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The brutal truth about ‘Never Again’ Don’t be fooled by the temporary Israel-Hamas ceasefire

Yesterday's March against Antisemitism in London (Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty)

Yesterday's March against Antisemitism in London (Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty)


November 27, 2023   4 mins

“An innocent child who was lost has now been found and returned,” was how the Irish Prime Minister, Leo Varadkar, greeted the news of nine-year-old Emily Hand being released from her Hamas hellhole. He made it sound like the poor girl had been temporarily separated from her family during a busy shopping day at Brent Cross. This was the child whose father was so tortured by the thought of her being kidnapped by wicked men that he confessed he loved her so much he hoped that she was dead.

“Keep waving,” said the Hamas terrorists, handing over another little girl to the Red Cross on Friday night. As she waved back nervously — they still have seven of her family locked up, so of course she did — the Hamas PR machine must have been punching the air in delight. This is the narrative they are trying to sell you: Hamas are just misunderstood humanitarians — or, at least, principled freedom fighters pushing back against years of colonial oppression. We treat our captives well, they say. Not kidnapped, just lost.

How is it that some people fall for all this manipulative rubbish? There have been posters of these children ripped down all over London and New York by Hamas apologists, gleeful fools who seem to think it’s a lie that children were ever taken in the first place. It’s like watching Holocaust denial develop in real time. Antisemitism doesn’t just rot the soul; it rots the brain.

Admittedly, facing the truth is often impossibly demanding, especially when the truth is as distressing as this is. I thought I was mentally prepared for Bearing Witness, the IDF’s 47-minute compilation of footage taken on October 7, which I saw last week at a private screening. But my body clearly wasn’t. Ten minutes in, I started to shake. The organisers had prepared the audience as best they could and explained there was no shame in having to leave. And there was a point where I was close.

Some of the footage came from Hamas bodycams, some from their mobile phones, some from CCTV, some from first responders. All of it was horrific. Later, after a number of medicinal whiskies, I did manage to sleep. But I woke early. And in the small hours, there was little protection from all those images: the beheadings, the children crying out for “abba” as their father was murdered before their eyes, the sheer joy with which Hamas hunted down and slaughtered their victims, the lifeless bodies of children in their Mickey Mouse pyjamas, the contortions of the dying, the endless pools of blood.

All lies, say Hamas’s useful idiots. Why else, they say, would this IDF production be shown only to a select group of sympathetic (a.k.a. gullible) journalists and opinion-formers. In that case, I’m not sure how obsessive Israel-hater Owen Jones made it onto the IDF guest list. The gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell also sat behind me. He’s no establishment patsy by a long chalk.

Then, yesterday afternoon, more than 100,000 of us marched through central London. This too was bearing witness — it was not a digital social media battle but these were real people, with real worries. It was the largest and most significant assertion of support for British Jewry since the fascists were pushed back by a similar number of indignant cockneys at the Battle of Cable Street on another Sunday afternoon in 1936. A few yards in front of me, Tommy Robinson, a latter-day Blackshirt, was forcibly ejected from the march to everyone’s approval. Nasty little man.

The atmosphere was mostly sombre, with grey skies and a little gentle rain reflecting the mood. A few reserved chants of “Bring them home!” broke out as we marched up towards Parliament, but mostly it was reassuringly free of drama, still less any sort of threat. No one wore a mask. These did not feel like people who were used to going on demonstrations. “First time I have been on one since the Sixties,” said the rather glamorous octogenarian sitting beside me on the Tube. These are the “moderate people” that actor Eddie Marsan had urged in his speech “to stand up and face down extremism and bigotry and antisemitism and islamophobia and all forms of racism”. It was pretty distressing that it took so many police to protect so many peaceful people. But they needed to be there.

The news broke that four-year-old Avigail Eden was being released as the march reached Parliament Square. Avigail was orphaned on October 7, then kidnapped from Kfar Aza. She was held in Hamas’s tunnels for 50 days, where she had her fourth birthday. I cannot imagine she would have been liberated so soon without the Israeli army invading Gaza. Previous hostages have been held for years.

