The Oldest Hatred is back with a Vengeance

 The oldest hatred is back, and I am absolutely done with this [and I should] get angry and then get angrier.

Andrew Fox April 20th

 

I am done pulling punches. This will not be an easy read. Do not look away.

[To  hell with] this. I am furious at the antisemitism pouring through the West, confident and shameless, and at those who know it is wrong, yet sit by and let it happen and say or do absolutely nothing.

In Britain, we have already had Jews and their security guards stabbed to death. Jewish ambulances were set on fire. Now we have had multiple synagogue fire bombings in London. I woke this morning to a WhatsApp message from a Jewish friend I treasure, telling me about the latest atrocity against British Jews. I am sick of this. I am sickened by it, and I do not understand how anyone with any decency is not sickened too. Why are we not angrier?

Jewish people are being forced to answer, again, for every accusation, every fantasy, every blood libel hurled at the State of Israel. A Jewish student in London, Paris, New York or Melbourne is treated as if they sat in the Israeli war cabinet. A synagogue is treated as if it were a military installation. A kosher restaurant becomes a proxy battlefield. A Jewish child in a school uniform is expected to carry the moral weight of a war they did not start, a government they did not elect, and a region most of their accusers could not find on a map without help. It is grotesque. It is ancient hatred with new slogans. I am angry, and you should be too. If you are reading this, why [the hell] are you not angrier?

Holocaust survivors have told me in person that the atmosphere in Britain today is like 1930s Germany. Why will our leaders, our government, our legal system not listen to them? The Holocaust did not arrive fully formed. It started with demonisation, isolation and undeserved blame.

[It’s Time to Wake Up].

The blood libels are back. They have just been laundered through the language of activism, human rights and moral urgency. Jews are again cast as uniquely cruel, uniquely conspiratorial, uniquely bloodthirsty. Israel is accused not merely of error, not merely of brutality, not merely of war, but of metaphysical evil. Every casualty is flattened into proof of Jewish depravity. Every complexity is erased. Every Hamas or Hezbollah or Iranian atrocity is contextualised into mist. Jewish grief is interrogated. Jewish fear is mocked. Jewish self-defence is treated as criminal.

The most sickening expression of this is the obscene inversion of the Holocaust in Gaza. Gaza is not the Holocaust. Gaza is not Auschwitz. Gaza is not Treblinka. Gaza is not the industrialised, continent-wide mechanical attempt to exterminate an entire people. Gaza is not the murder of six million people because they were Jews. Gaza is not children selected for gas chambers, families shot into pits, communities erased from Europe, nor names turned to ash. To compare the war in Gaza to the attempted extermination of the Jewish race is an obscene desecration. There is no parallel. None whatsoever.

Civilian suffering in Gaza or Lebanon is simply a feature of [a terrorist organization that went to] war. It can be real without turning Jews into Nazis. War can be horrific without becoming the Shoah. Palestinians can be mourned without stealing the language of Jewish annihilation and weaponising it against Jews. The Holocaust is not a metaphor for anyone’s rhetorical convenience. It was a specific crime, committed against a specific people, at a specific scale, with a specific ideological purpose: the eradication of Jews from the earth. To invert it against Jews now is morally obscene.

Everyone in the West should stand with their Jewish neighbours. They should stand with Jews because Jews are being threatened, harassed, isolated and collectively blamed for the actions of a state. They should stand with Jews because history has already shown us where this road leads when decent people find a thousand elegant reasons to look away.

Silence is permission. When Jewish schools need guards, when students hide Stars of David, when families wonder whether it is safe to walk to synagogue, and when mobs chant slogans that make Jews feel hunted in the cities they call home, when Jewish ambulances and places of worship are being firebombed, the moral test is not complicated. Stand with Jews, or admit that your principles are worth piss in the wind.

The absence of solidarity is a stain. The refusal to name antisemitism because it wears a fashionable political mask is a stain. The cowardice of institutions, politicians, universities and cultural figures who can identify every hatred except this one is a stain.

What the [bloody hell] are we doing, Britain? Why are we not angrier? Why are we not forming human shields around our Jewish community? Our grandparents fought a global war so that this could never happen again. It is literally happening again, and we are standing by and doing absolutely nothing.

I am angry because Jews should not have to beg for support. Jews should not feel they have to thank someone merely for showing solidarity with them. I am raging because “Never Again” has become a slogan people applaud, yet it fails when courage is demanded. I am angry because standing by Jews is the only right option, and too many otherwise good, decent people are choosing silence, disregard or antipathy.

Look: I cannot say this anymore simply. Once they are done with the Jews, they are coming for you, too. Get [really] angry before it is too late, if not for the Jews, then for yourselves and your children