It’s been getting more-and-more nasty and especially very scary.
The Golders Green attack of last month was a very dark day. Not just for two Jewish individuals brutally stabbed by a maniac, but because it demonstrates warnings about the normalisation of extreme anti-Zionist rhetoric, almost always a contributing factor to anti-Jewish violence.
Headline today shows university Jewish students receiving death threats! What is this?
Anti-semitism, is one of oldest and virulent of the irrational hatreds that saturates the Middle East. It is a key component of Palestinian Arab culture. It is also a significant undercurrent of Leftist ideology, and has been since at least Karl Marx and his self-loathing of his Jewish heritage. The antisemitism on the Right suffered a moral defeat after the horrors of the Holocaust. Today, about 80 years after the Holocaust, the generation that witnessed it first-hand have mostly passed away and antisemitism is undergoing a recrudescence. Now, Iran has replaced Germany.
Since Oct-7, the focus of attacks have been concentrated on Jewish targets. From the miniature Kristallnachts perpetrated on university campuses, to stabbings of clothing-identifiable Jews on the streets of major cities, to the vandalism directed at Jewish identifiable buildings; it represents a change in the direction of violence. The point is to separate Jews from their neighbours and community. In essence, while the antisemitism seems outrageous, it offers the West a way out of the current chaos: “allow us to kill off the Jews and we will leave you alone”.
I am in favour of free speech, but I think there is something deeply wrong in UK culture that it is mainstream and routine to call for the dismantling of the world’s only Jewish state, and when slogans such as “Globalise the Intifada” are tolerated under the banner of political expression. These nasty ideas carry real-world consequences for Jewish communities in England.
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Our King recently went to visit the Jewish community in Golders Green and met the Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis:
The Telegraph has just got a major scoop from a whistleblower about the rot at the BBC.
It is a private internal dossier (made public) on the corporation’s blatant biases which then, even worse, after having made serious journalistic errors, BBC executives opted to hide them from the public rather than correct the record.
This is huge news.
I’m going to comment on the three aspects in the reports.
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Dishonest editing of President Trump
Being biased is one thing - but deliberately distorting and lying is quite another.
The internal memo on the BBC’s Panorama programme about Donald Trump is utterly damning. The BBC had artificially spliced together two v. different and unrelated sections of video to create an impression that President D. Trump had said something he did not actually say. The BBC wanted audiences to get an impression that the former President expressly incited the Jan-6 riots. Not true.
In America, the best example of an organisation crossing-the-line was CBS, last year. It surreptitiously & selectively edited their much-vaunted “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris. She gave a ridiculously meandering “word salad” answer on the subject of Israel. And so, the network distorted and edited it to create an alternative version in which she looked “better”. It gave an impression that she rendered a more “succinct” answer (as opposed to a kindergartener fumbling to find words). I think Mr Trump was right that these were covert attempts - by the quondam “reputable” establishment - to sway the presidential election in their preferred way.
Some people hate Donald Trump so much that they’re prepared to accept a major broadcaster breaking its own rules of impartiality merely to read negative news on Trump - I don’t accept this compromise at all.
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Trans ideological capture
The memo accuses the BBC of “effective censorship” of its coverage of the transgender debate.
This is completely true.
The BBC has been completely and ideologically captured by the “progressives” in the trans debate.
E.g. JK Rowling recently attacked BBC gender identity “ideology” after the BBC used the word “she” to describe a male neo-Nazi who was jailed for incitement of hatred in Germany after switching genders through a simple declaration. The BBC’s use of language couldn’t be clearer. It’s a rolling back on the rights of actual women and spreading of misinformation about reality.
Then, there’s Dame Jenni Murray. Host of BBC Radio 4’s show “Woman’s Hour” (a joke, right!!). She says she was “banned” from discussing her TERF views for fear of a backlash at the organisation. Why can’t a decent & honourable lady, like her, express reasonable views in the organisation? Why.
I’ve been cataloguing the BBC’s failures for some time. It’s not just that they make mistakes - it is, as the memo reveals, they consistently take a pro-Hamas slant in their reportage (particularly the BBC Arabic service which is basically a toilet, at this point).
First, the BBC didn’t, and probably still doesn’t, wish to call Hamas “terrorists”, esp. after Oct-7. From the point of view of the BBC, they don’t think it’s their function to demarcate the bad guys from the good guys. I don’t have the words for this dereliction. It strikes me as total insanity. How can you equivocate on using the correct moral language to describe an event/phenomena? Then, as an example of bias, the rush to blame Israel for negative things even before the facts arrive (same blog: in the context of the Al-Ahli Hospital).
There are plenty of other things - like allowing the son of a Hamas official to narrate a documentary, Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone for the BBC. That’s basically terrorist propaganda on the waves of the UK’s major broadcaster! Hamas, and their civilian sympathisers, have been playing the media for decades. Channel 4 eventually bought the rights and broadcasted this garbage.