The news cycle moves so quickly that it’s easy to forget the overwhelming tectonic significance of what happened to Israel on October 7. Horror, shock and grief take far longer to process than news. But Israelis tell me that their world will never be the same again. It is certainly clear that the old rules have not worked. And no one knows whether two states will emerge, or whether there will be a death spiral, with apocalyptic and unknown consequences. Watching Bearing Witness, it felt like those Hamas 20-somethings, on their orgy of killing, were surprised that they had got through the fence and had the opportunity to do what they did. I don’t think they were quite prepared for it. And I still don’t think anyone is prepared for what is yet to come.

When this current cycle of hostage exchange is completed, the war will resume. Israel will not rest until Hamas is thoroughly defeated. It is a tragedy of the highest order that thousands of Palestinians will die as Hamas hides behind them. But watching Bearing Witness made me realise that the current war is so deeply existential for Israelis that there can be no going back to the old order. No more “mowing the lawn” of Palestinian discontent.

“Never again is now,” read posters on the march. It is like all the furies and demons of the Holocaust broke through a portal in history, through that wire fence from Gaza into Israel, and into the present. “Never again is now” is to say that, this time, the resistance to evil will be deafening. So don’t let a temporary ceasefire fool you. The horror is far from over.


Giles Fraser is a journalist, broadcaster and Vicar of St Anne’s, Kew.

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David McKee
David McKee
1 year ago

I am a non-Jew who was on that march in London yesterday. It was a good-natured, relaxed affair, albeit with a serious purpose. It was what it said on the tin: a show of solidarity for Britain’s Jews, not a partisan taking of sides in the Middle East. The placards and the speeches reflected that.

An incident on my train home, when a young blood decided to have a go at the Jews, illustrated perfectly why the Jews need all the allies they can get.

R.I. Loquitur
R.I. Loquitur
1 year ago
Reply to  David McKee

“not a partisan taking of sides in the Middle East.”

I’d say most of the attendees have taken sides. You cant support Jews and Hamas.

Last edited 1 year ago by R.I. Loquitur
Timothy Waters
Timothy Waters
1 year ago
Reply to  R.I. Loquitur

Isn’t David McKee supporting both Jews and Palestinians ?

R.I. Loquitur
R.I. Loquitur
1 year ago
Reply to  Timothy Waters

You can’t support both. More than 80% of Palestinians support Hamas. Saying you support both is incongruous.

David McKee
David McKee
1 year ago
Reply to  Timothy Waters

I’m not supporting both, I’m supporting neither. It doesn’t mean I don’t care, it means I don’t know enough to have any opinions worth sharing.
Unlike Ukraine, the conflict in the Middle East is horribly complicated, and anyone who tries to pick sides will end up looking pretty stupid. Not that I’m thinking of Gary Lineker here, of course not…

R.I. Loquitur
R.I. Loquitur
1 year ago
Reply to  David McKee

“I’m supporting neither”

That’s like saying you dont support life or death.

Guy Pigache
Guy Pigache
1 year ago
Reply to  R.I. Loquitur

Back off. This is no place for your aggression

R.I. Loquitur
R.I. Loquitur
1 year ago
Reply to  Guy Pigache

Better here than on a battlefield. Saying he supports neither side, that he’s just there to “show solidarity for Britain’s Jews” is, frankly, pathetic. What about the Jews in Israel? Or elsewhere? Its Hamas stated goal to exterminate Jews–and other non-believers–from the earth. If he cant stand against that, who cares what he thinks?

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago
Reply to  Guy Pigache

What aggression?

Diane Tasker
Diane Tasker
1 year ago
Reply to  R.I. Loquitur

You’re being silly now dear!

harry storm
harry storm
1 year ago
Reply to  David McKee

It isn’t that complicated. Putin invaded Ukraine. The Palestinians refuse to make peace and have done so since before 1948. They want Israel gone. Period.

