Surge in anti-Semitism in West: Shocking attacks and disturbing alliances

For the first time after the Holocaust, western nations are faced with the gleeful parading of savage brutality at scale as divine justice. To treat war and resistance at par with terrorism that seeks out the most innocent as the deliberate target, is to dismiss any sense of human morality, unwritten but deeply relevant. The shocking attacks against Israel are being followed by Hezbollah attacking northern Israel, as well as strategic ballistic missiles launchers on the Tehran-Qom highway in Iran. The terrorist attacks have swiftly led into war by proxy. At the same time, murdered Israeli civilians have been quickly forgotten in the news cycle, while concerns about Palestinian citizens have turned into anti-Semitic tirades as Arab states shut their borders against those escaping Gaza. Continuing a spate of lone wolf attacks across Europe, a mass stabbing attack in a French shopping mall was reported barely hours ago. In Germany, memories of the Holocaust were reawakened with houses of Jews being marked with the Star of David. Two Swedish football fans were shot dead in Brussels by a terrorist “inspired by the Islamic State”, and a teacher was killed in France to religious chants by a former Chechen student of the school in an eerie repetition of the death of Samuel Paty. This comes after calls for “holy war” against Israel and Jews by Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal. For decades after the Nuremberg trials, the western world made taboo any form of anti-Semitism. Persecuted Jews have been able to tell their stories of horror through cinema and books, and yet, not too deep beneath the sympathy they garnered on the surface, there lay hatred, awaiting exploitation. In the aftermath of the worst terror unleashed upon the Jewish community in the only nation they have, one would expect a world brought up on Hollywood retellings of the Nazi horror to rally behind Israel. What has been unleashed in the western world, instead, has been seas of people in apparent pro-Palestine rallies, calling for the death of Jews. As for Palestinians, they remain pawns, denied citizenship even after generations in Arab states that have at any point allowed them refugee status, such as Lebanon, and denied passage by the same nations condemning Israeli retaliation. In the fortnight since Hamas and its backers blindsided Israeli intelligence to launch a barbaric attack upon Israeli civilians, Canada, UK, USA, Italy, Germany and France have witnessed rallies in support of Hamas, a designated terrorist group. Moreover, Ivy League universities in the US have supported Hamas, with student groups holding rallies with death chants shouted at Jewish students, petitions signed to support all forms of terror against Israel, and professors have segregated and punished Jewish students for merely existing. In Canada, massive pro-Palestine rallies threatening the Jewish community were seen over the last few days, and RCMP confirmed that they were aware of social media posts threatening Jews. In Mississauga, Palestinian headscarves and flags dominated gatherings as the Israeli offensive against Hamas gathered steam. In Cooper Union University, a group of apparent demonstrators turned into a violent mob as eleven Jewish students had to be barricaded in the library to protect them from other students yelling antisemitic rhetoric. As Braverman mulled the banning of Palestinian flags in protests, residents of London gathered in the thousands in massive rallies, in support of terrorist attacks against Israel. Even as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reached Israel to offer his staunchest support, the citizenry has witnessed radical Islamist rallies led by radicals like Majid Freeman who has been at the forefront of anti-Hindu riots in Leicester, before leading anti-Semitic protests there. Mehdi Hasan, a former anchor for Qatari mouthpiece Al Jazeera, well-known for his rabidly anti-Hindu and anti-Semitic views, has been taken off-air by his current employer, MSNBC. Yet, as France burns, Swedes die and US universities attacks Jewish students among them, most measures fall much too short of the necessary reprisals against bigotry. This did not start 15 days ago. Communism, from its beginning, was cited as a reaction to Christian Imperialism, an enemy it found in common with Islam. As Christian imperialism faded and capitalism substituted it, the bonds between far-Left movements and Islam remained. While the relationship between the two ideologies have not always been smooth, there has been a sense of shared victimhood against a common enemy that ideologues of both groups have used to justify their beliefs. While Communist China stifled Uyghur Muslims in their midst, and Russia eventually had destroyed mosques, if a third faith was in consideration, the far-Left and Islam joined forces against it. Over the last decade and a half, the western hegemon — the United States of America — has seen a rapid acceptance of communist ideas. At the same time, high-handed injustices such as racial profiling and jailing of innocent Muslims in the wake of 9/11 offered legitimate grievances to a large Muslim population in Europe as well as the US. Bonds forged in history between socialism, communism and Islam, have found themselves manifesting in the present. Over the last decade, spaces such as education, media and art, at the forefront of exploring the exotic, slowly re-made itself in an absolutist version of a Leftist-Islamic protectorate. Trivialising of major global events, and even their complete rewriting, have become the norm. Universities implementing programmes such as DEI – Diversity, Equity, Inclusivity – a race and religion-oriented gradation system, are said to substitute for merit. As the Holocaust gained indelibility in public memory, it wiped away many of the truths that led up to Nuremberg. The dehumanizing language used for various groups of people superimposed with the overexaggerated usage of terms like Nazis for anyone opposed to a thought is visible in the coverage of the attacks on Jews at present. There are real statements with variations of “Israel is worse than the Nazis”, as well as outright calls for genocide praising Adolf Hitler’s attack on Germany’s Jewish population. At the same time, Palestine citizens continue to be used as pawns for global jihad as they are left stateless, homeless and braving war and death. Hamas continues to use them as human shields, while Arab countries surrounding Gaza refuse them entry into their borders. Israeli civilians murdered horrifically remain numbers, while universities sign petitions against Israeli retaliation in defence, and schoolteachers separate the Jewish students to humiliate them, in incidents that echo pre-World War 2 Germany. Their tactics continue to delegitimise the Palestinian cause as their support for intimidation and terror dilute the need for a two-state solution in the region. Western nations are morally culpable for the terror they have unleashed upon the minority Jewish people for centuries. A few decades of superficial support being undermined by systemic and institutional antisemitism will unravel any semblance of secular inclusivity, until the problem is recognised, before it is remedied. The author is a columnist at several Indian publications such as NDTV, FirstPost and CNN-News18 and also hosts a podcast on geopolitics and culture. She writes about international relations, public policy and history. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views. Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News, India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.