For decades after the Holocaust, mainstream discourse across the Western world treated Jew-hatred as the morally debased evil that underpinned the vow of “never again.” In the Islamic world, of course, antisemitism remained commonplace. Islamists—especially Wahhabists and Salafists—have long harboured genocidal intent toward Jews (and toward anyone who blasphemes the Prophet). Even mainstream opinion there often echoed the attitudes that once prevailed in the West until the industrialised genocide was fully revealed. Jews never expected much from that quarter, nor from the anti-Western axis of tyranny centred on Russia, the People’s Republic of China and their satellites.
But at least the world’s liberal democracies still knew evil when they saw it. Islamist and tankie cranks could be safely ignored.
Then came 7 October 2023. Everything changed.
The hatred that had been contained erupted and has festered ever since—day by day, week by week. We have watched it surface again and again: the storming of Makhachkala Airport in Dagestan by mobs hunting Jews off flights from Israel; the Manchester synagogue attack on 2 October 2025; Bondi on 14 December 2025; Golders Green on 23 March 2026 and again on 29 April 2026.
What some call the world’s oldest hatred is still very much with us. It has been fuelled by radical imams given platforms in Western countries. The baying crowds in Sydney shouting “Where’s the Jews?” or “Gas the Jews” (the former being the official, scarcely less chilling version) just two days after the Hamas attack were an early warning.
More chilling still are the Western academics only too eager to justify Hamas’s actions, and the politicians and activists who dismiss the sadism and brutality because of “context.” Context for the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust.
That context is not that Gaza was under full Egyptian control from 1948 to 1967 and was never turned into a Palestinian state. It is not that Israel demolished every settlement and deported every settler from Gaza in 2005 to grant full autonomy. It is not the repeated Israeli offers of land-for-peace and a Palestinian state alongside Israel—offers rejected time and again by Fatah. And it is certainly not that Hamas’s founding documents explicitly call for the eradication of Israel and death to the Jews.
Palestinians in Gaza have lived under Hamas tyranny since mid-2007: no freedom of speech, no elections, no free press. Yet Western media, academics and politicians have swallowed every report from Hamas-approved sources as objective reality. Compare this with Israel, which permits protests, maintains a free press, holds elections and tolerates constant criticism of its governments. Stupidity or hatred—or both—has chosen to ignore the difference.
I have lost count of the vile statements by politicians, academics, celebrities and others who justify or even deny the slaughter. Jews are accustomed to haters denying what is done to them. Holocaust denial and minimisation have returned as standard features of “pro-Palestinian” discourse—a discourse that never demands elections, a free press or the right to protest for Palestinians themselves, but one scripted by Hamas, whose leaders sit safely in Qatar enjoying the martyrdom of their own people.
The UK’s 7 October Parliamentary Commission Report (PDF) is an excellent summary of what happened. What remains particularly astonishing is that the perpetrators recorded and broadcast their crimes in real time. Even the Nazis were ashamed enough to try to cover up the Holocaust. Not Hamas:
The perpetrators documented their actions on the day, through GoPro body cameras and mobile phones. They live-streamed and recorded their actions, uploading them to social media sites like Telegram. Many attackers used GoPro body cameras, mobile phones, and even the phones of their victims to livestream their actions. Videos and images were uploaded in real-time by Hamas and other groups to platforms like Telegram and sometimes directly to victims’ accounts. This footage showcased graphic killings, abductions, and desecration of bodies, often accompanied by celebratory captions. Footage depicted hostages being mistreated, corpses desecrated, and victims in their final moments. (pg.10)
...
Civilians were targeted with calculated and unreserved precision. Victims, spanning all ages from infants to the elderly, were often shot at point-blank range, burned alive, or killed by grenades. The systematic destruction included the deliberate annihilation of entire families in Kibbutzim. Elsewhere, children were
orphaned as their parents were killed in front of them as they hid.
