“Gas the Jews!” was chanted loudly and enthusiastically by a large crowd of demonstrators outside the Sydney Opera house on 9 October 2023. There were similar demonstrations in Western capitals around the world and at Western universities, all showing pro-Palestinian flags. These happened just after Hamas terrorists from Gaza had invaded southern Israel on 7 October, killed about 1,200 unarmed men, women, children and babies, and kidnapped about 230 people including children.
These anti-Jewish demonstrations happened before Israel made retaliatory attacks on Hamas in Gaza, trying to rescue the hostages. The 9 October protests seemed louder and angrier than any that followed when Israel eventually struck back. They also seemed angrier than anti-Israel protests right now when Israel has launched attacks against Iran’s military establishments. The Jews seemed more hated as victims than attackers. Rather strange.
(I’ll deal below with commentators who denied that there was a chant of “Gas the Jews!” in Sydney.)
The poster “Queers for Palestine” has been shown repeatedly by privileged young people in the West, alongside the Palestinian Flag. These young people know perfectly well that throughout the Muslim world in the Middle East, including Gaza and Palestine, sexual intercourse between people of the same sex is illegal and often punishable by death, which includes beheading and being thrown off high buildings. They know perfectly well that any talk of “transgenderism” in strict Muslim countries would be meet with persecution.
They also know that in many Islamic countries women have no rights and are treated like chattel. In Iran in January 2024, a woman was sentenced to 74 lashes “in accordance with the law and with Sharia”. Her crime was that she had not covered her neck and head properly in a public place.
Adultery
In Somalia in November 2008, after she had been gang-raped by three men, a 13-year-old girl was found guilty of adultery by a Sharia court and was stoned to death in front of a large and enthusiastic crowd of the faithful. All of these things are known to the privileged young Westerners, but they never demonstrate against them. They do demonstrate loudly against Israel, often bearing posters saying, “Queers for Palestine”. They make it clear that they are not criticising Hamas or Palestine for persecuting homosexual people. They are showing solidarity with them. The fact that Hamas wants to kill a lot of Jews trumps everything else including its persecution of “queers”. Even more strange.
It certainly is, but it has been happening for centuries – for millennia. Antisemitism is an ancient and irrational evil found in many civilisations. (I am aware that “antisemitism” is an inaccurate term because “Semites” includes Arabs, Jews, Phoenicians, and Assyrians.) During the Crusades, which ran from the 11th to the 13th Century, the Christian soldiers seemed to hate Jews far more than Muslims and slaughtered them in large numbers wherever they went.
One of England’s most celebrated Kings, Edward III, kicked all the Jews out of England in 1290. England suffered as a result since Jews, banned from most professions except financial ones, became the world’s best financiers. In 1656, Olivier Cromwell, out of national self-interest, brought them back. Jews suffered horrible pogroms in Russia in the 19th century. But of course Germany in the 20th Century saw the worst antisemitic atrocity in history, indeed the worst crime in history.
In the past Germany was never particularly antisemitic, certainly less so than Russia or France. But somehow, among certain romantic writers and thinkers, a legend began to be built up about a simple, noble, pure German nation of the past, a nation of sinew and muscle, rooted in the countryside and the forests, a nation of pristine Aryan virtue.
Then it got contaminated by “cosmopolitans” and “liberals”, by people of no national loyalty, of which the Jews were the worst. The Jews polluted the pure German blood. The Jews were treacherous.
Surrender
It was they that had had caused Germany’s surrender in WW1; they had stabbed Germany in the back. (Actually it was the treacherous German high command that had stabbed Germany in the back.) Hitler soaked up all this nonsense and came to power by exploiting it. It is most significant that Hitler’s first conquests were the universities. In the 1920s, German universities were the best in the world, which makes their attraction to antisemitism particularly sinister. Hitler’s National Socialists (Nazis) made their earliest gains among privileged university students. Is there a horrible echo among Western university students today?
In a shocking 2024 interview before the US Congress, the heads of Harvard and Pennsylvania University, Ms Liz Magill and Dr Claudine Gay, were both asked this question: “Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate the conduct of (your) university?” Both refused to answer. Both said it “depended on the context”. In other words, in certain contexts – perhaps such as existed in Germany in 1933? – it’s perfectly acceptable to ask for the genocide of Jews. Both women seemed to me scared to answer that it was simply wrong to ask for the genocide of Jews, as if they feared they might lose their jobs at Harvard and Penn State, or at least face furious pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
It is instructive to compare the anti-Jewish behaviour of Hamas with that of the Nazis. Both wanted to kill Jews. Of course there is no comparison between the scale of their crimes. The Nazis killed six million Jews in the extermination camps; Hamas only killed about 1,200 on 7 October. But there is also a chilling difference of kind in their appreciation of their crimes. The Nazis knew they were doing a terrible thing even if they felt duty bound to do it.
In his famous speech to the SS on 4 October 1943, Heinrich Himmler said this: “I shall speak to you here with all frankness of a very serious subject. We shall now discuss it absolutely openly among ourselves, nevertheless we shall never speak of it in public. I mean the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish race.” He was telling his people that they had to do a shameful thing for the glory of the Volk, a thing they must never talk about, a thing the world must never know about. I have heard not one single instance where any of the Nazis boasted about killing Jews. With Hamas it was quite different.