The BBC’s Arabic news service chose to “minimise Israeli suffering” in the war in Gaza so it could “paint Israel as the aggressor”, according to an internal report by a whistleblower. Allegations made against Israel were “raced to air” without adequate checks, the memo says, suggesting either carelessness or “a desire always to believe the worst about Israel”.
BBC Arabic, which is funded partly by a grant from the Foreign Office, gave large amounts of space to statements from Hamas, making its editorial slant “considerably different” to the main BBC website even though it is supposed to reflect the same values, managers were warned.
The BBC also gave “unjustifiable weight” to Hamas claims about the death toll in Gaza, which are widely accepted to have been exaggerated for propaganda purposes, and incorrectly claimed the International Court of Justice had ruled that genocide was taking place.
An aspect which I found v. interesting in Mr Rayner’s report is the BBC’s prevarication over their dishonesty with regards to the much-repeated genocide claim against Israel:
The BBC repeatedly reported that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) had ruled in January 2024 that there was a “plausible case of genocide” in Gaza.
It was mentioned by Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s International Editor, among others, and on Newsnight and various television and radio reports.
Joan Donoghue, the former ICJ president, told the BBC’s HardTalk programme that the media had widely misinterpreted its findings and it was not correct to say the ICJ had found a plausible case of genocide.
An internal BBC review into the matter found that the ICJ’s ruling “is very clear and explicitly states that the court is not making any determination on the merits” of claims of genocide, but only on whether what was being alleged was covered by the genocide convention.
Mr Prescott said in his letter: “The ICJ report runs to just 26 pages and is written in non-technical language. Had no BBC reporter troubled themselves to read it?”
It took months for the BBC to issue a clarification.
Mr Prescott wrote: “The BBC is prone to downplaying criticism by saying it receives similar numbers of complaints from both sides. Looking at the evidence set out above, it seems very hard for any pro-Palestinian observers to make a compelling case that the BBC has a pro-Israel bias.”
Here is a video of Mr Rayner on the pro-Hamas bias.
The Balfour Declaration is celebrating its centenary.
It’s a short letter from the British Foreign Secretary to Lord Rothschild, leader of the British Jewish community, dated November 2, 1917.
The full key sentence says:
“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
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The Balfour Declaration represented, not just a diplomatic statement, but the moral recognition that the Jewish people - long persecuted, displaced and/or impoverished - had the right to safety in the restoration of their homeland.
More than a mere political document, it carried deep symbolic weight. It affirmed that a people without a state could still claim a history, an identity, and a belonging. Since this recognition was granted from one of the world’s great powers, it endowed that promise with legitimacy and hope - suggesting that safety and justice was not beyond reach.
It is a testament to humanity’s nobler instincts in the age of our history often degraded by its cruelties.
At a time when antisemitism was open, casual and systemic - from the pogroms of Eastern Europe to the prejudices of Western capitals (e.g. mob violence, the Dreyfus affair etc.) - it was a rare spark of moral courage. In hindsight, it shines all the brighter against the tragedies that have ensued, as hatred and denial continue to target the Jewish story.
The standard rebuttal against the Declaration is that it disregarded the Palestinian aspirations of independence. But, it’s important to note that the Declaration expressly recognised the need for a homeland without detracting from the civil rights of Arabs already living there. The Peel Commission ended-up recommending that the Arabs receive 77% of what was said to have been the “Jewish homeland in Palestine” promised in the Balfour Declaration. If anything, the Jews got shafted. So, it’s completely untrue to argue that the Arabs were disregarded.
The Declaration is not a relic of a empire, but a declaration of principle - even in darkness, safety and justice can still have a voice.
The troubles that Israel has endured since are because of Arab rejectionism, and not at all due to the Balfour Declaration. I think that might be my next post.
Whenever he pops up in a story, he exhibits an embarrassing decline in intellect alongside an outlandish propensity for conspiracy theories (invariably with an antisemitic bent).
For example, why describe the podcaster (i.e. non-historian) Darryl Cooper as “the best and most honest popular historian in the United states” giving him platform for his revisionist history that Winston Churchill was the “chief villain of the Second World War”; and, not Hitler.
... Where did all the money come from? And no one has ever gotten to the bottom of that because no one has ever tried. And moreover, it’s extremely obvious to anyone who watches that this guy had direct connections to a foreign government. Now, no one’s allowed to say that that foreign government is Israel because we have been somehow cowed into thinking that that’s naughty. There is nothing wrong with saying that. There is nothing hateful about saying that. There’s nothing anti-Semitic about saying. There’s nothing even anti-Israel about saying that ... You have the former Israeli prime minister living in your house. You have had all this contact with the foreign government. Were you working on behalf of Mossad? Were you running a blackmail operation on behalf of foreign government? ... (Excerpted)
And, of course, all of this from his intellectual safe house of “… just asking questions ...” - the unmistakable refuge of the demagogue.
As we know, eventually, all such conspiracy theories devolve to some Jewish angle.
The Epstein conspiracy is no different and it seems it won’t be easily killed.