Peter D
Peter D
1 year ago
Reply to  harry storm

Sad but true. From my time over there in the 90’s, the Palestinians were for the most a very hate filled bunch. I was fortunate to come across a handful who just wanted to live their life. Most however just wanted me dead. So I backtracked as quick as I could to the safe areas. Even then the looks were far from friendly.

R.I. Loquitur
R.I. Loquitur
1 year ago
Reply to  harry storm

“The Palestinians refuse to make peace and have done so since before 1948. They want Israel gone.”

Difference is that unlike Ukraine they never had title to that land in the first place. Palestinians have a far stronger claim to Jordan than to Israel.

Leonel SIlva Rocha
Leonel SIlva Rocha
1 year ago
Reply to  R.I. Loquitur

Exactly. Their true goal was never the Founding of a “Palestinian” state, but rather the destruction of the Jewish state. Their Jew hate runs deeper than the roots of a fully grown Sequoia. They have learned that hate from their”Prophet”, no less…

james goater
james goater
1 year ago

Exactly. The Koran spells it out in perfect detail in a number of suras. Almost the entire Middle East has been “cleansed” of Jews. There is now only a tiny sliver of land called Israel which needs to be “liberated”. Hamas, and the rest of the terrorist groups in the region, operate with the full weight of the Muslim holy texts behind them.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago
Reply to  David McKee

Could you get educated and informed somehow?

sue vogel
sue vogel
1 year ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

You too would benefit from more education about this.

Mark Eltringham
Mark Eltringham
1 year ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

I think we all know what “education” consists of in the way you’re suggesting. History teaches us not just about the effects of anti-semitism, but also what what happens when somebody like you decide other people need to be “educated” out of a position they hold you don’t agree with. You might be well intentioned, but other educators won’t be.

elaine chambers
elaine chambers
1 year ago
Reply to  David McKee

David, there are sides that have to be picked, it’s one of the dilemmas of being human. If a poisenous snake entered a room you are in, and you’re an animal lover, not the sort of person to kill a wild animal, you will have to face the fact of, kill or be killed.
Hamas is barbaric. Sadly, you have to know that or you’re in denial because the facts about the 7th Oct atrocities cannot/must not be denied. This was bararism, even nastier than the Nazis if one is allowed to make a comparison. The Nazis were bureaucratic in their evil, Hamas was personal, intimate, sickingly wicked in their evil. We can’t regotiate with the insane.
War is horrible, we can all agree on that. Fascism is horrible, we here I expect all agree with that. In order to fight fascism in the last WW2 we killed milions of people! We nice, reasonable, kind humans, in defence of nasty fascism carpet bombed Dresden, wiped out Nagasaki and Hirosma.
It’s the human dilemma, the tragedy of being human. It’s just plain awful.

Last edited 1 year ago by elaine chambers
David Barnett
David Barnett
1 year ago
Reply to  David McKee

The complications of both Ukraine and Israel come from trying to understand them via inappropriate questions like “who started it?” You can get any answer you want according to the date you assign as “start” and how you define the parties to be included.

Alan Hawkes
Alan Hawkes
1 year ago
Reply to  R.I. Loquitur

You can’t support Jews and Hamas. But people can care for the fate of the residents of Gaza and be opposed to anti-semitism (there may be some space between opposing anti-semitism and supporting current Israeli actions.) But can anyone, with a sliver of moral judgement support Hamas?

R.I. Loquitur
R.I. Loquitur
1 year ago
Reply to  Alan Hawkes

“can anyone, with a sliver of moral judgement support Hamas?”

80%+ of Palestinians do.

Peter Walker
Peter Walker
1 year ago
Reply to  R.I. Loquitur

AND most of the population of Planet Earth who know lies, racism and sadism when they see them. As Gideon Levy put it: very rarely in history, perhaps never before, have the oppressors presented themselves as the victims. More pungently stated by Primo Levi: a Zionist is someone who punches someone in the face and screams for help.

