“This obsession with Israel”
In Israel people view the hatred with great concern
From Tal Leder, Tel Aviv
March 16, 2024, 4:06 p.m
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Hatred of Jews is as old as Christianity itself. But since the Hamas attack on October 7th, the world has experienced anti-Semitism unprecedented since 1945. Israelis wonder and worry.
After its founding in 1948, Israel enjoyed support in the Western world. Especially in left-liberal circles, the country rose to become an anti-colonial pioneer state and was stylized as a model socialist state – not least because of the kibbutz movement. Left-wing visions and hopes for collectively organized alternative models were associated with Israel.
“Even before the Six-Day War in June 1967, there were global pro-Israeli expressions of solidarity,” recalls 78-year-old Noam Stern from Kibbutz Nahal Oz near the Gaza Strip, one of the survivors of the Hamas massacres on October 7th . “There were many non-Jews in Europe at the time who were willing to physically defend Israel.” After the war, the mood had changed: “When the Jewish state asserted itself militarily against a numerically superior Arab opponent, the previously international support quickly turned into hatred.”
During the pogrom, when Palestinian terrorists literally slaughtered more than 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped more than 200 people to Gaza, the French-born man had to watch, seriously injured, as his granddaughter was beheaded. “I don’t think there has been a more worrying time for the Jewish people since the Second World War,” says Stern, also with a view to the situation in Europe – he had visited Paris shortly before the attack on Israel. “We thought that in the wake of this attack, the enlightened world would show some empathy. Instead, its elite left-wing circles, from university campuses to mainstream media, have responded to the terrorist group’s barbarity by increasing their condemnations of Israel.”
Anti-Semitism is back in the mainstream
The empathy didn’t last long. At pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the West, Israel’s right to exist is denied; artists and intellectuals accuse Israel of a “genocide” against the population of the Gaza Strip, thereby deliberately reversing the role of victim and perpetrator. Physical attacks on Jews are now the order of the day. After October 7th, the Berlin Anti-Semitism Research and Information Center (RIAS) recorded more anti-Semitic incidents than ever since it began its work in 2015. Almost eight decades after Auschwitz, open anti-Semitism is back in the mainstream.
“The massacre should have sparked a world of horror against the terrorists, but instead it turned into a massive celebration of Jew-hatred,” said Micah Halpern, a visiting professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “While sympathy for Hamas’ fight is growing internationally, support for the Jewish state is seen as politically incorrect. The terrorist organization’s charter explicitly calls for the destruction of Jews and Israel, and had Israeli forces not stopped them, they would have continued their murder on October 7th moved across the country.”
For the American-born man, Europe’s old anti-Semitism can now be found in certain forms of Islamism, the ideology of which is represented by Hamas. Although he sees the right-wing extremist Israeli government as problematic, this unwanted war was forced on them by Iran’s proxy. “Hamas announced after the pogrom that it would renew its efforts to destroy the Jewish state and that there would be more October 7ths,” says Halpern. “So it is not only Israel’s right to defeat Hamas, but its duty. Just as it was a supreme moral obligation to destroy the Nazis, calling for a ceasefire is tantamount to supporting the resumption of the radicals’ annihilation efforts. Islamists.”
“This obsession with Israel”
In fact, the new Muslim hatred of Jews has partly replaced the old Christian anti-Semitism, which is accompanied by a number of conspiracy theories about Israel and Jews. In Hamas ideology, murdering Jews is a kind of Muslim obligation. Added to this is the anti-Western and anti-colonialist component of global anti-Semites who see Israel as a racist colonial power that represents all Jews. On the other hand, these mostly left-wing pro-Palestine activists describe the terrorist organization as a resistance group, which at least implicitly justifies their atrocities, mass rapes and kidnappings.
“The Hamas attack was a crime against humanity,” emphasizes Cochav Elkayam-Levy, a law professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. “This terrorist army has set itself the goal of genocide, including through systematic rape. Unfortunately, international women’s rights organizations have deliberately looked the other way for a long time.” According to the legal expert, the terrorists deliberately used the bodies of the women they attacked as a weapon of war. Unlike the Nazis, they filmed their atrocities. Their goal was to get attention and spread fear.
“The fact that there was limited global empathy for the victims of October 7th shows that the never-again declarations are empty words,” says Elkayam-Levy. “This obsession with Israel is frightening, because even when it defends itself after such a pogrom, anti-Jewish incitement like in 1933 is loudly audible. But solidarity is based on the ability to identify with those in your group – such as women – belong.”
“The accusation was predictable”
Even Israeli peace activists are puzzled why a contentious dialogue is not possible, or why there are demonstrations worldwide against Israel, but hardly against repressive regimes like Iran. “The hatred of Jews will be present for a long time,” says Noam Stern. “In order to stop this, more education and new laws are needed. The general public has forgotten that the right to freedom of expression is restricted if it amounts to incitement.”
He has no problem with criticism, but is shocked by the global passion to hate Israel. While there is Western support for Ukraine against Russia’s war of aggression, the Jewish state is denied the right to self-defense, even though the Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and not the other way around. “If it is forbidden to criticize murderers or the society that created them, the only thing left is to defame the victims,” says Stern, explaining the obsession. “The accusation that Israel was committing genocide after the Hamas massacre was predictable. But it tells us nothing about the Jewish state, but much more about its enemies.”