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The reasons why the Mossad-Epstein conspiracy is ridiculous:
It doesn’t make any sense for Israeli intelligence to connect itself to Epstein. Israeli intelligence is one of the few places on Earth in which idiots aren’t running things. He was investigated in 2005 and convicted in 2008. Why would Mossad be concerned with Mr Epstein’s island? What spy-trade skills did he possess? And who would Mossad be hoping to honey-trap - Mahmoud Abbas? It's ridiculous and would unnecessarily implicates Israel in his (by then) known pedophilia and sex scandals.
Following the Jonathan Pollard espionage fiasco, Mossad & Israel must be aware of the serious repercussions involved in underhanded activities to US-Israeli relations.
And as soon as the first Israeli strikes were announced on Thursday, the weirdos scuttled out from behind the woodwork and poured forth over Twitter/X, chirruping angrily and helplessly about Israel, about Jews, and about worldwide conspiracy theories to yoke America to the Zionists. Yes, old-fashioned nuttery was once again out in the open, as all the most obvious suspects ran rampant.
There was Candace Owens — a woman who swears she is not an antisemite even as she “just asks questions” about the myth of Simon of Trent — reverting perfectly to form upon hearing the news: “Get ready, white American men! It’s time for you to go die for Israel again.” There was Tucker Carlson’s favorite “historian,” Darryl “MartyrMade” Cooper, offering prayerful words of consolation to his followers: “Don’t worry, friends: as arrogant and invincible as he may seem, in the end the devil and all his children are cast into the lake of fire.” (Remember, my friends: Cooper — who also believes that Churchill was the villain of World War II and that Europe would have been better off had Hitler won — insists that he is in no way an antisemite.)
As if to top them all, purported comedian Dave Smith — last seen sidekicking as a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist spouting accusations of Israeli genocide in Gaza on Joe Rogan’s hyperpopular podcast — went one step further. Referring to reports that Trump is fully supporting Israel’s action, he called Trump a traitor to his own movement:
If this is true, Trump is the most impotent b**** of a leader imaginable. He’s allowing one side of a war, who clearly wants to drag us in, to lie about our involvement while not correcting the record.
Either way, Trump has betrayed MAGA and every principle of America First. He is no longer worthy of any of our support. He probably never was.
I am as worried about the potential outcome in the Middle East as any sane man would be. (In particular, I would be very careful about breezily calling for immediate “regime change” without further consideration of what a post-mullah Iran, brought to heel by Israeli military action, would look like.) But it does my heart good to see all the worst people absolutely enraged, and in such repulsively sputtering ways, about Israel’s success to date.
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For those who don’t know, Dave Smith is a total moron. I’ve heard him “debate” on the Israel-Gaza conflict and he knows nothing. He would babble about a two-state solution on the popular 1967 borders until he realised Egypt and Jordan occupied Gaza and Judea and Samaria from 1948. And even if we pretend that there was a country called “Palestine”, and that we could revert to the 1967 borders, or even the 1948 borders; why did the Arabs reject every single partition plan before these borders were demarcated and tried to take the entirety of the land by force? No answer. These people parrot “ending the occupation” or “from the river to the sea” which is an antisemitic dog whistle. It means the eradication of Israel and the Jews.
Tucker Carlson is an isolationist conservative. The problem here is that this inclination is apt to sometimes involve conspiracies about the Jews and world dominion. Tucker did also “interview” Putin and, worst of all, gave Darryl Cooper a platform on his show for his deplorable David Irving historical revisionism of WW2.
The mechanised nature of human destruction marks it out. More people died under Stalin and Mao. Most of the people died because of disastrous communist economic policies which brought on famine. Otherwise, executions and imprisonments were targeted at specific groups and/or individuals. The Holocaust was a systematic, intentional, industrial killing machine. The Holocaust was organised and operated as a business, with efficiency and cost optimisation.
The Holocaust is still very recent & changed our world. Genghis Khan’s empire caused the 10 to 80 million deaths, but the conquest brought gunpowder to Europe, and opened trade between the east and the west (Silk Road) etc. Hitler’s unintended aftermath was laying the foundations of the EU (e.g. through the European Coal and Steel Community), the use of nuclear power as an energy source, and the creation of the state of Israel for the Jews.
Born in 1914, Grossman survived the Holocaust and went on to raise a large family in Israel. Her son, Vladimir Shvets, said earlier this week that his mother had endured unimaginable suffering but overcame it with strength and resilience.
“She experienced the worst and survived,” he said. “She raised her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and taught them that unbridled hatred cannot win.”
Shvets added, “We must all remember her story, remember her survival, so that her past never becomes our future.”
Elena Shvets, Grossman’s granddaughter-in-law, said the trauma of the Holocaust remained with her until her final days.
“They fled the Nazis, and she suffered terribly during the war,” she said. “Lately, she had dreams—she even dreamed the Nazis were choking her. These memories never left her. I hope she is at peace now. Until the very end, she was sharp and spoke with us. She passed away quietly.”
Remembrance days, for me, feels different.