Paul Devlin
Paul Devlin
1 year ago
Reply to  Peter Walker

Well said, Peter. The notion that Israel is anyone’s friends but its own is laughable. From the very start, Israel has been a bad actor. From the treachery of attacking British forces, USS Liberty, murdering Palestinian diplomats in England, constant espionage campaigns in friendly states, nuclear blackmail, the undermining of allies democracies, fomenting of war by allied states to get rid of its enemies, the list goes on and on and on. Israel is no friend of the West. Israel hates the West. Israel hates the Christian World

Shrunken Genepool
Shrunken Genepool
1 year ago
Reply to  Paul Devlin

BS

Paul Devlin
Paul Devlin
1 year ago

Really? So none of those things happened?

Richard Ross
Richard Ross
1 year ago
Reply to  Paul Devlin

Yes, Israel conducts espionage, at one point attacked British forces, formed alliances against its mortal enemies, but so has Canada, Britain and the best-behaving nations in the world. Context is everything, which you have hidden in your rant.

sue vogel
sue vogel
1 year ago
Reply to  R.I. Loquitur

Depends what exactly you mean by moral judgement. Most Palestinians are too terrified to exercise what judgement they may have lest it result in an unscheduled ride behind a Hamas motorbike – and not on the pillion….

sue vogel
sue vogel
1 year ago
Reply to  Alan Hawkes

Yes but only to a point. Such people are on a hiding to nowhere if they ignore Hamas’/Islamists’ openly stated aims, to the extent that they are willing to sacrifice their own young to see them enacted. Those young are not born hate-filled but are made so from kindergarten age through schooling and junior jihadi summer camps run by Hamas. Hamas leader in hiding in Qatar, Fathi Hamad, is on record boasting that women, the elderly and children are the best human shields.

Whereas Nazis had to get drunk in order to slaughter Jews en masse, Hamas gets high and is proud of its savagery.

David McKee
David McKee
1 year ago
Reply to  R.I. Loquitur

Most of the people there were Jewish. I think I am right in saying that most British Jews have friends and relatives in Israel. So yes, I expect Mr. Loquitur’s comment is correct.
The point is that those of us who were there and were not Jews, were not being asked to take sides. What we were asked to do was to support our Jewish compatriots in their hour of need.

harry storm
harry storm
1 year ago
Reply to  R.I. Loquitur

HOW they’ve taken sides (and conduct themselves at demonstrations) is far more significant than whether or not they have taken sides.

R.I. Loquitur
R.I. Loquitur
1 year ago
Reply to  harry storm

What does that even mean?

Helen Nevitt
Helen Nevitt
1 year ago
Reply to  David McKee

I was there too, I was thanked a couple of times for my support. It was a good natured and friendly affair, apart from anything else it was heartening to be with people who appreciated the many good and valuable things about this country, after hearing so much negativity over the years. Maybe it takes immigrants to appreciate what we take for granted.
Everyone I spoke to was on their first march, as was I. Maybe it’s time for people like us to start marching.

Last edited 1 year ago by Helen Nevitt
Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago
Reply to  Helen Nevitt

Whoever “us” is keep it up!

David Jory
David Jory
1 year ago
Reply to  David McKee

I was there as well. It was wonderful to have so many Jews and non-Jews there. October 7th was horrific even demonic. One of my daughter’s friend’s escaped the festival carrying wounded.
I do take issue with what you say about Tommy Robinson. He was quiet, respectful and supportive.
Have a look at the Police brutality. They grabbed him,held him down,formed a ring so he couldn’t be seen the hoped. A policeman then lifted his head and sprayed him with pepper spray. There are videos if you don’t believe it. I saw him being led away and I was disgusted by the Police and their politically driven 2 tier policing. They never do that for JSO,BLM or Hamas supporting marches.
You can deny it all you like but the fury of ordinary people in Dublin, Crépol on France,Holland and here is very real.

Dave Smith
Dave Smith
1 year ago
Reply to  David Jory

Tommy Robinson is the working class oik those middle classes who tend to the the right have to be seen to deplore. He is a deplorable in their world. What are they afraid of is the question, Him or the strident all seemingly powerful left?

