They’re lining up the prisoners
And the guards are taking aim
I struggle with some demons
They were middle-class and tame
I didn’t know I had permission
To murder and to maim
Leonard Cohen, You want it darker?
There is no decent place to stand in a massacre”.
Leonard Cohen, The Captain
The events of the past four weeks in Israel should make us all question our previous assessments and assumptions. One assumption is that antisemitism is no longer a major threat to Diaspora Jews, and that much of the talk about it was an obsession and distraction from much weightier issues that Jews should be focusing on.
The Hamas’ assault was almost perfect act of Taqiyyah, deception and dissimulation in an ostensibly Islamic cause. The term تقیة taqiyyah is derived from the trilateral root wāw-qāf-yā, literally denoting caution, fear, prudence, guarding against a danger), carefulness and wariness. It used unprecedented intelligence tactics to mislead Israel over past last months, by giving a public impression that it was not willing to go into a fight or confrontation with Israel while preparing for this massive operation. As part of its subterfuge over the past two years, Hamas refrained from military operations against Israel even as another Gaza-based armed group known as Islamic Jihad launched a series of its own assaults or rocket attacks.
One of the reasons Israel was caught unaware was because its security apparatus believed Hamas had changed its ways. Contrary to all the evidence afforded by a long history and a painful present, a belief emerged that its leaders are at least somewhat “like us” – they want the same things, they act the same way. Israel watched Hamas train for October 7 believing that the training for the real thing was itself the deception. All of the country’s formidable military technology meant nothing for the simple reason that — despite decades filled with thousands upon thousands of Hamas-directed attacks and kidnappings — they believed there was nothing on the other side of that fence to be overly alert to.
The audacity and brutality of the attack were as astonishing as its secrecy. The images of fear and bloodletting, of ecstatic attack and capture, guarantee that October 7, 2023, will become an indelible tragedy in Jewish history. Hamas probably succeeded beyond their expectation. Now they are having to deal with an Israel determined to decimate them
Since the Simhat Torah massacre, which mirrored in so many ways the pogroms inflicted upon Jewish communities in Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, what we’ve been seeing in cities around the world is that antisemitism is the devil that never goes away. One could also ask whether anti-Zionism is but an old hatred clad in new clothes. One phenomenon of anti-Semitism is its ability to mutate over history: from religious hatred to ethnic hatred to hatred of Israel in any form. If the marchers want a two-state solution, a pathway to peace, they do not say so. They chant “From the river to the sea”, which is a call for ethnic cleansing at best, and genocide at worst, though many do not know the name of the river, or the name of the sea.
Hamas recorded and broadcast the images of its atrocities on October 7 to make sure Israel and the world knew exactly what it had done. Israel has struck back hard on Gaza, killing many civilians in the densely populated region to reach Hamas targets. The Palestinian authorities say over 10,000 civilians have been killed, over a third of them children, and about two-thirds of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been made homeless, unable to escape the territory. As tens of thousands flee and the bodies pile up, the brief moment of sympathy for Israel has receded and a tide of anti-Jewish sentiment is rising around the world.
International political theorist Arta Moeini wrote in Unherd on 4th November: “The moment Hamas carried out its heinous terror attacks against Israel, the war in Gaza was instantly globalised, reverberating in the hearts and minds of people oceans away who were neither Israeli nor Gazan. Millions on social media picked a side, proudly displaying their solidarity flags and condemning their opponents as either evil terrorists or genocidal oppressors. Both foreign states and populations assumed reflexive positions, railing against antisemitism or settler-colonialism and identifying with the “victims” in a Manichaean struggle that cares little for historical context, nuance or open debate. They became virtual participants in the conflict, as if their own lives and futures depended on it, cancelling and dehumanizing their opposition other just as the most extreme Hamasi Islamist or Israeli Zionist would do”.
In western, Liberal-democratic countries with some of the largest Jewish communities there are mass marches with open calls to kill Jews; there is the defacement and removal of posters of hostages being held in Gaza; and Israel is being held responsible by mainstream politicians and media figures for war crimes committed by Hamas; and there’s a flood of antisemitic poison on social media. It appears to have given permission for progressive activists to clothe antisemitism as anti-colonialism, and indeed, an alibi to say the most racist of things, and yet to retain all innocence in their own minds. And the more morally certain people are that they are right, the easier it is for them to miss their own complicity.
