THE WEST’S REACTION TO 7/10 IS CAUSE FOR CONCERN

Our anti-hate speech laws aren't doing the job many had hoped they would.

26th October 2023

Discussing the consequences of 7th October 2024, is impossible without first reminding ourselves what happened that fateful day in Southern Israel. The details were passed over quickly by an international media impatient for the next step of the news cycle, but they included burning people alive. As roaming Hamas bands moved from village to village and house to house, they shot parents in front of their children, children in front of their parents. They raped girls and paraded their bodies through the streets of Gaza. Those they kept alive were abducted as hostages. All this they filmed themselves and broadcast it to the web. The spectacle was part of its purpose. October 7th was the perfect illustration of what happens when you pump young men full of hate, give them machine guns and let them loose on unarmed civilians.

Had it been British or Israeli soldiers acting in such a way, I’d have been ashamed and appalled, because I believe that the kidnapping of children is evil. When someone fires a bullet into a 9 year old’s face, I don’t need to know the context in order to condemn it. The identity of the child and killer are irrelevant. I had assumed such an attitude was ubiquitous. Apparently not so much. Because as illuminating as anything about the 7th October, were the days that followed it and what they revealed about the West.

One common puzzle about the Holocaust is how everyday people could have looked the other way, or even cheered on the murder of children and babies. Let us puzzle no longer. No one ever need ask again how common folk could square the genocide of Europe’s Jews with their conscience. Because the 7th October gave us a demonstrative lesson in precisely how it happens. Because when Hamas proudly showed off their handiwork to the world, people celebrated.

They celebrated in Stockholm, Los Angeles and Ottawa. In Berlin they handed out pastries along the Sonnenallee. In Seattle they chanted “Long live the intifada!”, in London they called for “jihad”. Rivkah Brown, Editor at Novara Media, called 7th October “a day of celebration for supporters of democracy and human rights worldwide”. The Guardian published an opinion piece headlined, “Israel must stop weaponising the Holocaust”, just weeks after the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

The line between anti-Israeli sentiment and anti-semitism was never as clear cut as its proponents tried to make out, and come 2023 it’s effectively non-existent. In New York a pro-Palestinian waved a swastika at a group of Israel supporters. In the Netherlands police had to be called when chanting in Arabic was revealed to be calling for the murder of Jews. In Australia people didn’t bother with such subtlety, chanting "Gas the Jews” in such numbers outside the Sidney Opera House that police had to warn local Jewish residents to avoid the area for their own safety.

The New York mayor, Eric Adams, gave a resounding speech in support of Israel and the Jewish community, but numerous Black Lives Matter chapters across America posted images of Hamas soldiers, declaring they stood in “solidarity” with what those militants had done. The oddly named Black Alliance for Peace backed Hamas’s fight for victory over Israel “by any means necessary”. No concerns about war crimes there then. The BDS Movement unsurprisingly got in on the action with the statement, “The aggression of the Zionist occupiers has been met with a deserved response”. That response being the dragging of people from their homes and beheading them on their front lawns.

Surprisingly, a large swathe of those whose compassion I’d overestimated were on the political left. The Democratic Socialists of America had nothing to say about dead Jewish children, instead urging people to “join the fight to end the occupation and decolonize Palestine - from the river to the sea”. The Young Democrats of America Black Caucus announced proudly that they, “fully support the uprising happening in Gaza right now”. While Israeli authorities were still counting the corpses of young people gunned down at a music festival dedicated to peace, the Party for Socialism and Liberation declared “[today] is a morally and legally legitimate response to occupation…Settlers are not civilians and they have no right to security”. The World Workers Party, ironically founded by Jews, called the massacre “a heroic example for people longing for liberation from imperialism”. In the UK the Socialist Workers Party headlined an article, “Rejoice as Palestinian resistance humiliates racist Israel”.

Response in Academia

The academics didn’t shower themselves in ethical glory either. Despite a University of Washington alum being amongst the slaughtered victims, the university couldn’t bring itself to describe Hamas as terrorists. Mika Tosca, a trans professor and climate scientist at the Art Institute of Chicago tweeted on the 9th October, “Israelis are pigs…irredeemable excrement…May they rot in hell.” Russell Rickford, Associate Professor of History at Cornell University said he was “exhilarated” by the massacre. Joseph Massad, professor at Columbia University called the slaughter a “major achievement…against their cruel colonisers”. Zareen Grewal, Professor of American Studies at Yale tweeted that weekend, “[Israel is] a genocidal settler state and Palestinians have every right to resist through armed struggle”. Most chilling was Norman Finkelstein, who wrote on his substack that Hamas’s actions “warm every fibre of my soul”. While Jemma Decristo, professor at the University of California, slipped into outright criminality when she tweeted on the 10th October, “One group of people we have easy access to in the US is all these zionist journalists…they have houses, addresses, kids in school…they should fear us”, ending her tweet with a knife and blood drop emojis. Her academic institute is the only one so far to announce an investigation into her conduct.