October-7 was the Holocaust reattempted. It was the largest number of Jewish people deliberately targeted and killed in a single day since the Holocaust.
When we saw the videos of young people trying to run away in the Nova music festival — it was the same as the historic photos of Jews running to escape from Nazis, being shot at, and being caught and tortured. The recent video footage of October-7 brings back the memories of our most dark period.
It is important to remember — as I was today reading the obituary of this lovely lady whose courage and strength and compassion I salute.
It’s incredible to think that the liberation was only 80 years ago.
I hope we never forget.
I’m v. glad that King Charles attended the commemoration.
Unfortunately, there will be detractors and deniers who will argue that the Holocaust remembrance is being overplayed or seek to minimise the uniqueness of Jewish suffering.
Infuriating scenes in Amsterdam. They make my blood boil. Feels like Europe 1939!
Mobs waiting for Jews. There was a video of some guy begging for his life and offering the assailants his wallet and possessions while they kick him to the ground, or the video of the mob chasing down and beating a Jew in broad daylight, or the video of the lynch mob demanding to see a man’s passport as to whether he is Jewish or not so they know whether to beat him up. Or being forced to jump into canals to save themselves.
Over 60 arrests, and Jews were even told to shelter in places to be safely evacuated.
The Dutch PM has already condemned this as a deliberate antisemitic attack.
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Some people may say that the Israeli football fans “antagonised” people with their shouting and tearing down flags etc. However, no amount of stupid, angry, or disrespectful chants (or bad behaviour) justifies beating-up anyone from that country that we can find, and throwing them into the river etc.
What happened cannot be attributed to everyday hooliganism.
Nasrallah, speaking for the first time since twin pager-and-radio attacks killed dozens across Lebanon, said Israel had crossed all ‘red lines’. The attacks could be seen as “a declaration of war,” he added.
Hezbollah attack Israel – and then cry victim when Israel hits back in response.
They have been attacking Israel for years. The firing of the over 7,000 rockets into northern Israel since the Hamas massacre of Oct-7 was the latest phase which began on Oct 8 – well before Israel responded militarily in Gaza.
And yet, somehow, the Jewish state’s right to defend itself is being gainsayed as a “declaration of war”.
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I think we have normalised the firing of rockets into Israel because of its amazing (but not imperfect) air defense system. Yet 2 points should be made:
Hezbollah have been firing rockets killing civilians indiscriminately. Israel detonated explosives via an ingenious method targeting Hezbollah fighters and personnel discriminately. Military communication devices are a valid military objective. The pagers were distributed by Hezbollah to Hezbollah operatives (and, therefore, non-civilians). Hezbollah is an active participant in the international conflict, and so discrimination can be proven overwhelmingly. The harm to the civilian population cannot and did not outweigh the military advantage conferred.
Hezbollah isn’t some silly nuisance. They do serious harm to Israel. Imagine living in the country, and wondering if today is the day there is a malfunction and a rocket slips through, killing you or your loved ones. It makes day-to-day life intolerable. Hezbollah is a serious material threat to the territorial integrity of Israel and the security of its citizens. Tens of thousands of Israeli citizens and others (like the Golani Druze) live and thrive under its protection.
To question Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah – let alone characterise it as terror (as Belgium’s Deputy Prime Minister Petra De Sutter did) – discloses either a deep-rooted nasty antisemitism or a brain-addled stupidity so profound as to be literally unfathomable.
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Israel must maintain military action against Hezbollah – despite the significant risks.
Citizens must be able to return safely to their homes and businesses in Israel’s northern communities.
Hezbollah second-in-command, Ibrahim Aqil, was killed in an Israeli air strike in Beirut.
Last week, I went to the Imperial War Museum London’s “Holocaust Galleries”.
It is a dedicated gallery to conserving the memory of the lives and devastation wrought by the Third Reich.
It’s very moving. There were lots of photos of so many families and children caught in the web of WW2 and antisemitism. Including life in the ghettos which were overcrowded and miserable, with limited food, sanitation, warmth, and medicine.
I realise how outrageous it is that urban city centres in America are somehow called “ghettos”. The original ghettos were designed to isolate and control millions of Jews during the Holocaust.
There is a tendency to think that we know enough or too much about the Holocaust. In my view, if anything, we don’t learn about it enough. It’s the sheer scale of what happened that still shocks me. It’s a state-wide industrial scale. Like an Orwellian fiction.
Before the Nazis, there were 3 million Jews in Poland. After they left, there were under 200,000 left. The Auschwitz gas chambers were capable of “processing” 2000 lives per hour.
On more than one occasion, the guards ran out of Zyklon-B and fed little Jewish children to the furnaces while they were still alive.
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Oct 7 and the Holocaust: the rising antisemitism
Today, posters of Israelis taken hostage by Hamas is very striking. Although there are some parallels, it must be said that there is nothing in similarity between the Holocaust and what’s going on in Israel-Gaza today.
Oct 7 was the worst atrocities to Jews since the Holocaust. Eradicating Hamas is thus a just cause. Not out of vengeance, but the necessity of keeping Israelis safe in their homes.