Rare is the criticism of the less savoury aspects of Muslim religion and society, like its patriarchal authoritarianism, its latent misogyny, and its antisemitism and homophobia. The intersectional narrative inhaled by activists, giving comfort to the “oppressed” legitimizes unspeakable cruelty against the “oppressor”. Hence, we have the sublimation of antisemitism into support and justification for the atrocities of the Hamas. [Pogrom, by the way, is a Russian-Yiddish word derived from “to destroy by violence]
Many people, particularly on the left, have forgotten or just ignore what triggered the latest bloody episode in the long running bloody saga. If you deliberately target civilians, regardless of your ideology, religion or ethnicity, you have lost all moral authority whatsoever. There are no excuses, no mitigations and no explanations. You have become the very thing you purport to hate.
For sure, an almost sixty year long occupation of the West Bank and the ongoing blockade of Gaza are criminal, and Israel’s behaviour thereby, is inexcusable. We can argue forever whether it is justifiable or necessary. But remember that in Gaza, the Hamas is a quasi-government, and a reactionary, exclusivist outfit with a “post-Israel” vision that will produce an ethnically cleansed theocratic dictatorship. And when it launched its troops on the kibbutzs of the Negev twith orders to behave like Da’ish, murdering kids at a music festival killing, raping, mutilating, and abducting unarmed men, women, children and babies, the opprobrium inevitably and unfortunately attaches to all Palestinians.
It is not helped when in the West Bank and elsewhere, such “bravery” is celebrated with sweets, ululation and “happy shots”, when people in a crowd in the forecourt of the iconic Sydney Opera House chant from the river to the sea” and “gas the Jews”, and social media is awash with memes that display but limited knowledge of the history and politics of the Middle East.
The Hamas now holds some 250 Israeli men, women and children captive in Gaza, adding to over two million Palestinians that are serving as human shields against what it knew would be inevitable Israeli vengeance. It has reportedly three months of supplies in its tunnels whilst above them, the Gazans run out of gas, food and water and medical facilities are brought to a standstill. Hundreds of thousands of civilians are now caught in a crossfire of Hamas’ making. There are reports that the Hamas is preventing Gazans from leaving, determined to use them as human shields, and has actually fired on fleeing convoys. They need to be protected, but how? We need to seek justice for Palestinians without glorifying unspeakable violence.
Luxury beliefs and historical illiteracy
The term “luxury beliefs” was coined to describe how privileged progressives like to traffic in a kind of unhinged extremist rhetoric. Partly, it’s a byproduct of their insulation from ever having to experience the practical impact of what they advocate. When people in Australia chant “from the river to the sea”, and “gas the Jews”, relatively few are saying this because they have a material interest in obliterating the real Israel and rendering the land “Judenfrei” (remember that word!) More have no particular animus toward Jewish people – they just don’t care about them. But most are moved by a desire to weaken what Israel symbolizes: the US.
Many left-wing impressions are coloured by a an antipathy for the policies of the United States, an antipathy that for many was born of the Vietnam War and was perpetuated by America’s interference in the affairs of nations large and small since then – and of course, America’s strong ideological and military support for Israel. Uncle Sam certainly does have a case to answer. There’s no denying the hundreds of thousands, millions maybe, of bodies of men, women and children that could be laid at the foot of Abe Lincoln’s huge statue in Washington DC. But giving aid and comfort to a regime that is antithetical to your beliefs and also your lifestyle does not compute. It is an ideological stance uninformed by knowledge and awareness of the nature of the Israeli and Palestinian entities, their peoples, and their cultures in the 21st Century. None of these are what they were in the nineteen seventies and eighties.
Writing in The Australian on 29th October, commentator Gemma Tognini wrote: “As I watched mainly white, middle-class privileged (in the truest sense of that word, not the co-opted, cheapened version) people parade themselves around as soft apologists for a declared terror organization, I felt despair. How? How did we get here? … What’s been on display on university campuses since October 7 has been terrifying in its historical illiteracy, lack of humanity and ideological zealotry”.