Mark McConnell
Mark McConnell
1 year ago
Reply to  Dave Smith

Because he knows an awful lot about UK Islamism and has come up with the ‘incorrect’ answer.

Last edited 1 year ago by Mark McConnell
sue vogel
sue vogel
1 year ago
Reply to  Mark McConnell

As do I and it’s not comfortable knowledge.

John Tyler
John Tyler
1 year ago
Reply to  David Jory

I absolutely agree that the police seem to be rather one-sided. Nevertheless, TR is still a horrid little man!

Richard Craven
Richard Craven
1 year ago
Reply to  John Tyler

What has he said or done that you find horrid and little?

Edgar Wallner
Edgar Wallner
1 year ago
Reply to  David Jory

I was standing outside the cafe opposite the Royal Courts of Justice in which Mr Robinson was apparently having a peaceful breakfast and there seemed to be no disturbance.
Suddenly about 15 police appeared, manhandling him out of the cafe and pushing him down the road. I hold no brief for the now defunct EDL but he is deeply affected by the changes in his home town of Luton, where there are now 25 mosques as opposed to one when he was a boy. In this respect he is a supporter of Jewish people and I believe his motive of being at the march was to support them in spite of the protests of the organisers.To understand his background and history, see his speech at the Oxford Union on YouTube. I think you might be astonished, as I certainly was.

elaine chambers
elaine chambers
1 year ago
Reply to  Edgar Wallner

Yes, I am baffled about the police’s attack on T. Robinson and possiblely the Jewish organisers reluctance to have him there, and furthermore, Giles Fraser’s view of him as ‘horrible’!
I can understand that this man, who long ago left the EDL, is a massive problem to our establishmet and its institutions because he repeatedly and persistently drew our attention to the Pakistani (grooming) raping gangs which our establishment was desparately trying to ignore. In fact, it went further than just ignoring this openly, in our faces, paedophilic abuse of our young poor white girls, IT COLLUDED WITH THE PAKISTANI COMMUNUTY over this filthy behaviour to keep it sileneced by using the race card. Joining in support of this collusion has been and still is, the police, our cllrs, social workers and MPs, in particular the Labour Party. It took a clear minded strong Pakistani Muslim working for the CPS to morally challenge this filthy criminal behavour, many years later, his name is Nazir Afzal. Also Maggie Oliver, ex-police woman kept telling the truth and then having to leave the police force. Her work continues today to bring these filthy men to court.
Our establishment and its institutions became frightened of the Muslim communuties here in the UK 30yrs ago when the riots and book burning occured over the ‘Satanic Verses’. Since then, it has gone out of its way to placate Muslim men in order to prevent them rioting. We have actually handed over our poor white children as sacrifical offerings to these men in order to placate them.
I am baffled as to how Giles has not undertsood what has been happenineg. How can a man be demonised for objecting to the raping of little girls? ‘Prostitutes’ the Labour party called them! J. Smith, then Home Sec said they had made ‘a career choice’!
And it’s T. Robinson who ends up as the villain. Baffling!
Yes, I am baffled about the police’s attack on T. Robinson and possiblely the Jewish organisers reluctance to have him there, and furthermore, Giles Fraser’s view of him as ‘horrible’!
I can understand that this man, who long ago left the EDL, is a massive problem to our establishmet and its institutions because he repeatedly and persistently drew our attention to the Pakistani (grooming) raping gangs which our establishment was desparately trying to ignore. In fact, it went further than just ignoring this openly, in our faces, paedophilic abuse of our young poor white girls, IT COLLUDED WITH THE PAKISTANI COMMUNUTY over this filthy behaviour to keep it sileneced by using the race card. Joining in support of this collusion has been and still is, the police, our cllrs, social workers and MPs, in particular the Labour Party. It took a clear minded strong Pakistani Muslim working for the CPS to morally challenge this filthy criminal behavour, many years later, his name is Nazir Afzal. Also Maggie Oliver, ex-police woman kept telling the truth and then having to leave the police force. Her work continues today to bring these filthy men to court.
Our establishment and its institutions became frightened of the Muslim communuties here in the UK 30yrs ago when the riots and book burning occured over the ‘Satanic Verses’. Since then, it has gone out of its way to placate Muslim men in order to prevent them rioting. We have actually handed over our poor white children as sacrifical offerings to these men in order to placate them.
I am baffled as to how Giles has not undertsood what has been happenineg. How can a man be demonised for objecting to the raping of little girls? ‘Prostitutes’ the Labour party called them! J. Smith, then Home Sec said they had made ‘a career choice’!
And it’s T. Robinson who ends up as the villain. Baffling!