Nevertheless, the attack by Islamist terrorists against the only Jewish state has been accompanied by a rise around the world in antisemitism.
These recent “protests” (with “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” or “Intifada revolution” etc.) give implicit succor to the pro-Hamas fanatics who attack the Jewish identity, and the right to exist. Anti-zionism is anti-semitism.
They should be demanding that Hamas release the hostages of Oct 7. They should not be equivocating Oct 7 with wartime civilian deaths in Gaza. They should be rebelling against hate.
If people retort by saying only a few bad apples were making those chants; then, at what point, do these protests containing rotten apples become bad protesta? If you’re at a protest and people around start chanting something you don’t support, you need to remove them or remove yourself. Otherwise, standing side-by-side, people will assume they are together.
But this is not their war. Where are the demands for the return of the remaining hostages? What about demanding that the perpetrators of Oct 7 atrocities be brought to justice? Nope ... didn’t think so.
There has been a huge outpouring of antisemitism amid these protests — Jewish students being barred from their own campus by pro-Palestinian activist thugs, told to go back to Poland and to the gas chambers, a Jewish student being beaten unconscious in UCLA, Jews told they were the next target for terrorists. When they shout ‘globalise the intifada’, it reminds me of the Brownshirts.
Today’s Cambridge pro-Palestine camp’s spokesman refused to condemn Hamas or describe them as a terror group when questioned by The Telegraph (reported at 3:26pm).
All civilian deaths are abhorrent; but we shouldn’t lose sight of the basic proposition: Hamas’s declared intention is to annihilate Israel and its population – whilst Israel is fighting against a fanatical fascist enemy who prop their own citizens as human shields and then cynically and gleefully propagandise the inevitable collateral casualties.
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So what are they fighting for?
A narcissistic game of pretending to be a revolutionary and pretending to be part of something bigger than oneself. Protesters in the 60s were fighting for CND, Vietnam, gay rights, animal rights, environmentalism etc. Today’s protesters are positioning themselves against the progress made in the 60s onwards. I.e. with Hamas.
Antisemitism — Where were these protesters when Syria was wiping out its citizens? Where were they when Iraqi women were protesting against the killing or girls and women? There are no protests against the War in Yemen with over 150k+ direct casualties in that conflict. They only can be bothered to protest against the Jews.
To isolate Israel from the global economy. They want the West to adopt the old “Arab boycott” against Israel in which any kind of business with Israel/Jews is banned. No oil, no gas, no electricity, no food. Essentially, they want to turn Israel into North Korea. This is ironic as they claim that Israel banning of trade with Gaza amounts to “genocide”.
They don’t want ceasefire. They want intifada. “Students for Justice” in Columbia — and people like Norman Finkelstein — have endorsed Hamas on October 7 arguing their “resistance” was justified. There is enough toxicity among this “underbelly” that a non-insignificant pro-Hamas sentiment can be easily found. Some are no better than their Holocaust-denying fellow travellers.
Decolonisation “settler-colonial” dialectical narratives — At recent protests, they were shouting that Israel are white colonialists oppressing brown people. This offshoot of Marxian traditional class-conflict presents itself in the post-modern “identity-politics” “decolonization” framework which leading universities (whose academics are overwhelmingly left-wing) have been pushing for years now. This shows a serious lack of understanding about Middle Eastern demographics. There are Lebanese & Palestinians who are the whitest people you can see. Meanwhile, there are Israelis who are black, and every shade in between. Essentially, projecting US racial dynamics onto this conflict.
And some are genuinely well-meaning students, albeit mistaken, about the conflict; and have imbibed the media tropes about “genocide” etc. They are decent and would probably be shocked if they knew enough about their comrades. I suspect that most pro-Palestine supporters probably didn’t even know where the Gaza strip was before Oct 7.
As the war has raged on and the death toll has grown, protest rallies on American campuses have morphed into a campaign of ever grander and more elaborate ambitions: From “Cease-fire now” to the categorical claim that Israel is guilty of genocide and war crimes to demands that Columbia divest from Israeli companies and any American company selling arms to the Jewish state.
Many protesters argue that, from the river to the sea, the settler-colonialist state must simply disappear. To inquire, as I did at Columbia, what would happen to Israelis living under a theocratic fascist movement such as Hamas is to ask the wrong question. A young female protester, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution, responded: “Maybe Israelis need to check their privilege.”
What happened this week was not just a rise in the temperature. The protests took a wrong turn, of a kind I have seen too many other activist movements take. It’s the same wrong turn that the civil rights movement took in the late 1960s.
Beyond a certain point, however, we must ask whether the escalating protests are helping to change those circumstances. Columbia’s administration agreed to review proposals about divestment, shareholder activism and other issues and to create health and education programs in Gaza and the West Bank. But the protesters were unmoved and a subgroup of them, apparently, further enraged … Who among the protesters really thought that Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, and the board of trustees would view the occupation of Hamilton Hall — and the visible destruction of property — and say, “Oh, if the students feel that strongly, then let’s divest from Israel immediately”? The point seemed less to make change than to manifest anger for its own sake, with the encampment having become old news.