It’s worthwhile quoting what else she had to say about such “luxury beliefs”:
“… This is the soft generation. Their grandparents fought type 2 diabetes, not Nazism. It was reported that (perhaps unsurprisingly) the University of Sydney Student Representative Council urged students to “stand against oppression … until Palestine is free”. Let me tell you one thing I’m willing to bet on. Not one of them would volunteer to go help the cause. Not one of them would give up their Uber eats, days at the pub and total freedom to go live in a place where being gay is an offence punishable by death, fewer than 20 per cent of women are allowed to work and more than 20 per cent of women are married under the age of 17. Good luck wearing a bikini or your active wear in downtown Gaza.
And then, there’s a punchline: “… this conflict in the Middle East, this visceral, existential attack on Israel, and on Jewish people the world over, seems to have ripped something open to reveal an ideological hatred that I don’t understand. It’s a good impetus to raise the voting age, to be honest. If your response to the fact that the Arab states are refusing to take refugees, that Egypt won’t open its northern border for the same reason, is “Israel’s committing genocide”, then sorry, you’re not intellectually agile enough to be in the conversation … If it were 1400 young people barbarically slaughtered anywhere else in the world, if it were any other ethnic cohort, these same junior cowards, and the universities they attend, would be condemning the act and the actors”
I couldn’t say it better, particularly her allusion to “historical illiteracy, lack of humanity and ideological zealotry”. Many people out there in the world of university politics, social media, and reflex virtue signalling, have, for a variety of reasons a limited, even cursory knowledge of the roots and fruits of intractable conflicts that originated decades, centuries, millennia ago. As the late Israeli Amos Oz explained in his excellent book, How to Cure a Fanatic, Arabs and Jews typically understand each other far better than westerners understand either of them. Cost-free wisdom from western liberals is so often pathetically ill-informed and bathing in self-righteousness.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine did not originate in 2022 or 2014 or even 1991 when Ukraine departed the defunct Soviet Union. The wars of the Yugoslav secession did not begin when Serbia attacked the newly independent states of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo from 1991. The seeds of the Syrian civil war were sown well before 2011. So too with the story of Israel and Palestine, one of the world’s most intractable conflicts, did not begin on October 7th.
A war of words
Understanding is not enhanced when a conflict morphs into a battle of words as well as weapons, the words invariably loaded with emotional and ideological weight. Enter the old adage “one person’s terrorist in another’s freedom fighter. The Hamas calls itself al muqawamah, resistance – it’s the “m” in its acronymic name – see below) as also does Hezbollah, which means literally Party of God (though the deity him/herself has no say in the matter). Türkiye’s opportunistic president calls Hamas fighters mujahidin, holy warriors, a name that recalls Afghanistan resistance to Russia’s invasion in the eighties. Whilst some refer to a terrorist attack, many pro-Palestinian groups have called it an intifada, as have memes and posters put up by “progressives” recalling the two earlier risings against the occupation, implying that it was the work of freedom fighters resisting colonialism. Some have even called for a “global intifada”, though against what and whom is unclear.
Then there’s the sad semantics around other descriptors, each loaded with partisanship and emotion. Self-defense. Proportionate or disproportionate response. Collective punishment. Moral equivalence. Human shields. Hostages. Refugees. Collateral damage. Just war. War crimes. Genocide. Justice, Revenge. Warriors. Executioners. Shahidiin (or martyrs). Thugs. Pick a side, pick your vocabulary to suit. It makes you wish for the now depleted ammo of syntax like “shock and awe” and “war on terror” – though we’re getting plenty of both right now as “we sit back and watch while the death count gets higher”.
Only two things are certain: antisemitism is the devil that has never gone away, and everything is broken.
As Leonard Cohen sang, “There is no decent place to stand in a massacre”.
Meanwhile, in the corridors of power
On 24th October, Antonio Gutierrez, the perennially exasperated and disappointed secretary general of the United Nations, told the Security Council that “it is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced, and their homes demolished.