Atrocities
Hamas wanted the world to know they had killed Jewish men, women and children. They videoed their atrocities and posted them on social media for all the world to see. One Hamas terrorist sent a message to his mother and father asking them to be proud of him because he had killed ten Jews – not ten “Israelis”, ten “Jews”. This has caused something of a split between Hamas itself and Hamas supporters in the West and in South Africa.
Apparently most interviewed Muslims in England do not believe Hamas committed any atrocities on 7 October. Hamas itself is proud of the atrocities. In South Africa, on the radio phone-in programs, I never hear a mention of the Hamas atrocities, as if the callers deny they had happened. Hamas would be disappointed; they want their supporters to know what they have done.
Here is a video taken in Sydney on 9 October. ‘Reprehensible’ protesters chant ‘Gas the Jews’ outside Sydney Opera House (nypost.com). I can clearly hear “Gas the Jews!” being repeatedly chanted. “Fuck the Jews!” has been bleeped out. Yet you will find some Western commentators and even some Australian authorities denying that these were chanted.
Why do these people in the West and South Africa love Hamas so much and condemn Israel’s retaliation? Is it because they care for Palestinians? Of course not. Palestinians are hated everywhere in the Middle East, except in Israel, where alone they have full democratic rights. When Palestinians were persecuted in Syria, there was not a peep of protest from the Western people who today wave Palestinian flags. Was it because Muslims were being victimised? No.
In China over a million Muslim Uyghurs are being horribly persecuted and yet I have never seen a demonstration by these young people in the West against it. Was it because Israel has stolen land? Of course not. In Sudan, the Arabs stole the land that belonged to black African people some centuries ago, occupied it, enslaved and persecuted the Africans, and in recent decades have slaughtered hundreds and thousands of black people in a systematic program of “ethnic cleansing” – of genocide. It is now the worst humanitarian disaster in the world.
Genocidal killer
But nobody at the Western universities is demonstrating against it and the ANC seems almost to encourage it. When a genocidal killer, Omar al-Bashir visited South Africa in 2015, the ANC gave him a warm welcome. In 2024, President Ramaphosa gave the worst racist killer today, Muhammad Dagalo of Sudan, a big beaming smile when he visited him at the presidential residence. The real reason is simply that Harvard students and ANC hates the West, and see Israel, democratic and tolerant, allowing homosexuality, as a bastion of the West in the Middle East, and even worse as Jewish. Modern Western self-hate and ancient antisemitism combine, and the result is “Gas the Jews!” and “Queers for Palestine”.
Jews have lived in what is now Israel for over 3,000 years. They suffered invasions and conquests over the centuries, and many were driven out of the land of their fathers to disperse around Europe. Following the Holocaust in World War II, some decided that they would never be safe anywhere on Earth except in their own homeland, which they chose as Israel. In 1947-8, a tiny Jewish army, thanks to help from the Soviet Union and Communist Czechoslovakia, prevailed against a much larger Arabs force and essentially founded the modern Israel.
Some Arabs left Palestine/Israel voluntarily but some were driven out by Jewish terrorists, such as Irgun and the Stern Gang. So the Jews in Israel do not have an entirely virtuous history but it is incomparably better than that of some neighbouring states, let alone the Sudan.
If I were Jewish, what would scare me most was not the Nazi Holocaust, but the willingness of people in German-occupied countries, such as Poland and France, to hand over their Jewish friends and neighbours to the Nazis to be shoved onto the cattle trucks taking them to the gas chambers. All my life I have experienced sudden violent antisemitism from people quite close to me. It has never ceased to shock me. You are speaking to a perfectly decent man or woman you have known all your life, a kind and liberal person, when the subject of Jews crops up and suddenly the person turns into a Nazi.
Conspiracy
“The Jews are taking over.” The Jews are behind every evil conspiracy. And – almost – “Hitler was right”. Then sometimes, a day later, you see this person arm in arm with a Jewish buddy. It’s all creepy and horribly unpredictable. If Jews try to integrate into the broader society: “Those Jews are trying to worm their way into everything.” If the Jews don’t try to integrate: “Those Jews are too superior to consort with us.”
On Thursday night Israel launched an attack against nuclear and military targets in Iran. President Trump said the US had nothing to do with it and was against it. Iran is a wonderful country with civilised, decent people and a brutal, backward, misogynist, hate-filled, Shia government. Iran has been attacking Israel with her proxies Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, both of whom mainly strike at civilian targets.
Israel has dealt devastating blows against both. Iran is considerably weakened now, with a faltering economy and civil unrest. Israel must have thought it was a good moment to strike, and the strikes seem successful. I believe that most Sunni Arab countries, such as Saudi Arabia, are pleased, although none would say so in public. But will this eventually help the Israeli cause? I don’t know.
I’d also have been against the attacks. I think the only lasting way to solve Israel’s problems is to find friendship between Israelis and Palestinians, and separate out the nihilists who just hate Jews ordinary decent Arabs who accept them. I have no idea how this can be done but I believe it can.
I don’t like Netanyahu and I believe his retaliation in Gaza was excessive and cruel. But I am more pro-Israel than ever. If I were Jewish, I should be even more so.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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