The normalisation of the global intifada and being Jewish as a mortal sin. 7 October, three years on

On 7 October 2023, we wept. On 7 October 2024, we normalised. On 7 October 2025, we repressed. On 7 October 2026, we find ourselves grappling with a different emotion. Neither tears, nor normalisation, nor repression. Simply: superimposition. A disquieting overlap that at times borders on justification and that at times has the unintended consequence of reversing the roles. With the victim becoming the aggressor. With the aggressor becoming the victim. And with the aggressor, now the victim, who suddenly looks around and finds comfort.

The most dramatic act of erasure on 7 October 2023 – an erasure that has become the norm and, in some cases, has even served as a justification – is the ease with which the reasons behind the pogrom of three years ago have been erased. Of course, 7 October – the event of three years ago – still strikes a chord today, and perhaps even moves even the most inveterate haters of Israel. But what moves people are the scenes of the dead, the attacks, the rapes. What is slowly disappearing from our view, however, are the reasons behind the attack. On 7 October, 1,300 people died simply because they were Jewish. 1,300 people died because a group of terrorists, pampered by a state that funds terror around the world, chose to bring anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism together in a vivid, dramatic and violent manner.

The 1,300 lives wiped out on 7 October 2023 were not collateral damage in a symmetrical war fought between two regular armies. The 1,300 people killed on 7 October died because Islamist terrorists aim to wipe Israel off the map, to drive the Jews out of the Middle East, to extend Palestine from the river to the sea, and to gain legitimacy for their genocidal quest: to kill Jews simply because they are Jews, to turn Jews into targets to be attacked throughout the rest of the world, and to turn supporters of the Jewish state into further targets to be attacked. Hamas did not win the war, Iran did not win the war, Hezbollah did not win the war; the Islamist terrorists who dreamt of destroying Israel did not succeed in their aim. But the attempt to export the global Intifada around the world has succeeded. And it has succeeded thanks to a shifting of blame. Those who were attacked have, over time, become the aggressors. The reasons for the pogrom have gradually been swept under the carpet. Anti-Semitism, the battering ram of the global Intifada, has been normalised. And three years after the horror of 7 October, we have moved from normalisation to justification. 

Has a Jew been attacked? Has a Jew been killed? Has a rabbi been threatened? Has a synagogue been defaced? The blame no longer lies with the hatred that drives a knife. The blame lies with those who have reignited that hatred. The blame lies with Israel. The blame for the hatred against Jews lies with the Jewish people. With the Zionists. With the accomplices. With the perpetrators of genocide. However, this reversal of blame has not only led to a downplaying of the new global Intifada—a downplaying well exemplified by that section of the Italian left which refuses to sign a bill designed to provide better tools to combat antisemitism—a perfect example of a ‘pro-Bal’, not pro-Pal, left, which considers the defence of a Jew’s right to be Jewish incompatible with the defence of the rights of the Palestinian people. This downplaying has created a different, almost dystopian effect, through which we may today find ourselves faced with scenes such as these: the sponsors of terror congratulating those who downplay anti-Semitism.

Those who have begun to compare Israel’s brutal actions in Gaza to a re-enactment of Nazism are perfectly in tune with Hamas’s vocabulary: if the Nazis are ‘the others’, if the Nazis become the Jews, the context is lost, the horror is erased, memory crumbles and the aggressors can easily become the victims. Those who seek to normalise terrorism are perfectly in tune with Hamas’s rhetoric: ours is not a war of terror; ours is resistance. Those who help find the right words to encourage the Flotilla to portray Israel as the sole obstacle to achieving peace are perfectly in tune with Hamas’s vocabulary: if the focus of the war shifts to just one side, it will be easier to gloss over the culpability of those who have chosen to turn an entire people into a human shield. Those who encourage governments across half the world to diplomatically isolate the Jewish state are perfectly in tune with Hamas’s vocabulary. Those who portray all those who support the Jewish state’s right to exist and to defend itself against those who dream of wiping it out from the river to the sea as Zionists to be demonised are perfectly in tune with Hamas’s vocabulary.

It is hardly surprising that, in recent years, the process of erasing the events of 7 October and portraying the victims as aggressors has led to scenes such as those witnessed a few years ago, when, in May 2024, Ali Khamenei, the former Supreme Leader of Iran, wrote a letter of praise to American students to thank them wholeheartedly for having formed ‘a branch of the resistance front’. Three years after 7 October, the Jewish people living in the Jewish state have returned to living in a safe, fortified place; they have succeeded in curtailing the scope of action of those who sought to annihilate them; and they have managed to maintain strong relations with the Arab states which, understanding better than many Western governments the danger posed by the proliferation of Iranian-funded terrorism, have chosen to continue building their own path of relations with Israel.

But three years after 7 October, those most at risk are all Jews living outside Israel, who have become – thanks to a deadly cocktail of normalisation, double standards, downplaying, demonisation, aggressors becoming the victims and victims becoming aggressors, human rights often used as tools to legitimise the actions of terrorists, and Jews who, thanks to the global Intifada legitimised by the champions of downplaying, are once again becoming targets – in search of someone who, remembering 7 October 2023, understands what it means to say ‘never again’.