The attackers abducted 251 hostages, including civilians, soldiers, and corpses from various locations. Hostages endured abuse during this process including binding and beatings. Children as young as 9 months and elderly people were forcibly removed from their families.
Women and girls were particularly vulnerable during the attacks. Reports detailed gang rapes, sexual
mutilation, and assaults on both living and deceased victims. There was a pattern across various locations
attacked on 7 October of “fully naked or partially naked bodies from the waist down [that] were recovered – mostly women – with hands tied and shot multiple times, often in the head.” This was particularly prevalent at the Nova Festival.
The attackers looted homes, destroyed property, and set buildings ablaze, compounding the suffering of survivors. Kibbutzim and neighbourhoods were left in ruins, with fires burning for days. Forensic evidence highlighted the widespread use of incendiary weapons and flame accelerants, leaving many homes unrecognisable and further hindering the identification of the dead.
In Kibbutz Holit, Hamas gunmen broke into the home of Adi Vital-Kaploun who was looking after her 4-year old son and 3 month old baby. After killing Kaploun, the gunmen filmed themselves putting shoes on
the infant boy and rocking the baby in its crib, later posted online by Hamas. They then took the children
hostage and booby-trapped their mother’s body.
In audio captured during an attack on the Mefalsim Bend, a Hamas militant used the phone of a dead women to contact his father and tell him how many Jews he had killed. He says: “Hello Baba, I am speaking with you from Mefalsim. Open your WhatsApp, tell Wiam. Look at all the dead bodies. See how many I killed myself, Baba. Your son killed Jews! Here, I’m inside Mefalsim, Baba. I am speaking to you from a Jewish lady’s phone. I killed her and I killed her husband. I killed ten myself, Baba. Ten!. Ten with my owns hands. Baba, open your WhatsApp and see how many I killed”. Footage captured throughout the day frequently showed Hamas militants and other attacking groups celebrating the killings.
Hamas had—and still has—genocidal intent. It killed Jews because of what they are, not who they are. It glorified the death of Jews. Far more were murdered than taken hostage; many hostages were later killed or died in captivity.These are not the actions of “liberators” or the “oppressed,” except in the warped minds of those who embrace critical theory and radical post-modern structuralism. It is closer to the Khmer Rouge, who murdered teachers, business owners and the educated as “oppressors,” grooming young illiterate peasants to become the killers.
Yet the whole narrative was skewed, even before Israel responded.
It was, ironically, to use a term by communications academic, mouthpiece for Hamas propaganda, Mohan Dutta, a communicative inversion. The genocidal terrorist group that seeks to wipe out an entire people, wipe out a nation-state and implement an intolerant tyranny theocracy is suddenly the victim, and it is a "liberation" movement backed by people who declare themselves for peace, tolerance, diversity and against racism, misogyny and homophobia (despite that very group being more fascist and intolerant than almost any other on earth).
The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) group led by veteran hard-left activist John Minto has been at the forefront of providing succour for Hamas and its actions through double-speak that would make Orwell blush. It opposed Hamas being designated as a terrorist group claiming "it is for Palestinians to decide the groups they support for the liberation of Palestine". This is like saying it is for Germans to decide who they support for the liberation of the German people, to appease the Nazis. It being particularly precious to claim Palestinians in Gaza have any genuine means of expressing support or opposition to Hamas. Of course PSNA likes bringing up the Nazis...
Furthermore, PSNA said "It’s important to point out that under international law Palestinian resistance groups have the right to take up arms against their colonial occupier, Israel, in the same way the French resistance had the right to take up arms against the Nazi occupiers of their country during WWII"
In short, PSNA justified the attack, furthermore equating Hamas to the "French resistance". France, having been an independent republic, attacked unprovoked by Nazi Germany is somehow akin to Gaza under the rule of an Islamist eliminationist terror group. Hamas having been allowed to take control of Gaza from the Palestinian Authority, which itself was handed control from Israel.