Last edited 1 year ago by elaine chambers
Alan Osband
Alan Osband
1 year ago
Reply to  David Jory

The police are disgusting . He showed up their uselessness , even collusion , with respect to the grooming gangs and they are out for revenge . They realise the MSM and the trendy vicars will let them get away with anything re Tommy Robinson .

Iris C
Iris C
1 year ago
Reply to  David McKee

I am not a Jew either but I would have been on the march with you had I not lived so far away. In London a majority of the citizens voted for a Moslem mayor which speaks for itself.

Shrunken Genepool
Shrunken Genepool
1 year ago
Reply to  David McKee

At what point do we draw the obvious conclusion that we need a moratorium on immigration, a weighting in favour of Christian asylum seekers from the Middle East and places like Nigeria (because they are being killed) and a complete ban on further Muslim immigration until we have had a few decades of ascriptive integration ( coercive if necessary) – and a rejection of multiculturalism – and made it clear to the Islamic community that some kind of theological reformation is a prerequisite for cohabitation in the West. We should be making residence in the UK for dual passport holders conditional on active, clear and vocal acceptance of the state of Israel and a rejection of the politics of the caliphate – and also on the political right for non-Muslims to make images of Mohammed if they so choose – the latter because it is a litmus for acceptance of free speech and individual political liberty. If anyone can’t sign up for this, and they have dual citizenship, they should be deported. UK citizens without dual citizenship should be subject to the full force of the law and any infringement of the rights of others (especially UK Jews) should result in long prison sentences and public shaming. This means that most of those taking part in anti-semitic marches should have been arrested and fined or jailed. Unless we reject multiculturalism and make integration and social cohesion non-negotiable foundations of our society, our future will look like Lebanon. London and many of the big cities are becoming no-go areas…..which is to say, that is the direction of travel. If the Tories can’t stop this trajectory …..then we need another party

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
1 year ago

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar has now usurped Justin Trudeau as the most pathetic, ill informed, progressive, performative, shallow PM in the free world.

What POS writes this drivel and who reads it and says it sounds right; “an innocent child who was lost has now been found and returned.”

Harry Phillips
Harry Phillips
1 year ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Varadkar is a clown.

In less than a week he has utterly destroyed any credibility he may have had and then some.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 year ago
Reply to  Harry Phillips

A clown and an embarrassment given that he followed up his offensive comment by saying he was baffled as to why the Israelis are getting so upset.

Leonel SIlva Rocha
Leonel SIlva Rocha
1 year ago
Reply to  Harry Phillips

What credibility? He was always a coward and a clown. The current situation has only shed light on the utterly useless, incompetent, cowardly Politician that he is. It says as much about the people(s) that vote in these Progressive Clowns as those clowns themselves, whether it is Americans, Canadians, Australians or Irish…

Paul Devlin
Paul Devlin
1 year ago

Varadkar, like Sunak, was never voted into office (except as a td). He got in through horse trading and office peddling, plain and simple. He’s a serial election loser. He’s in power because certain forces want him there, not the Irish electorate

