The atrocities committed by Hamas on 7 October 2023 and the subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza mark a turning point not just in the fraught relationship between Israel and the Palestinians but between religious communities and ethnic groups in the United Kingdom as well. Previous conflicts between Israel and Gaza have resulted in an increase in anti-Semitic behaviour, such as abuse of ultra-orthodox Jews in parts of north London. But what has occurred since 7 October is on an altogether different scale.
The surge began even before Israel launched its invasion of Gaza and immediately after the October pogrom. Nor was it confined to Islamist extremists. There were plenty of critics of Israel, neither Muslim nor Arab, who continue to argue that this was a valid act of resistance (despite the fact that Gaza had not been occupied by Israeli forces or settlers since 2005), and despite the accumulated evidence of slaughter, rape and hostage-taking, some of it filmed by Hamas themselves. It is not simply a reaction to the loss of civilian lives following the bombing of the Gazan towns. It is, in fact, an attempt to take much further campaigns for the erasure of Israel.
Many well-meaning people disturbed by the horrible loss of life within Gaza have joined the mass marches in London and elsewhere. But they need to think about the people with whom they are marching. The Jewish community has reacted strongly to the refrain “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” because its message is that the state of Israel must be cleared off the map. In the eyes of Hamas, this means the extermination not just of a legally recognised state created by the United Nations, but the disappearance of its Jewish population. The atrocities on 7 October suggest what methods might be used to effect this. Maps of Palestine displayed in demonstrations portray the whole area “between the river and the sea” and do not reflect the argument that a solution to 75 years of conflict lies in the existence of t wo states side by side.
Particularly troublesome is the situation in universities. Agitation among young people against Israel has disrupted universities in dangerous ways. It is directed against Jews even though the label used is generally (but not always) “Zionists”. University Jewish societies attract demonstrations. The Jewish chaplain at Leeds has received death threats. Jewish students at Exeter University report being hounded. Graffiti at the University of East Anglia and at Manchester University have caused distress and alarm. Jewish academics at Queen Mary University in London report a hostile atmosphere. Lecturers mark down essays that are not suitably anti-Zionist.
An alarming example of this aggressive behaviour is the recent outrage at Trinity College, Cambridge, where a woman from “Palestine Action” tore to shreds a painting of Arthur Balfour by the prominent society artist Philip de László (himself a Hungarian Jew). It was painted three years before the Balfour Declaration of 1917, in which Britain indicated that it looked with favour on the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
Resurgent anti-Semitism is not just about Israel. Most Jews in the UK, I suspect, have warm feelings towards Israel but feel very differently about its government. Yet the terms “Jew” and “Zionist” have become entangled. Along with this, unashamed talk in the open about rich Jews, Jews controlling the media, the “over-representation” of Jews in high positions – all this has spread. The reason for that is what we often call “wokery”. Jews are no longer regarded as the victims of 2,000 years of persecution, who have at last managed to find a place in mainstream society.
In line with the fashionable nonsense of “critical race theory”, which has infected universities first in America and now in Britain, they are white oppressors, indeed the archetypal white oppressors, and Israel has become the last but perhaps the worst “settler colonialist” society. It is a simplistic distortion (many Jews are not even white), but on social media, it is easier to explain the world’s problems through simple arguments with a stench of conspiracy theories than through dispassionate discussion based on evidence.
The sense of insecurity among British Jews is compounded by the weak response of the police to the behaviour of marchers – which might almost be described as complicity. When the prime minister finds it necessary to make a speech outside 10 Downing Street condemning hatred for Jews and insisting that the police adopt a more active role, something has gone badly wrong at Scotland Yard.
When the police wrestle to the ground a demonstrator carrying a placard denouncing Hamas as terrorists (which is official government policy) and ignore the marchers who have roughed him up, something has gone very badly wrong. When “From the river to the sea” is projected onto Big Ben, something has gone truly, terribly wrong. Above all, when a country that over the last few centuries has not practised the anti-Semitic excesses seen across most of Europe becomes caught up in a wave of Jew-hate, the wider community must not remain silent.
Photo: Members of the public walk past the Ministry of Defence Building in central London, hours after members of Youth Demand and Palestine Action have spayed red paint onto the brickwork to demand that the political parties in the UK impose a two-way arms embargo on Israel and end the development and production of fossil fuels in the UK, London, 10 April 2024. (Photo by HENRY NICHOLLS/AFP via Getty Images.)
David Abulafa is Professor Emeritus of Mediterranean History at the University of Cambridge.
This article originally appeared in the April 2024 issue of the Catholic Herald. To subscribe to our award-winning, thought-provoking magazine and have independent and high-calibre counter-cultural Catholic journalism delivered to your door anywhere in the world clickhere.
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