Several of the above academics later apologised for what they’d said, but if it weren’t for someone in authority telling them that they’d gone too far then it’s hard to imagine that they’d be apologising. They’d likely be saying - and doing - much worse. Small wonder that young people, fresh out of education are the most likely to hold antisemitic views. According to a PBS poll, only 48% of Americans under 40 believe their country should voice support for Israel. A Generation Lab poll found a similar proportion felt Hamas weren’t responsible for the October 7th massacre. In the UK a poll by Hope Not Hate found that 30% of Under 34s believed Jews had “disproportionate control” in society and used “their power for their own benefit and against the good of the general population”.

The Muslim Response

It’s hard to gauge collective attitudes at the best of times, and never more so than when discussing a Western Muslim community that stretches into the tens of millions. No doubt within their number can be found the full spectrum of possible reactions to October 7th. But when Josef Schuster, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, declared that he was disappointed by the reaction of many of his Muslim counterparts, it’s hard not to notice what he’s talking about.

The Arab Centre of Washington DC published a lengthy statement on the event, but failed to actually condemn Hamas’s actions or express sympathy with their murdered victims. The Council on American Islamic Relations and the US Council of Muslim Organisations issued a joint statement that was similarly silent on the massacre, instead calling upon America to “exert pressure on Israel” to stop its “atrocities”.

The responses were even worse in the UK, with the ironically named Islamic Human Rights Commission declaring “we reject the use of the word ‘terrorism’ to describe Palestinian acts of resistance”. Over 40 other British Islamic bodies, amongst them the Muslim Youth Network, issued a statement insisting that “for peace to prevail in the region the apartheid state must be completely dismantled”. This offers a fairly clear picture of how such peace is envisaged - with the replication of October 7th across every inch of Israel.

Dana Abuqamar, leader of Friends of Palestine and a Media and Diversity Officer at the University of Manchester, declared to Sky News, “We really are full of joy, full of pride at what has happened”. Over at Sussex University, student union officer Hanin Barghouti worryingly described the attack as “beautiful and inspiring”, adding “we need to celebrate these acts of violence”. While Dylan Saba, an attorney at Palestine Legal, tweeted “I could not be more proud of my people”. The Students for Justice in Palestine declared that Hamas had, “valiantly confronted the imperial apparatus”, while the Palestine Solidarity Alliance of Hunter College said they “actively support the Al-Aqsa Flood initiative [the Hamas operation]”. Richard Barnard, founder of Palestine Action urged Hamas to turn Al-Aqsa Flood “into a tsunami over the whole world.”

It is reasonable to assume that if the events of 7th October didn’t turn these peoples’ stomachs, then nothing will. So long as their victims are Israeli, no deed perpetrated by Hamas would be beyond the pale. People - not just underground Neo-Nazi clubs but millions of people in the streets and in charge of classrooms - have seen what the slaughter of Jewish families looks like, filmed on Hamas phones, and they’re OK with it. It’s hard to see how peace, in the face of such an attitude, can ever succeed. If such sentiments reflect even a sizeable portion of Palestinian supporters, then we can forget about a two state solution. This is a desperate fight for basic survival that can only end with one side standing. It is hard to appreciate this fact when you’ve been raised, as I have, on the promise of two independent states living in harmony. But unless a huge subset of the Western world suddenly learns how to put aside their politics, just for a moment, and reconnect with their humanity, then war is the only future we have in store.

Interestingly, there is a ray of hope in all this. It comes not from the Muslim representatives in the West, but the Arab States in the Middle East. The Moroccan government condemned “attacks against civilians wherever they may be”. In contrast, at a Pro-Palestine rally in Edmonton, Canada, a speaker shouted “There are no Israeli civilians”. While the Muslim Council of Britain was silent on the abductions, the UAE government announced it was “appalled” that people had been taken hostage. Bahrain saw nothing valiant about the Hamas attack, instead describing it as “a dangerous escalation”. Again, generalisations are difficult, but it’s far from certain that the most merciless Muslim voices are to be found outside the West.

Hate Speech

These antisemitic statements don’t come free of real life consequences. In the days that followed 7th October antisemitic attacks in Britain and France skyrocketed. In Berlin molotov cocktails were thrown at a synagogue, while at Columbia University, where professor Massad had called Israelis “cruel colonisers”, an Israeli student was assaulted. This shouldn’t be surprising, and it’s why we have laws against hate speech. Laws that are usually stringently policed.