Truth be told, it has indeed been the past that has brought us to this. Lost in the miasma of violence is the fact that Israel has occupied the West Bank for 56 years and, along with Egypt, maintained a cordon sanitaire around the Gaza Strip. Prominent features of life for Palestinians in these areas are violence, dispossession, and dehumanization. Under these circumstances, there are few Palestinians who regard resistance as illegitimate. The ‘Hamas attack was a reaction to many things, including settler attacks on and evictions of Palestinians in the West Bank; attacks on Muslim and Christian holy sites by Israeli extremists; and Israel’s normalization with Arab countries, that is seen as an attempt by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “liquidate” Palestinian rights and the Palestinian cause.
“But” as Guterres then stressed, “the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas. And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people”. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing”.
Israel’s delegate was predictably enraged. But Guterres’ statement at least condemned the Hamas – unlike a UN General Assembly resolution a few days later which condemned Israel for its collective punishment of defenseless Gazans whilst completely ignoring the direct causus bellum. Making no reference to the barbarous attack by the Hamas was an absurdist denial of reality, as if Israel had decided to bomb Gaza on a whim, unprovoked.
Like Guterres, politicians across the western world endeavour to straddle the barbed wire fence, calling almost out of habit for the elusive “two state solution” as a panacea for the Palestinians’ plight. But in reality, there can be no two-state solution when an immovable and irredentist Hamas remains as a powerful if beleaguered “third state”. As Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese stated, “we have picked a side against Hamas. And we did that very clearly and unequivocally because the actions of Hamas are against the interests of both the Israeli population, clearly, but also against the interests of Palestinians”.
Calls for a ceasefire by world leaders and humanitarian organization’s go unheeded in the stark reality that a ceasefire would effectively give the Hamas the justification to declare victory whist permitting the mortal threat it poses to Israel to continue. Israel knows that if its response to the terrorists is unconvincing, the attacks on it on all sides will redouble. The sharp rise in global antisemitism reminds Jewish people that they may never be truly safe anywhere., and this intensifies, rather than weakens, the desire for a defendable homeland.
The Hamas and together with the ineffectual, corrupt and discredited Palestinian Authority which ostensibly governs the West Bank, and Hezbollah, the Lebanese paramilitary force on Israel’s northern border, most Arab states, Iran, and their western and southern sympathizers blame the situation on the historical behaviour and present policies of Israel and the US, implying that really, Israel had it coming.
There is much discussion in the mainstream media about what comes next if the Hamas is destroyed or effectively neutered and Gaza is “liberated” from its thrall. Should the IDF reinstate the occupation it ended two decades ago? Should Israel hand the enclave over to the Palestinian Authority, to use a decidedly un-Muslim analogy, organize a piss up in a brewery? Or should the UN, or at a stretch, the Arab League, a club of autocrats and tyrants, assume military and political administration until it can be reincorporated into a reformed and workable Palestine?
And even then, should any of these scenarios work out, would Israel be in the mood to make nice? The Hamas pogrom has not helped Palestinians in besieged Gaza, nor will it help those in the occupied West Bank who have been subjected to IDF incursions and vigilante violence by angry settlers. Nor will it encourage Israel to moderate its draconian policies and end the occupation.
Little mention has been made, both before and after outbreak of war of what may have been going on in the PA’s domain. The old, ineffectual and rejected Mahmoud Abbas, “emir” of Palestine, in the eighteenth year of his four-year term, is ill and probably dying, so there is a power struggle already underway in what are in fact three Palestines, Gaza, the West Bank, and the Diaspora (principally Syria, Lebanon and Jordan) over the succession. Meanwhile, Iran and its proxy, Hezbollah are stirring the pot, whilst even the Yemeni Houthis, who you’d think were busy with their own nasty civil war, the third strand, with Hezbollah and the Hamas of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance”, are lobbying missiles Israel’s way up the Red Sea.