Growing numbers of Jewish families are considering fleeing London for abroad because of rising antisemitism in the capital, campaigners warned on Tuesday as they demanded tougher action to combat intimidation and hate.
The Campaign Against Antisemitism said some Jewish residents had already left because of fears for their safety.
But it added that the number of those considering leaving London was increasing daily in response to hostility being displayed towards them.
The campaign group has exposed a series of antisemitic attacks in London amid reports of increasing nervousness among Jewish people about their safety.
Gideon Falter, chief executive of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, said an earlier opinion survey had already shown that about half of Jewish people were considering moving abroad and that the trend was growing because of continuing hostility from sections of the community.
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This is incredibly depressing.
As a Londoner, I must admit that I feel this article has somewhat overstated the problem — if not a bit misleading. People are not seriously “fleeing” the Capital.
Jewish students are covering kippahs with baseball caps and hiding Star of David necklaces amid soaring reports of anti-Semitism at UK universities. Undergraduates at some of Britain’s leading institutions have told The Telegraph they feel “afraid” and “on edge” on campus. One student described how she put up posters of hostages taken by Hamas in her university town, only to see them ripped off the wall within 45 minutes. The accounts come as reports of anti-Semitic incidents in the 18 days following the Hamas terror attacks hit a record high.
Ms Schwinger, who admitted sometimes hiding her Star of David necklace when she walked past a pro-Palestine protest or rally, said she and others had reported signs held at such demonstrations, including one that read “Intifada until victory”. (The Daily Telegraph)
People have been reporting antisemitic graffiti, stickers and posters — often by Jewish schools or Jewish graveyards. One of my own local shops actually had “from the river to the sea” written by its entrance. Disgusting.
Immediately after the Jews were targeted in an evil attack, antisemitic incidents hit record highs. Why? Where is all the disgust and racism and hatred against Russians? People don’t care about russia because it’s not Jewish.
London isn’t Nazi Germany. But, for me, I think we should be mindful of history. The chants didn’t immediately start by saying “murder all the Jews”. but, people having to hide their Jewish identity is how it all begins. We should be very careful.
There has been chaos and outrage in Parliament this week.
A motion that was tabled by a minority party, the SNP, in Parliament to back an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza.
The Speaker of the House, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, decided to go against official advice and selected a Labour amendment to a motion reserved for the SNP.
Our constitution is convention-driven. The Convention states that the Government's amendment is adopted; as opposed to the opposition's. Instead, the rules were changed. He explained that he wanted to give MPs “the widest possible range of options”.
Tory MPs felt the Speaker had been bullied and cajoled into helping the leader of the Labour Party, Sir Keir Starmer, who was facing another huge revolt by many of his MPs. The Labour party has a longstanding problem with antisemitism. Nick Watt, BBC Newsnight political editor, wrote that there had been some blackmail to undermine Parliament's conventions to get Labour out of a hole:
"Senior Labour figures tell me @CommonsSpeaker was left in no doubt that Labour would bring him down after the General Election unless he called Labour’s Gaza amendment. The message was: you will need our votes to be re-elected as Speaker after election, with strong indications this would not be forthcoming if he failed to call the Labour amendment.
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My thoughts:
Israel will rightly ignore all of this grandstanding. Can you imagine some other country’s politicians dictating to us when, and on what terms, we are allowed to defend ourselves!
This ceasefire vote has nothing to do with Gaza. The SNP wanted to create trouble within the House of Commons. It has everything to do with rising levels of antisemitism. Hoyle cited Labour MPs fear that they would be physically attacked by Hamas and Islamist supporters in England if they weren’t visibly voting against Israel! So, Starmer applied emotional pressure on Hoyle and the Speaker suddenly upturned convention and rules to pander to the mobs.
“What is happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people has no parallel in other historical moments. In fact, it did exist when Hitler decided to kill the Jews,” Lula told reporters during the 37th African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
The Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem said it would summon the Brazilian ambassador for a reprimand over the remarks, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as “disgraceful and grave”.
Outrageous.
Lula is just an idiot – a complete ignoramus.
But, in other contexts, I would argue that this jibe would be a nasty antisemitic slur. It seeks to align the Jewish state – as the successors of the Holocaust’s victims – into the perpetrators of a second Holocaust. This is not only ahistorical and ignorant – it is also very disrespectful to Israeli’s legacy and Jews. In fact, I think it is venomously antisemitic. It amounts to accusing the Jews & Israelis of serving as Hitler’s willing executioners!
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Part 1 – Why is the comparison wrong?
Because what matters is both the scale and especially the intent, and reserving the term ‘genocide’ for genuine genocidal acts.
