“Solidarity with Gaza masks anti-Semitism”

“The massacres at the Nova festival and in the kibbutzim, far from generating sympathy in circles that describe themselves as ‘progressive’, were a trigger for jubilation,” writes the renowned historian Simon Schama in The Telegraph. “Tearing down posters of the hostages or festival-goers who had been killed became a popular pastime amongst pro-Palestinian demonstrators, wherever they saw them pinned to lampposts, shop windows or the walls of underground stations. The world is overflowing with bloody cruelty and the slaughter of civilians. Yet, somehow, there are no marches mourning or railing against the massacre of Ukrainians or Sudanese Africans by the Arab RSF, or the slaughter of tens of thousands of Iranian protesters by their theocratic despots.”

There is no boycott of Chinese restaurants to show solidarity with the Uyghurs in the face of cultural annihilation (…) The ‘Nazification’ of Israel and the morally squalid and historically absurd equation of Gaza with Auschwitz serve as a form of reprieve for having done little to save Jewish victims even after the facts of their annihilation were known. Similarly, portraying Jews as the paradigmatic imperialist oppressors of history spares the descendants of the true colonisers from an overly critical examination of their own consciences. Put the Jews in the dock rather than your great-grandparents, because we are the people onto whom guilt can easily be transferred, and the means to incriminate us, collectively, are readily available, as they have been for centuries. We are guilty on an equal footing.

Hence the furious obsession – particularly on the part of self-appointed white progressives who yearn to be forgiven for a colonial past – with demonising a people who had nothing to do with the unchecked plundering carried out by their ancestors. Hence, too, the anger of the descendants of immigrants from those empires, for whom no act of penance is ever enough, even though the white comrades in keffiyehs calling for an intifada against the Jews seem to be helping. In essence, the community’s request is to be left in peace: to send children and grandchildren to Jewish schools where they wear uniforms—perhaps with a kippah on their heads—without being shouted at or feeling frightened or ashamed; to be able to take public transport without being attacked or spat at; to go to synagogue without having to pass through a cordon of armed security guards; and for our Israeli friends and family to be able to speak to one another in Hebrew and still manage to book a hotel room, or enter a singing competition, or get tickets for a football match.

And perhaps, if it is not too much trouble, we could ask those who speak out to take the trouble to read up on a bit of history – if they can find it, given that in bookshops’ Middle East sections, only anti-Zionist texts are highlighted. A few books (and there are plenty of them) that do not assume that Zionism has been racist and imperialist from the outset, that the bloodshed has been one-sided, or that we should talk about the deaths in Gaza but not mention those of 7 October at all.”