Antisemitism in 2023
This is a difficult post to write, so please bear with me. I am honoured to consider Ethan Gutmann a friend and I hope this post honours that friendship. Until earlier this year I thought Ethan and I had very a different lineage. Then I discovered I am a distant descendant of Rebecca of Flanders who was a crypto-Jewess and of the Khazar Jews of Eastern Europe who married into the Scottish royal family from which I am descended. Then I found that my great-great-grandmother was a Messianic-Jewess. But that was emotionally as far as it went.
Decades ago I walked through the gas chambers of Auschwitz and I felt a sickness. Almost more so when I saw the punishment cell just 1m x 1m for four prisoners. I met survivors in Poland. Christians who claimed almost as many Christians as Jews were killed there, though I could not verify that claim. It was a memory burned into my psyche.
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| Block 11 and (left) the "death wall", Auschwitz I, 2000 photo by Anneli Salo |
Then 7 October happened. I found myself feeling an intensity of passions I didn’t recognise. Reactions I hadn’t felt on 11 September 2001 or during ‘the Troubles’ in the United Kingdom. It wasn’t anger; it was an overwhelming sadness. I knew the reaction from the Netanyahu government would be swift and brutal. Now I have been a lifelong pacifist: I deplore war. The Americans killed more than 70,000 civilians as a result of 11 September. How many would be killed as a result of 7 October?
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| A destroyed kindergarten in the Kibbutz photo by Yoav Keren |
But I wasn’t expecting the outcry and protests against Israel. There had been no outcry or major protests against the USA killing in Afghanistan. I’m a citizen of the Republic of Cyprus. There had been no outcry or major protests against the Turkish killing in Cyprus 49 years ago. Pro rata the killing per day in Cyprus was approximately twice that of the killing in Gaza. The outcry has made my compatriots angry at the abandonment of our country by the west and are then divided into pro- and anti- Israel.
On the Internet in social media I am frequently seeing calls to remove all Jews from Palestine. Not just the ‘from the river to the sea’ calls of some Arabs but a winding back pre-Balfour from some Europeans and Americans. It’s vitriolic. My Jewish friends are not surprised by the outcry or by the memes. They see it as typical antisemitism and there is frequently a strong reaction against them.
We all tend to react emotionally to things at first, especially if the emotion of one of pain. So when I see a ‘Save Gaza’ meme or a meme contrasting Mary & Jesus with a Palestinian and her son my first thought is not to evaluate it but to almost gasp with pain. When I settle down after a few moments I realise my reaction is unreasonable and I think of the discussion among journalists about being truth-tellers rather than reporters. Gaza needs saving (from Hamas) and every mother seeing her son killed feels pain. 7 October 2023 started the pain. Hamas demonstrated itself to be evil beyond measure. No, 7 October only started the most recent pain, though it did clearly display the vile degenerate behaviour of Hamas. There has been pain for 80 years – from Lehi and Irgun against the British occupation through the failed attempts to reconcile Palestinians and Israelis since 1948.
Do I support the killing of civilians in Gaza and the West Bank? Absolutely not. Do I believe Israel has a right to defend itself? Absolutely… absolutely what? I recall an interview of a Hutu married to a Tutsi being challenged to kill his wife or the Hutu would kill his children. His Tutsi wife begged him to kill her to save their children. What would I have done in the situation? Defend the children by killing another human being? I pondered that interview many times.
I recall Ethan’s work defending the Uyghurs in China. The horrendous genocide of a Muslim people group being defended by a Jew following Abraham’s covenant to be a blessing to the peoples of the earth. Jews, Christians, and Muslims alongside humanists all put a value on human life over and above other animals. In the situation of the Israel-Hamas war, defending Israel inevitably means killing. And that turns my stomach as it did on 7 October 2023 when Hamas wreaked terror among Israeli civilians.
There are rarely any significant situations in life that is are binary (ie black and white) as many people like to portray them. Though I accept there are a few that are. We live in a complex world; and attempts to simplify the way we see things tend to promote argument rather than constructive dialogue.
The problem in this complex situation is simple. The problem is there are no simple solutions! And the further problem is that it’s almost impossible to feel what another person is feeling in this complex situation and hence a post that seems as inoffensive to us may create stark and forceful emotions in another person. Like I say, when I see a ‘Save Gaza’ meme or a meme contrasting Mary & Jesus with a Palestinian and her son my first thought is not to evaluate it but to almost gasp with pain.
[FURTHER READING: BXI International have recently published a document detailing the conspiracy theory believed by Hamas about the Jews that is inhibiting the peace process.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, is a notorious 1903 document that falsely purports to reveal a global conspiracy by Jewish leaders, known as the ‘Elders of Zion,’ to seize control of the world.
Despite its debunking, the myth that Jews seek world domination persists, and it forms the basis of Hamas’s ideology. Hamas believes that the Protocols accurately reflect Jewish aspirations.
The Protocols spread through various translations and played a role in Hitler’s worldview, contributing to the Holocaust as part of what he saw as the ‘final solution.’ ]
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