The whole thing is a bloody mess (literally and figuratively) and the implications for Israel, Palestine and others unpredictable. The violence reminded me of the Lebanese civil war, and particularly, of Maronite Christian militia’s massacre of Palestinians in Sabra and Chatila (ironically, with Israeli connivance) in 1982. I am reminded also of Chaim Nachman Bialik’s poem, Al haShehita (On the Slaughter), about the Kishinev Pogrom in present day Moldova in the spring of 1903:
And cursèd be he that saith: avenge this! Such vengeance for blood of babe and maiden Hath yet to be wrought by Satan.
Whosoever sows the wind reaps the whirlwind.
Rafah, Gaza
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free
It is much more than a snappy chant. The Hamas’ stated goal is the “liberation” of what is presently Israel and the expulsion annihilation of its people, and it pays little heed for the suffering of the people of Gaza – Hamas leader Moussa Abu Marzouk, for example, in a recent interview on Russia Today’s Arabic channel, told an interviewer that his movement had not built bomb shelters in Gaza for its population because it was the job of the UN and the “occupation” – that is, Israel – to look after the civilians of the Strip.
In an interview on October 24, 2 on Lebanon’s LBC TV. Ghazi Hamad of the Hamas political bureau declared that the Hamas, was prepared to repeat the October 7 “Al-Aqsa Flood” Operation time and again until Israel is annihilated. He added that Palestinians are willing to pay the price and that they are “proud to sacrifice martyrs.” He said that Palestinians are the victims of the occupation, therefore no one should blame them for the events of October 7 or anything else, adding: “Everything we do is justified.”
Some extracts:
“We must teach Israel a lesson, and we will do this again and again. The Al-Aqsa Flood is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth, because we have the determination, the resolve, and the capabilities to fight. Will we have to pay a price? Yes, and we are ready to pay it. We are called a nation of martyrs, and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs”.
“We did not want to harm civilians, but there were complications on the ground, and there was a party in the area, with [civilian] population … It was a large area, across 40 kilometres”.
“The existence of Israel is illogical. The existence of Israel is what causes all that pain, blood, and tears. It is Israel, not us. We are the victims of the occupation. Period. Therefore, nobody should blame us for the things we do. On October 7, October 10, October the millionth – everything we do is justified”.
Hamad: “The occupation must come to an end … I am talking about all the Palestinian lands”
News anchor: “Does that mean the annihilation of Israel?”
Hamad: “Yes, of course”.
If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel.
Golda Meir, Israeli prime minister, 1973
© Paul Hemphill 2023 All rights reserved
Note: al Hamas is the Arabic word for ‘zeal’ and also, an acronym for Ḥarakah al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah, the “Islamic Resistance Movement”; Hezbollah means ‘Party of God’.
For more on antisemitism in In That Howling Infinite, see: Little Sir Hugh – Old England’s Jewish Question; and The Shoah and America’s Shame – Ken Burns’ sorrowful masterpiece
For more on Palestine and Israel in In That Howling Infinite, see: A Middle East Miscellany
Addendum – poster wars
Why are Americans tearing down posters of children held hostage by Hamas?
Linda Dayan wrote in Haaretz on 26th October:
Those removing flyers may not be ready to look into the eyes of ‘the other side’ and acknowledge that they are people. But the consequences of this lack of introspection go far beyond posters
If you’re a Jew on Instagram, you’ve probably seen a particular genre of video going around: a shaky phone camera follows a person, either in a big city or on a college campus, as they tear down posters bearing the names and faces of Israeli civilians kidnapped by Hamas.
Sometimes they’re smiling, sometimes they’re defiant, sometimes they hide their faces from the person filming them. In one, the person says “kalba” (the Arabic word for bitch) while tearing down a flyer. In another, a man holding a wad of posters says he is doing so because “Jews in Israel – I mean, the Israeli government – are bombing Gaza.” When the cameraman asks, in a thick Israeli accent, why Hamas killed babies and even pets, he responds: “I can’t explain what people filled with rage do.”
Channel 12’s Yuna Leibzon tweeted photos from New York of posters that had been defaced – instead of “kidnapped,” they now read “occupier.” (If the person who did this is not Algonquian, I have unfortunate news for them about their own status.)
It is clear that the posters rouse discomfort in these people, and not in the “this could have been me” way that many Jews view them. Some, like the aforementioned man, look into the faces of abducted children and see the airstrikes that followed. Others have mentally transformed them into human embodiments of the occupation. A few accounts state that the people tearing down the posters do not believe that Hamas took hostages at all.