Speech intended to stir up racial hatred was criminalised for the first time in 1986. In 2006 religious hatred was added to this Act, and in 2008 a further amendment added hatred based upon sexual orientation. By 2014 the law had been further broadened to include not just speech that was intended to incite hatred but any behaviour that could be interpreted as threatening or abusive. UK police recorded almost 150,000 cases of hate crime in the year to March 2023. These cases range from the serious and reprehensible to the mild. In 2010 Harry Taylor was jailed for leaving anti-religious cartoons in an airport prayer room. In 2017 Chelsea Russell was fined and given an enforced curfew when she quoted a Snoop Dogg lyric on her Instagram. In 2018 Mark Meechan was fined £800 after teaching his dog to raise its paw whenever he said ‘Sieg Heil’. Even when speech isn’t criminal, it’s often still policed by institutions and businesses. The Nobel laureate Tim Hunt lost his job at UCL for telling a sexist joke in 2015. Since then, sombreros have been banned from campuses on halloween, JK Rowling has received death threats for her definition of a woman and a Canadian Court ruled that misgendering someone was a human rights violation.

In such an environment Jews should feel thoroughly protected. After all, calling for the eradication of 9 million Israelis is clearly worse than quoting a rap song, and encouraging rape is worse than teaching your dog German. Yet, in May 2021, when a convoy of vehicles drove from Blackburn to London displaying Palestine flags and calling through loud hailers for the rape of Jewish women, no one was even fined let alone jailed. In the era of ‘silence is violence’, actual violence - baby murdering racist violence - seems to be a non-issue, so long as the violence is directed against Jews. Two hundred and sixty unarmed young people have just been gunned down at a music festival and yet Glastonbury hasn’t tweeted so much as an emoji about it. The FA, which encouraged players to take the knee after George Floyd was killed in America couldn’t light up a stadium in Israeli colours. Is their silence not violence?

And the double standard goes on.

The University of Central Florida fired Charles Nagy for tweeting about ‘Black Privilege’ in the days after George Floyd’s murder. Both Hamline University and Minnesota University fired professors for showing images of the Prophet Muhammed in class - in the UK a teacher from West Yorkshire is still in hiding for the same crime. Yet the University of Pennsylvania proudly defended the right to free speech after it hosted speakers who advocated the ethnic cleansing of Jews in Israel during its Palestine Literature Festival last month. Manchester University dealt with the fallout from Abuqamar’s interview with Sky News by “helping her through this difficult time”. Neither Yale nor the Art Institute of Chicago opened disciplinary action against their respective professors, at the time of writing, and Rickford was even defended by the American Association of University Professors who said his “speech is protected by academic freedom”. The point isn’t whether or not speech should be policed, it’s why it isn’t being policed evenly that’s the concern. When one ethnic minority is barred from the societal protection extended to others, it should serve as a warning for the direction in which that society is heading.

In July 2021 Manchester was in turmoil when a mural of Marcus Rashford was defaced with allegedly racist graffiti. The incident drew crowds of hundreds who laid candles, flowers and messages of support. Andy Burnham gave an official statement and Manchester City Council announced plans to preserve the messages that had been left at the site as a ‘Wall of Hope’. The police investigation into the crime lasted almost six months. It was eventually revealed that the graffiti had called him “shite”. Compare the above to events this week, when posters of the kidnapped Israeli children were put up in London and Manchester, only to be ripped down by pro-Palestinians within hours. One image of abducted three year old twins was defaced with a Hitler moustache. When police reviewed the dozens of videos of the incident, they declared that there was no criminal offence to investigate. We live in a society that’s rightfully quick to call out victim blaming, and yet 34 Harvard student groups felt able to draft a joint statement saying they, “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence”. On the 4th October Hope Not Hate commemorated the Battle of Cable Street, but they couldn’t condemn the outpouring of hate against Jews that unfolded three days later.

All the above further underlines David Baddiel’s excellent thesis that Jews don’t count. Because as much as modern society likes to congratulate itself for its anti-racism and anti-hatred, the truth is that it is acceptable to hate, so long as you’re hating the right people. We’re sliding into a growing acceptance of antisemitism, partly because we’ve also developed a culture that only picks the easy fight. A culture comfortable with campaigns over equal pay but not Female Genital Mutilation. A culture that polices middle class women at a Sarah Everard protest with force, but not a thousand Muslim men at a jihad rally. A culture that calls out American emissions while ignoring Chinese concentration camps. A culture that condemns Israeli policy and ignores Hamas depravity. A culture that’s sensitive to micro-aggressions and ignores antisemitism. It’s a double standard that’s rotting our societal values from within.