Peter O'Dwyer
Peter O'Dwyer
1 year ago
Reply to  Harry Phillips

The possibly unfortunately phrased comment of Leo Varadker was taken totally and deliberately out of context. He has, like many politicians, an unfortunate history of not engaging his brain before opening his mouth, but is a genuine good person.
He did not mean she was simply “lost”, but used that phrase, quoting the New Testament , i.e. that the Good Shepherd rejoices in the lamb that was lost now being found.
(Matthew 18:10-14 and Luke 15:1-7)
In the next paragraph of his longer statement, (not quoted), he went on to unequivocally and unconditionally condemn the attack of October 7th and to lay the blame firmly on Hamas.
However, it suited Israeli ultra-right members of Netanyahu’s government to distort what he said in its entirety.
People who around the world had never heard of Leo Varadker now claim to “know” him.
The Irish Prime Minister, Leo Varadker, is the son of Indian immigrants and an openly gay man, who has, in his lifetime also suffered outrageous abuse for being both brown and a homosexual, so please, don’t try and invent a new Leo Varadker, who doesn’t exist.
Whereas Irish people tend to be very well informed about UK politics, the vast majority of UK citizens know sweet f**k all about Irish politics … and could care less.
And, yes, I do know what I am talking about having lived and worked in England for many years. I am now living in Ireland, where I was born.
Also, before judging me, please note that since October 7th I wear a star of David around my neck and an Israel flag pin on my lapel, whenever I am in public to show my solidarity with Israel and Jewish people everywhere.

Last edited 1 year ago by Peter O'Dwyer
Mike Downing
Mike Downing
1 year ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Maybe Justin will send him a pair of those shamrock-themed socks at Xmas to cheer him up.

Terry M
Terry M
1 year ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Not sure I agree. Trudeau has set the bar remarkably high in terms of being pusillanimous. He de-banked hundreds of truckers for shouting at him.

Bret Larson
Bret Larson
1 year ago
Reply to  Terry M

Agreed. The Irish bloke is going to have to sustain such behaviour a long time to dethrone black face.

Peter G
Peter G
1 year ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

I can’t speak to Varadkar’s competence, but his comment struck me as a Biblical quote from Luke, Chapter 15 about the Prodigal Son when the father calls for celebration when the son returns from his exile: “This son of mine was dead. And now he is alive again. He was lost. And now he is found.” Maybe not, but that’s how I took it.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 year ago
Reply to  Peter G

It’s how it sounded which makes it even more offensive given that the prodigal son was the architect of his own misfortune. Unlike the wee lassie who was kidnapped by a bunch of murderers.

Graham Strugnell
Graham Strugnell
1 year ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

I think he was quoting Jesus’ comments about the lost and found.

Miriam Uí Riagáin
Miriam Uí Riagáin
1 year ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

It was an expression of relief and joy at the child’s release, which said what many felt, not a political statement of any kind. Here in Ireland people were surprised at how those comments were misunderstood.

Leonel SIlva Rocha
Leonel SIlva Rocha
1 year ago

Ah, we have got a Fan here…

Alan Osband
Alan Osband
1 year ago

Maybe the Irish are not so familiar with the New Testament as they would have been 30 or 40 years ago

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 year ago
Reply to  Alan Osband

Thank Christ.

Alan Osband
Alan Osband
1 year ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Funny one but if only for cultural reasons it worth knowing the Old and New Testament . It’s clearly a weird thing to say in relation to a kidnapped child , at least for anyone aware of the source

Peter O'Dwyer
Peter O'Dwyer
1 year ago
Reply to  Alan Osband

Read the whole statement before commenting.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago

I feel that the Bearing Witness video needs to be shown to the world. It happened, why not let the world see what happened, why are people being protected from the truth? The horror of mass deaths in Gaza is on TV every day gaining sympathy for Palestinians, it’s time to level the playing field.

Karen Fleming
Karen Fleming
1 year ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

Clare- I couldn’t agree more.

Mike Fraser
Mike Fraser
1 year ago
Reply to  Karen Fleming

well. it certainly at some point should be shown to my hand wringing, well meaning English friends. Preferably before Islam has them, in their turn, in its sight.