The Nazis killed around 65% of European Jewry, and about 40% of all Jews in the world. During a two-day period at Babi Yar, approximately the same number of Jews – compared to the number of Gazans killed over 4 months in a given combat zone – were corralled, stripped naked, laid down in rows along a 500ft ravine, and shot in the neck. Survivors were buried alive. The Nazis deliberately sought to kill as many civilians as possible such that they built dedicated murder camps to make it more efficient and effective.
With respect to Israel and the IDF – and any comparisons to Nazis, Holocaust or genocide etc. – the critical and obvious difference is that the Hamas attack (Oct 7) was trying to intentionally kill civilians. Israel is retaliating against this barbaric enemy, who uses human shields. They are not even remotely the same. There is an obvious and gigantic consequential moral difference between Israel and her enemies. Israel is surrounded by religious fanatics who have explicitly genocidal intentions towards Israelis. The charter of Hamas makes genocide – against the Jews – explicit.
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Part 2 – A brief note in defence of Israel
People will look at this conflict and say: “my gosh … the IDF are hitting civilian targets …”.
Hamas have been using human shields with the object of mixing legitimate targets with civilian ones – as they always have. But, the Geneva conventions have always forbidden deploying military (defensive or aggressive) installations under civilian areas. It is against the historic rules of war for any government to build bunkers under any civilian areas – with the calculated understanding that any attempts to target their military forces will engender huge civilian casualties. They even used a hospital (the Al-Shifa hospital) as their base of command. That is sick.
What is Israel to do under the circumstances?
Some 134 Israeli citizens – who were kidnapped as hostages and dragged back, like a Viking raid – remain captive by these maniacs. Hamas could have released them, if they were concerned about the Gaza death-toll. But they obviously are not concerned. In fact, the civilian deaths are the desired military object of Hamas. Hamas makes it necessary for Israel to kill Gaza non-combatants to destroy their enemy. In so doing, they can – through international pressure – seek to compel Israel to ‘negotiate’ (presumably) on Hamas’s own terms. After all, Hamas are holding they key bargaining chips, namely the hostages.
The calculus is that if the human cost becomes so high, international pressure will be increased on Israel. So, the only way Hamas can “win” is if Israel becomes isolated diplomatically and internationally from materials and weapons purchases, and aid. But, if Israel were to accede to that, it would establish a precedent that if you want to change Israeli policy, then go and invade their country: behead, murder and rape their civilians, uploading these videos online, and kidnap as many innocent people as possible.
The IDF cannot put boots on ground in any area of civilian population. This would be urban warfare. The key personnel with any serious power in all organisations in Gaza have been vetted by Hamas. They do what Hamas orders - including stealing food & diverting medical aid to prioritise Hamas operatives over the civilian population. In many ways, it reminds me of Stalin. He was able to use the vast populations of Russia to act as fodder against the Nazis. And, of course, Hamas doesn’t wear military insignia and uniforms – as required under the Geneva conventions. They blend in with the civilian population to make it impossible to tell who is Hamas.
Hamas cannot take on the might of the IDF in any open battlefield. They have to rely on the moral calculus of people around the world getting outraged at the death-toll. War involves the breakdown of values. But we shouldn’t lose perspective here. Israel is a liberal democracy. They engage in warfare according to the rules of war. Israel could completely obliterate the Gaza strip at any moment, if they want – but they clearly don’t want to do that. But, if Hamas could; we all know they would (as is literally carved in their Hamas charter).
And, more importantly, release the Israeli hostages.
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Update: this came in the post recently:
The irony of a war between a people with the means to commit genocide but not the desire; versus people with the desire to commit genocide but not the means.
Part 1 – I think anti-Zionism is inherently antisemitism
Firstly, once people assert anti-Zionism is unacceptable etc.; then they invariably hold Israel to ridiculous & absurd standards - well beyond any other country. And certainly not to a commensurable standard as the Palestinian side.
Secondly, the concept of an ethnic nation would suggest that they are entitled to self-determination as an independent nation state. For Jews, that nation state is Israel – not (only) on the grounds of a genuine historical provenance, but on the grounds of international law via UN resolution.
When someone says “I’m anti-Zionist ... not an antisemite”, they are accepting and tolerant of the Jew if he’s consigned to his role as the “wandering jew”. Otherwise, they are not entitled to a collective nationhood, the preservation of their history and archaeological sites. There would be no government on Earth ever prioritising Jewish safety. The anti-Zionist wants the Jew to resigned as a perpetual stranger in a country, nothing more.
Partly the fascists islamists - “poor Hamas ...!” and the left-wing identity politics groups who see Jews as white and privileged (despite being a minority that has historically been the target of discrimination).
Anti-Semitism hit an all-time high last year in an “explosion of hatred” against the Jewish community following the Hamas terror attacks on Israel, official figures show.
The Community Security Trust (CST) said the surge in anti-Jewish attacks, threats and abuse amounted to a “celebration” of Hamas’s October 7 massacre by anti-Semites whose own hatred was fuelled by the brutality of the attacks.
Its annual report said that there were 4,103 anti-Semitic incidents in the UK last year, nearly double the previous record in 2021, covering all types of “hate” against Jewish people.