The people kidnapped by Hamas, much like the October 7 atrocities, represent a kink in a very clear narrative thread. The people holding tight to this thread might not be ready to face the realization that not all acts are justified so long as they bear the banner of “resistance.” They might not be ready to hold the idea that it’s okay to say out loud that the occupation is wrong, but so is holding an infant hostage. They might not be ready to look into the eyes of “the other side,” and acknowledge that they are people.
But the consequences of this lack of introspection go far beyond posters and posing. After a silent vigil in which they held photos of the kidnapping victims, Jewish students at the Cooper Union had to barricade themselves into the library as anti-Israel protesters stormed the building. The Anti-Defamation League reported 193 antisemitic incidents since October 7 – a 21 percent spike in the United States. A University of California, Davis, professor posted online against “all these Zionist journalists who spread propaganda and misinformation,” and noted that their children are vulnerable.
It is good, correct and just to stand up for Palestinians, to make the plight of Gazan civilians known, to mourn for the innocent lives lost. None of that demands erasing the reality of Hamas’ campaign of kidnapping and murder. And none of that demands harassing, threatening and attacking Jewish institutions and individuals, wherever they may be.
Of course, this may not be about Palestinians at all: Alawi and Shi’ite students in America did not have to barricade themselves in after Bashar Assad’s airstrikes on the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp. And in that case, perhaps these people can leave the Palestinians out of such campaigns, and be open about the narratives and ideologies that drive them to erase the faces of our children.
A defaced poster depicting a woman held captive by Hamas is seen as people attend a pro-Palestinian rally as part of a walkout by New York University students
Authors Note
Whenever In That Howling Infinite posts commentaries such as this, people ask why I rarely forward my own opinion on the issues I am presenting or discussing. On the contrary, I would argue that my views are fairly transparent in in the subjects I chose to engage with, the words I use, and the vein in which I use them.
The following is an updated version of a postscript I wrote six years ago after I’d last visited Israel. It does not mention in detail the events since then, including the Israel’s rapprochement with its autocratic neighbours, the political paralysis that has afflicted Israeli politics for several years, and the war now being wages in the besieged enclave of Gaza. The rest still holds true.
With respect to my numerous posts about Israel and Palestine, and the Middle East in general, I come to my conclusions from a political science and sociology perspective – that’s where my academic experience came from – and a background in conflict resolution, supported by study and travel. If I do on occasions display any particular bias, it originates in my longtime interest, understanding and affection for the history, politics, and culture of the region, of its geography and archeology, and of its people of all faiths and nationalities.
I believe that the systematic dispossession of almost a million Palestinians and the destruction of half of their towns and villages in 1948 is Israel’s original sin. It is the primal stain that colours and corrupts all that followed. And yet, if not for the actions, often daring, often brave, often questionable, and often deplorable, of the politicians and soldiers of 1948 – and of the generations that followed – Israel would not exist today. This paradox is addressed sympathetically by Avi Shalit In My Promised Land, referred to above, and scathingly by ‘new history’ scholar Ilan Pappe in The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.
The Occupation, fifty-six years old this year, which grew out of the unexpectedly total victory of June 1967, has taken on strategic, ideological and indeed messianic dimensions by many in the Israeli government and political elite. It compounded the original sin, deepened the primal stain, released the demons of messianic fervour, and wounded Israel’s soul. The settlements locked the nation into the colonialist project. With the close call of the Yom Kippur War, the violence and murder of the first and second Intifadat, and present Palestinian jacquerie, Israel’s heart has not just hardened, it has become sclerotic.
I admit that I have always been sympathetic towards Israel – from my first visit in 1972. I’ve travelled its length and breadth and also visited the major Palestinian cities of the West Bank. But mine is not a blinkered viewpoint. I am deeply critical of Israeli politics and policies and have no respect for many of its leaders. Yet there are hundreds of thousands of Israelis who oppose the present government and long for justice and peace. And if – a very big “if” – Arab Israelis and the Israeli left could work together, they could obtain a majority in the Knesset and change Israel’s politics.