Of course equating Israel to Nazi Germany is quite the exercise in Jew hatred.
PSNA of course opposes the very existence of Israel in saying "Today Israel is responsible for the longest military occupation in modern history – 76 years so far and counting". In short, Israel shouldn't exist. Gaza was under Egyptian control for 19 of those years, and the West Bank under Jordanian control, so PSNA doesn't want a two-state solution, it wants a one-state solution and it is "for Palestinians to decide" who runs it. If you think either Hamas, which openly spreads Jew hatred, or Fatah, which is led by a Holocaust denier is going to led Jews live peacefully under a state either leads, you're an idiot or hiding what you really think. PSNA goes on to quote from the Hamas Charter (which of course it is at pains to say it doesn't support) which says it "Hamas rejects the persecution of people or the undermining of their rights on nationalist, religious or sectarian ground".
If you believe that then you probably also believe the Constitution of the People's Republic of China, Article 37, "The personal freedom of citizens of the People’s Republic of China shall not be violated."
Jew haters do deny facts (except of course when live streaming their murders to their families). They deny the Holocaust happened because it hurts Jews more to pretend that those who were slaughtered never existed in the first place. Now they deny that Jews would be harmed by Palestinian militant groups if Israel were abolished, because it hurts Jews more to deny them indigenous status or a homeland.
Both the Green Party and TPM have fully embraced PSNA, so take from that what you will.
Even former Prime Minister Chris Hipkins talked of "genocide" in Gaza to describe Israel's military response. Nor can we forget how many have said attacks against Jews are "their own fault" for not opposing Israel, including Helen Clark's husband. There's no shortage of Australian artists and commentators who have said the same about the Bondi attack.
Think for a moment how you'd feel if your community had been attacked by blood-thirsty sadists who were gleefully proud of murdering unarmed civilians, ranging from babies to the elderly, and celebrated it with their family.
This isn't just the periodic rocket attacks Hamas lobbed into Israel proper. It isn't attacks on IDF soldiers in the West Bank, or confronted Jewish settlers in the West Bank. The "resistance" was a pogrom, by attacking a music festival and a kibbutz.
The aftermath of this evil is now a much smaller world for Jews. The Green Party of England and Wales only days ago passed a resolution saying "Zionism is Racism" (the UN General Assembly in the 1970s, when dominated by tinpot Marxist dictatorships did the same), with a motion calling for protection of Jews who attend "Zionist synagogues" defeated.
Imagine if a mainstream political party in Parliament passed a resolution saying "Palestinianism is racism" and was nonchalant about Muslims being unsafe attending Mosques deemed to be Islamist.
So today, think of those who were murdered for doing nothing wrong. For attending a music festival, for living in Israel - not occupied territory - not settlements in the territories - but Israel.
You may debate about the scale and nature of Israel's response, but the mere idea that one should be neutral about Hamas, that one should lie explicitly about the state of the conflict, that one should side with those who want Israel wiped off the map ("from the river to the sea") and just use talking points from one side is both stupid and evil.
The evil Hamas embodies is palpable, and there will only be peace in this part of the world when Hamas is no more.
However, what is most distressing is not so much the boiler-plate, tankie, Soviet-style support for Hamas and unique hatred of Israel (no other country receives protests or gets called for its destruction by the self-styled "peace" movement), but how this has all percolated into generalised hatred for Jews. You can see it here in the PSNA. Jews across the world are fearing violence. Jewish schoolchildren in the UK are being told to cover up signs of their "Jewishness" because they risk being attacked.
The irony being that politicians who claim to be "anti-racist" are only too willing to give a free pass to Jew hatred. The latest incarnation of pro-Palestinian terror is the Palestine Forum which chooses today to magnify its cause. That's not just bad taste, it is deliberately designed to blank out the Hamas attacks, minimise and ignore the victims and discredit the facts of the Hamas attack instigating the current round of conflict.