Mark Gardner, the CST chief executive, said: “British Jews are strong and resilient, but the explosion in hatred against our community is an absolute disgrace.”
Another article recently by Danny Cohen showing the nasty sides of antisemitism:
Background: Last month, there were Congressional hearings on antisemitism in American universities – notably following the recent upsurge of anti-Jewish hate in the Western world following October 7 (e.g. usual nasty chants "from the river to the sea" etc.). The presidents of three major US universities (Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, MIT) proved themselves incredibly incompetent on answering the most basic of questions: whether the calling for the genocide of the Jews would violate their campus rules of harassment or bullying. Their answers to this basic question is that it would violate the university's code of conduct – "depending on context" and if "speech becomes conduct".
Yesterday, Dr. Claudine Gay - former President of Harvard - has finally resigned following the strong (and justified) backlash, and the threat of major donors withdrawing money. It also seems that Dr. Gay is guilty of plagiarism which is another serious reason to step down. In this post, I will discuss the culture of antisemitism at universities.
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Part of the problem is that these presidents have taken the responsibility for their university's policies and practices. Both Claudine Gay and Elizabeth Magill were asked directly if calls for genocide constituted a violation of their university's code of conduct, whether it constituted bullying. Her response was to state that Penn had a "serious decision to make" in reviewing the 'genocide' policy in campus. What does that mean? It's an evasion of responsibility, at best. At worst, and in fact, it is a suggestion that tolerance of calls for genocide is something worthy of consideration. At a time when moral clarity is exigent, these academics chose to dissemble and give cover to the worst expressions of antisemitism in recent times.
Another aspect that scares me is how antisemitism is backed into our institutions of higher learning: "depending on context". Part of these presidents rationalization is that calling for genocide is fundamentally acceptable if it does not lead to action and/or doesn't target an individual. Using that logic, would it ever be acceptable for a student to start chanting racist slurs, as part of a mob on campus, at African-American students because of the conflict in South Sudan, let's say? Or, shouting that the George Floyd's murder was justified, in context, at some black students? Of course not.
When Jewish students say they are feeling unsafe and harassed, and that campus antisemitic speech is threatening; it shouldn't be equivocated. Otherwise it's a shameful moral hypocrisy. History has made these bursts of antisemitism an ominous and existential threat to Jews. They know all too well where these slogans and marches and slurs lead. It should never be contextualised and shouldn't matter whether gentiles can 'identify with it personally'. When Jewish students say they feel threatened, universities should listen and act, as opposed to dancing around semantics.
However, I think our present antisemitism comes from two places:
I think people don't regard Jew-hatred – physically or mentally – in the same way as hatred of other minorities. The logic here is that the hatred of a 'peoples' is based around their position in the framework of 'oppressor vs oppressed'. For whatever reason, Jews have been firmly planted in the 'oppressor' category. As such, the hatred & pain inflicted on Jews can be downplayed, legitimised, or denied. Hence, it is "context"-dependent – as opposed to being objectively wrong. If this was any other minority, such attacks would be completely unacceptable and not subject to any 'debate'. Harassment towards blacks or Muslims or gays etc. would never have any "context" to it, and would be regarded as nasty bigotry. But, when it comes to the Jews, there is a "context" that can explain it.
The BBC has a similar problem as Harvard: Today's Daily Telegraph has a lamentable article criticising the BBC's flawed reportage on the resignation of Dr. Claudine Gay. I haven't read the BBC article (which has since been deleted!) but it seems – just like our universities – that in their warped view of reality, Harvard/Gay are the victims here. The BBC claimed that Claudine Gay was the victim of America's "campus culture wars" as opposed to her inability to condemn the calling for a genocide as unacceptable! Talk about avoiding reality!
Our Jewish Society president had the mezuzah (a protective Jewish prayer scroll) ripped from his door. At a freshers’ event, one Jewish friend told me that she was called a “coloniser” and “race traitor” (the latter by virtue of her non-European descent). I know male students who have removed their kippot (skullcaps) and others who have hidden their Stars of David. On Instagram, I saw students posting pictures of paragliders, celebrating Hamas’s massacre. I waited five long days for my university to condemn “appalling attacks by Hamas” and stress “that there is no place for antisemitism or hate of any faith at Oxford”. An Israeli student whose relatives were murdered at the Nova festival has returned home, telling me she felt safer there than on campus.
The silence we encounter stands in stark contrast to the sensitivity and outspoken support displayed by staff and students to those touched by other events, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Beyond Oxford, Jewish students have experienced similar incidents of antisemitism. In Manchester, posters with the words “kill more Jews” and “Yids” have been displayed. On Instagram, a university Jewish society was sent the message: “Wherever you are in the world, we will take you out of your homes and perform a dance of victory and happiness over your bodies”; another was sent a threat, accompanied by a video of beheaded babies, reading: “You must be killed all of u till the last naziest of you” [sic]; a university rabbi received a direct message that said: “You massacred innocent Muslims, I hope you die too.”