Meanwhile, Binyamin Netanyahu and his nationalist coalition allies call all the shots, the Israelis continue to control and exploit the land, its people, and its resources, whilst varying degrees of annexation are on the cards. The settlements are an abomination, as are the policies and practices of the state and its occupying army. There’s no escaping these facts.
But I am likewise critical of Palestinian governance, politics and politicians. The Hamas and the PA are on the nose in their respective fiefdoms, and if a moderate “third force” were to arise – and survive, because sure as hell, they would risk being murdered – Palestinians who just want a quiet, normal life, adequate services, and opportunities for their children, and Israelis who want likewise, might – just might – reject their extremist, dogmatic, entrenched leaders and reach some form of modus vivendi.
Palestinians themselves have to take control of their own lives, kick out their corrupt leaders, cease inculcating their children with hatred and jihadism, and use all that international good will and dollars to build a viable economy that can provide jobs, opportunities, and security, economic and physical to the people. Only this way will they be inoculated against cronyism, corruption and extremism. And yet, the dead hand of a moribund, patriarchal, conservative and ethnocentric culture holds them back – but that is the subject of another, future discussion for In That Howling Infinite.
Today, the ‘powers that be’, defenders and beneficiaries of a status quo that looks more like a cul de sac, predominate over a dispiriting array of competing, clamouring factions, left, right, nationalist, secular, tribal, Haredi, and Islamist alike. New, young, brace, local voices in both Israel and Palestine, are not heard.
So what happens next?
I get that question too. And I am perennially reluctant to venture an answer beyond one that runs like “on the one hand…but then on the other”. I inevitably fall back on Robert Fisk’s response to the same question with regard to the calamitous freezing over of the Arab Spring and the fall and rise again of the same old autocrats and tyrants: “my crystal ball is broken”. It’s a cop out, really, but just as cogent as that famous line in that UK spy drama Spooks: “What’s going to happen to me?” “Bad things!”
One thing is for sure: as songwriter Warren Zevon sang, “the hurt gets worse, and the heart get harder”.
October 8th, 2017, and 6th November 2023
The new anti-Semitism looks a lot like the old hatred
The current wave of anti-Jewish hostility did not originate with the Gaza war, and its horrors. It has been building for decades.
The combination of these themes makes the public response to the Gaza war complex and difficult to process. For most Jews it is nothing short of a continuing nightmare.
Deep anti-Semitism has been on vivid display in certain parts of the movement leading the anti-Israel protests. This has been explicit in celebrations of Hamas and its terrorist massacre of Israeli civilians as a heroic act of resistance, together with calls for such attacks to be repeated. This has been paired with simultaneous insistence, in some quarters, that no atrocities were committed. The dual response is reminiscent of a certain type of Holocaust denial. On one hand the mass violence that the Nazis committed against European Jewry is justified as a response to the odious behaviour of the Jews, and the threat that they posed to their host societies. On the other the historical reality of the Nazi genocide is questioned, or it is denied entirely.
Some anti-Israel demonstrations have skidded into violent assaults on local Jewish communities, and harassment of Jewish students on campuses around the world. Boycotts, exclusions, and “political” acceptability tests in the academic, publishing and entertainment worlds are now common phenomena. They recall darker periods of Jewish history. No other diaspora ethnic group associated with a country run by a widely censured regime is subject to this sort of marginalisation.
When racists target Muslims, or other immigrant groups after terrorist attacks, or the misdeeds of a foreign government, broad segments of public opinion, particularly on the liberal left, defend the victims of prejudice, precisely as they should. By contrast, attacks on Jews are explained away as possibly misguided expressions of fully comprehensible outrage at Israel’s egregious behaviour.