So today just take a breath, pause to reflect on the victims and the horror they faced by sadistic men wanted them dead, wanted them tortured and mutilated their bodies, even the bodies of their pets. Reflect on how you might have coped had you faced anyone who videoed the slaughter of your loved ones - much like the Christchurch mosque murderer videod his slaughter. Reflect on how you would want to treat the survivors and the grieving, and how much you would want the organisation and the ideology behind them to be wiped off the face of the earth.
The odds of peace in Israel are not great at present, and part of that is the fault of Israel. Yet it is difficult to imagine a peace and mutual co-existence when the cancer of sadistic Jew hatred remains at the heart of part of Palestinian politics. A hatred fed by men who live luxurious lives in another country, and frankly whose power and authority would evaporate if there was peaceful co-existence.
Most of all, if you know a Jew, give them your support. Reject the snide comments made by so many, that they are somehow powerful and money-grabbing. The language that talks of rats, that talks of "going on" about the world's only industrialised genocide, and being suspicious of a people that, mostly, just want to live in peace in the land of their ancestors, or the lands their ancestors settled in.
Maybe also think twice about voting for parties and candidates who reject this, who throw about propaganda about genocide and give succour to groups that seek to blank out what happened on 7th October and use it as a rallying point for what they want - which is the abolition of the state of Israel and expulsion of its non-Arab population.
After all, find another ethnicity which united hatred from white-supremacists on the far-right, Islamic fascists and far-left critical theory proponents?
The world used to be pretty safe for Jews, especially in liberal democracies. It's about time that we returned to that.
(Footnote: I was going to write more about Mohan Dutta, but he's not worth it. He's ignorant about the history of Israel, and engages in Orwellian doublespeak to slither out of accountability for his own solidarity towards Hamas and the entire Palestinian movement, including parroting its propaganda. It is the lives of those sacrificed by the sadistic monsters on this day that deserve to be in lights).
If Isaac Herzog were not Jewish and certainly were not Israeli, an objective assessment of him would see him ticking most mainstream liberal boxes on political views. He was a member of the Israeli Labor Party before it merged with Meretz to be the new secular centre-left party of Israel. Herzog believes in a two-state solution and “land for peace”, which is the mainstream view of virtually all liberal democracies across the world on the Israel-Palestine conflict. He is socially liberal. He was a strident critic of Netanyahu and was Leader of the Opposition for four and half years.
President of Israel is not the same as President of the United States. It is not an executive function, but a constitutional head of state. It is elected by the Knesset for a single seven-year term, and is largely a ceremonial and administrative function, not political. The President doesn’t declare war or decide on the budget or pass laws.
He’s currently visiting Australia in response to the worst terrorist attack in Australia’s history, which targeted Jews for being Jews, on the holiest of days, in Bondi on 14 December 2025. This is understandable, as Israel exists as the national homeland of Jews. He has travelled to Australia to offer condolences, sympathy and comfort to the families and friends of the 15 who were murdered, and the entire Australian Jewish community who feel vulnerable, threatened and frightened.
None of this matters to the psychopathic hate mobs who have been protesting in Australian cities about his visit, calling him a “war criminal” (even though he has literally no role whatsoever in declaring, waging or ending war) and choosing to disrupt solemn occasions created by the Jewish community to support themselves, and to mourn the dead.
Plenty of them are well meaning but ignorant people, who are riled up by anger about what happened in Gaza, which is nothing to do with Australian Jews and little to do with President Herzog, and of course which they don’t give any agency to Hamas which started the war by a sadistic massacre of Jews at a music festival, and abduction of hostages, many of which it killed. A mix of understandable distress and anger about the suffering of some, blends with hyperbolic propaganda, and the deep buckets of Jew hatred spread by Hamas and its backers in Tehran and elsewhere, to a venal expression of hate. Hate not just for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, but a hatred of Israel itself, demands that it be eradicated (and who imagines what happens to Jews and Arabs who are happily Israeli citizens during and after this process), and of course anyone who opposes them is a fair target. Given most Jews support the existence of the State of Israel (even if many oppose the Netanyahu Government), it’s a very short jump to want to wipe Israel off the map and want to wipe Jews off the map or rather eject them from their homeland. You know the land that, if it were in Australia would “always is and always will be” their land?
