don't count... again. They don't count.
As Nick Cohen said in the Spectator:
If they were from any other minority, no one on the left would have the slightest trouble denouncing the deaths of 53-year-old Adrian Daulby and 66-year-old Melvin Cravitz as the result of a lethal racist attack. A terrorist with the resonant name of Jihad Al-Shamie – talk about nominative determinism – went for them because they were Jews.
He continues:
Last night pro-Palestinian demonstrators couldn’t give it a rest – not even for 24 hours. They were outside Downing Street and Manchester’s Piccadilly station, chanting all the old slogans and ducking all the hard questions. ‘Globalise the intifada,’ they cried – does that mean killing Jews in Manchester? ‘Palestine will be free from the river to the sea’ – does that mean driving out all the Jews living between the Mediterranean and the River Jordan?
It should be the easiest thing in the world for pro-Palestinian demonstrators to reject accusations of Jew hate and dismiss these questions as smears. It’s not anti-Semitic to denounce Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli far right. Nor is it in any way racist to deplore the reduction of Gaza to a charnel house of rubble and bones.
Yet much of the British left cannot defend itself against charges of bigotry because many leftists (not all, but many) refuse to define anti-Jewish racism and declare it unacceptable. They can’t and won’t because any condemnation of anti-Semitism would imply a condemnation of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranian theocrats. Rather than take a stand against the very people who have led the Palestinian cause to disaster, they prefer to say nothing at all.
Remember when Phil Twyford was hounded at a "pro-Palestine" rally for condemning Hamas?
Remember also the elation expressed by Islamist preachers protesting in Sydney just after October 7th.
As Julie Burchill said in the Spectator last year:
Excitement is the often overlooked element when it comes to anti-Semitism – an excitement that is almost sexual. There is a sadistic feeding frenzy to this anti-Jewish crusade, as though the rape rampage of Hamas made the cause of anti-Semites more, not less, worth rallying around. The ‘Paraglider Girls’ convicted this week appeared like overgrown Girl Guides, their grim insignia a twist on badges for Kayaking or being an Emergency Helper – only evil.
The fact that the pro-Palestinian marches started before Israel actually retaliated was a big tell; these people weren’t marching against Israel defending itself, but in favour of Israel being attacked. Unless they all had access to a big old time-travel machine, of course.
Nazis did this, the far-right does this, Maoists do this, and the Islamists do it.
It is, of course, entirely possible to protest against the Israeli Government, to call for peace and negotiations for a two-state solution. Remember though that many of the protestors for Palestinians don't want this. John Minto's Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa explicitly says:
PSNA aims to change public opinion and bring pressure on the New Zealand government to join the majority of the international community in requiring Israel to recognize and support the following principles:
- A just peace in Palestine depends upon the return of Palestinian refugees to their homeland and the dismantling of the Zionist structure of the state of Israel, recognizing that the further partitioning of Palestine in order to create the so-called Two-State Solution would only lead to further injustice and suffering.
- Acceptance of the primacy of international law and United Nations resolutions as the basis for the ending of military occupation and all forms of ethnic discrimination in Israel.
- The international community's responsibility for upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the urgent need for the state of Israel to be called to account for its gross abuses of Palestinian human rights.
- Justice requires the establishment of a single state in Palestine, bi-national, secular and democratic, with full and equal citizenship for all with ethnic and religious rights protected in a democratic constitution.