The current wave of anti-Jewish hostility did not originate with the Gaza war, and its horrors. It has been building for decades, as indicated by the steady annual increase in anti-Semitic incidents across the globe, at least since 2000. This has now become a flood. It is the result of deeper economic and political forces that have undermined the social contract that once defined the post-war era. A sharp rise in economic inequality within countries across the world is a major factor driving the unravelling of the post-war era. The unconstrained globalisation of financial markets and trade has been largely responsible for the skewed within-country (as opposed to between-country) distribution of wealth. It is creating a cleavage of populations into a comparatively small group of wealthy beneficiaries of economic growth, and increasingly large groups of people who endure a declining standard of living and jarring social dislocation. This disaffection has provided the basis for a variety of extremist anti-globalisation movements that exploit identity politics as the focus of their reaction to the chaos and instability that is attending the collapse of the post-war order.
These movements thrive on the sense of powerlessness among electorates. This is feeding a breakdown of mainstream political institutions, which are increasingly perceived as unable to respond effectively to the pressing problems that people are contending with in their daily lives. Polarisation between far-right and far-left anti-globalisation movements has now become a defining feature in the political life of many countries, with traditional centrist parties fading into irrelevance in a variety of places. The alliance of much of the far left with radical Islamist movements (also a form of anti-globalist, identity-focused reaction) has accentuated this clash. The nature of the alliance has come sharply into view in the course of the ongoing anti-Israel protests over the past 10 months.
The far-right threat has emerged in recent European elections, in Trump’s current presidential campaign, and in the current riots sweeping the UK. It is also apparent in the authoritarian regimes that control Russia, Hungary and Turkey, as well as in Modi’s Hindu nationalist government.
Anti-Semitism is a central feature of the anti-globalisation movements of the far right, the far left and radical Islamism. This is due to the fact that it is deeply entrenched within both Western and Middle Eastern cultures. It encodes myths of power and conspiracy that provide simple, satisfying answers to complex problems in times of severe crisis. It turns on the notion that the Jews are an illicit collectivity whose continued existence as a group obstructs the realisation of the respective (and mutually incompatible) utopian programs to which each of these movements is dedicated.
Anti-Semitism was marginalised in the West during the post-war period. It has now flooded back into mainstream discourse as a potent factor in mobilising support for totalising ideologies across the political spectrum. In its capacity to cross political boundaries from right to left, anti-Semitism is a unique form of racism. To identify it properly, it is necessary to understand its history throughout the millennia that it has plagued the societies where it has taken root. It is essential to recognise its very specific expression as a reaction to the current political and social crisis. It is also important to combat it in its current manifestation, rather than through the backward-looking ideologies of the past.
For the most part the gate keepers of liberal opinion and the custodians of public discourse have simply stepped aside while anti-Jewish campaigns, often packaged as “anti-Zionism”, have been raging in their institutions. They issue pious incantations of their commitment to banishing racism, gender discrimination, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, while doing nothing to implement this commitment in the current crisis. They take strong action against assaults on other embattled ethnic minorities and gender groups, as ought to be the case. They assume the role of neutral moderators when such attacks are launched against Jews. They frequently sanitise these attacks as an exercise of the right to free speech, even when this speech crosses into active incitement to hatred and violence.
The current wave of anti-Jewish racism is not only a threat to Jews. It is a challenge to the survival of democracy and the viability of liberal values. Political leaders are singularly failing to address this threat, and the forces that have produced it. They are largely content to step back and allow the manifestations of anti-Semitism to multiply, as long as the appearance of public peace is maintained. In fact, this peace is increasingly frayed. The extremist movements that converge on the Jews as the source of their problems have much larger agendas. They seek to transform the social order in their own image, overturning the foundations of liberal democracy.
In treating anti-Semitism as a parochial development, threatening only Jews, current political and cultural leaders are allowing large swathes of public life to be taken over by movements that are determined to overturn democracy. Recent history is littered with precedents that warn of the dangers involved in ignoring the larger threat that anti-Semitism presages. By failing to address these movements, and the deeper causes of the crisis that generated them, political and cultural leaders in the West risk repeating past historical errors that have led to disastrous consequences. It is long past time to address this issue honestly and effectively. To start to do so requires that we acknowledge the extent of the problem, and that we describe it accurately. Most people who shape mainstream opinion in the West have yet to take this initial step.
Shalom Lappin’s The New Antisemitism (Polity Books, 1 September) investigates the upsurge of anti-Jewish racism now manifest across the world
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In That Howling Infinite 
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