Some are not well-meaning people of course. Those are the ones flying the flags of the Islamic Republic of Iran, providing solidarity of the ones who claim that there is a Zionist conspiracy running the media, governments and the world. Those are the ones who think the Bondi massacre was a false flag, or Israel’s fault. Those are the ones who want Jews to be scared, because they are probably pro-Israel. Those are the neo-Nazis, Hamas supporters and utterly evil.
Yet they all march, protest and shout together. They say nothing about the 30,000 murdered for protesting the brutal authoritarian Iranian Islamist regime. Like they say nothing about mass murders in Sudan, Syria, Ukraine or Burma. For they aren’t human rights activists, they don’t care about peace, let alone freedom of individuals. Nor do they care about the deaths of Muslims (for the ones in Iran don’t count, because they are rejecting an Islamist theocracy), or Arabs (see Syria’s civil war which saw no protests of Russia backing barrel bombing/chemical weapon dropping Assad).
It matters not to them that Herzog wants a Palestinian state, opposes settlements in the West Bank, wants peaceful co-existence and is simply in Sydney to give support, sympathy and courage to a Jewish community as shattered by its terror attack as Muslims in Christchurch were by the attack on them. They couldn’t just spend some days being quiet, letting Jews have space and time to be themselves, with a head of state that is there for them. No, they couldn’t.
The moronic can change, because almost everyone was once young, naïve and stupid. It doesn’t take much to learn something about the topic you protest about, to stop following your readily packaged social group going on protests you think are righteous because people you like think that way (and how could they be wrong). The malignant are another story. They deserve all of the contempt and disgust that polite company treats Nazis.
I’m not going to pretend that I would protest for any movement that has the support of Hamas or Fatah, but of course anyone in a liberal democracy has the right to express their views on what happens in Gaza. The consequences of some of those views are to stir up not just hatred of Israel, but hatred of Israelis and of course of Jews, despite the claims of best efforts of many protesting that they oppose all forms of “anti-semitism” (and curiously then say also “Islamophobia” et al, because you can’t just criticise Jew hatred without relativising it with hatred of the people of the religion that seems to have a disproportionate number of promoters of Jew hatred).
People can protest for an independent Palestinian state (the idea it would be “free” is fanciful, but the far-left, which dominates these protests, regarded leaders from Robert Mugabe to Macias Nguema to be “liberating” their people), but perhaps some of the following might be less likely to encourage and promote Jew hatred:
•Exclude anyone calling to “globalise the intifada”: Don’t kid yourself. If you read about what the Palestinians intifadas involved, it was targeting Israeli civilians in terror attacks. Intifada is violent resistance. If you want to undertake it globally, who do you want to target? Who will get targeted? It’s Jews (nobody undertaking such attacks.
•Exclude anyone supportive of Hamas or the 7th October attack or justifying them: Justifying most murderous pogrom of Jews since the Holocaust, at a music festival is justifying violence against civilians. It wasn’t an attack on a military target, but much worse than that, it took men, women and children as hostages. It saw the gleeful slaughter of young people because they were Jews. If you want to justify the sadistic slaughter and taking of civilian hostages because of who they are, then you’ll justify it happening anywhere.
•Exclude anyone using symbols that place the Star of David into a rubbish bin or depict it with a swastika: Equating any regime with Nazi Germany is a tall order. Russia’s actions in Ukraine could justify it, given the use of the Z slogan, the abduction of children, the direct targeting of civilians and the desire to destroy Ukrainian culture, but the Gaza protestors are uninterested in that. North Korea has many shades of Nazism, given its totalitarian system that tolerates zero dissent and promotes racial superiority. However, to link Jews to the regime that sought to eliminate them is promoting Jew hatred. That’s not a call for a Palestinian state it’s a call to wipe them out wherever they may be.
•Promote peace talks and a two-state solution, not the extinction of Israel: Most governments agree that this is the only solution for a lasting peace, but so many protestors call for Israel to be destroyed. If you are chanting for the destruction of the Jewish homeland (where Jews have lived for thousands of years), then you’ll justify destruction of those who want to retain it and to keep Jews as a global diaspora always at the mercy of others.
•Call for the overthrow of Hamas and for Gaza (and the West Bank) to be a secular liberal democracy: If you just think Gazans should live under the jackboot of Hamas, with its explicit Jew hatred and support for eliminating Jews, then you’re hardly damning attacks on Jews are you?
•Demand an end to foreign support for Hamas: Iran and Qatar both fund and support Hamas, and Iran in particular constantly expounds Jew hatred, including Holocaust denial and tropes about Jews running the world. Maybe, just once, protest against the Islamic Republic of Iran?
Of course you can criticise Netanyahu, any Israeli political party, you can call for the occupation to end, you can call for a Palestinian state, but if you are silent on Hamas, silent on the Jew hatred that drips from Palestinian political movements and welcome explicitly anti-semitic individuals and their rhetoric into your protests, you’re part of the problem.
Some activists say that if you have one Nazi at your protest, you’re at a Nazi protest. Well, there is no lack of people that are part of the pro-Palestine movement who expound Jew hatred. Whether it is the trope that the Jews run the world, or that Mossad was responsible for 9/11, the Holocaust was exaggerated (or there was a good reason for it), there is plenty of evidence that that movement attracts Jew hatred.
Maybe, just maybe, treat these like you claim to treat people who are racist…
Oh and calling "despicable" the act of lighting a museum in the colours of the Israeli flag days after it had suffered an explicitly anti-semitic attack of Jew murder, isn't caring about Jews, is it MP for Auckland Central?
Sadly I wont be holding my breath while you pretend all your colleagues, friends and fellow travellers are all good people who are “anti-violence”.
When the leftie kids go on marches shouting "globalise the intifada" alongside the geriatric tankies and the blood-thirsty Salafist and Wahhabist Islamists (who know what it mean), they probably think it means protest marches, blog posts and "deplatforming" Jews Israelis.
Well Bondi is what it means. A group of murderers out to target Jews in a place far away from the Middle East, living lives of peace. It's not just the 15 murdered by the fascist Islamists, it's the pipe bombs found and the car containing explosives. The intifada perpetrators wanted a bloodbath - in Bondi - because they hated Jews.
Whether it's about Gaza or Palestine, or the age old belief that Jews control the world, or whatever it is, doesn't matter so much. When you call for a global holy war for your cause, then this is the result. This, when Gaza is under a ceasefire.
Jews are frightened in Tel Aviv, London, Paris and Sydney, and everywhere, because politicians enable a small bunch of radicals to let fascist ideology take over marches and protests that started almost instantly after the 7th October pogrom was launched.
Jews are always afraid of Nazis, so are Muslims, so are the many others Nazis hate, but they aren't the main cause of their fear. They fear the (Iranian supported) Islamists who want to wage war against them globally, and the far-left academics and students who cheer them on, or apologise for them, or now... say this is a false flag that Mossad set up.
The problem is mainstream politicians, not just the far-left, have appeased it as well.
If you don't think there is a direct line from the ghouls who were "elated" on Sydney streets after 7th October, or stood outside the Sydney Opera House shouting "where's the Jews" or "gas the Jews" (it hardly matters), then you're kidding yourself.
It's time for those politicians to come out, to make it explicitly clear that there shall be no intifada, that Jew hatred must be expunged from the public space AND from mosques that expound it, and that Australia is no place for anyone who justifies terrorism, or wants to make any peaceful citizens fear for their existence.