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
1 year ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

It is out of regard for the families of victims, which I understand. I do however think it is necessary.

Terry M
Terry M
1 year ago

I think you could pixellate all the faces and distinguishing marks of the victims.
People NEED to see the depths of depravity of Hamas for themselves.

Alan Osband
Alan Osband
1 year ago
Reply to  Terry M

Millions of Hamas fans would gloat , and those westerners who support the Palestinians would not look because they’d think there’s no equivalent film showing the dead civilians in Gaza .

Last edited 1 year ago by Alan Osband
sue vogel
sue vogel
1 year ago
Reply to  Terry M

I made the mistake of listening to some of the accounts and testimonies from deeply devout members of ZAKA, the religious body charged with recovery of the remains of the massacred for religious burial. I had nightmares and haven’t slept well since. I still hold, in my mind’s eye, the image of their leader, in tears as he described the horror of what they had found, and showed his deep compassion and caring for the men and women of his team.

AC Harper
AC Harper
1 year ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

Indeed. Make it generally available, but not broadcast – and when there is an interview or podcast the very first question should always be “Have you watched Bearing Witness?”

A D Kent
A D Kent
1 year ago
Reply to  AC Harper

That question should immediately be followed by “Are you aware of the IDF’s previous and well documented history of falsifying videos and other such evidence?”

Nigel Clarke
Nigel Clarke
1 year ago
Reply to  A D Kent

Are you by any chance a white leftard, under 25 and have a degree in media studies?

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 year ago
Reply to  Nigel Clarke

Probably not but you are obviously a sanctimonious prat. I mean, what kind of supposed grown up adult uses a word like “leftard”? Er, a numbskull. That’s who.

A D Kent
A D Kent
1 year ago
Reply to  Nigel Clarke

No, I’m a white man in my 50s with a PhD in Applied Psychology. Now you answer my question.

Stephanie Surface
Stephanie Surface
1 year ago
Reply to  A D Kent

Maybe concentration camps were fake and all eye witness reports? Staying ignorant must be such bliss…

Last edited 1 year ago by Stephanie Surface
A D Kent
A D Kent
1 year ago

Yawn.

Alan Osband
Alan Osband
1 year ago
Reply to  A D Kent

Are you suggesting the murders didn’t actually happen ? Or are you saying the killings were quite pretty in reality but the film has been doctored to appear less appealing to Hamas fans ?

A D Kent
A D Kent
1 year ago
Reply to  Alan Osband

Neither – I’m saying that anything provided by the IDF must be treated with scepticism. This is not to say that murders did not take place, but that every death was at the hands of Hamas is unproven – especially given the ample evidence of a panicked IDF reaction. Call me old fashioned, but I think facts matter. See the links to Chris Hedges I’ve posted elsewhere.

sue vogel
sue vogel
1 year ago
Reply to  A D Kent

Whereas footage provided by Pallywood must be accepted unquestioningly?

Charles Hedges
Charles Hedges
1 year ago
Reply to  A D Kent

Are you saying IDF fired weapons whose bullets hit and killed Israelis? If so, high velocity bullets leave wounds, they do not behead or burn babies.
Where is the forensic evidence to back your claim ?

William Amos
William Amos
1 year ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

Sadly I strongly suspect that if the last 20 years of mass media saturation and the exponential growth of the digital panopticon have shown us anything it is that the currency of images has plummeted to almost nothing.
The proliferation of images has not brought a greater understanding of truth. The opposite in fact.
Those who will not believe will not be swayed or influenced by the sight of their eyes or the reason of opposing arguments.
A democratic culture, such as we live in, is in an existential struggle with people who refuse to be persuaded of the truth. It has no solution to that.
‘If only they understood they’d agree with me’.

Last edited 1 year ago by William Amos
Andrew Vanbarner
Andrew Vanbarner
1 year ago
Reply to  William Amos

The shock and disgust one would feel if one viewed “Bearing Witness” would be difficult to endure, in the way that viewing the disturbing images of Nazi atrocities, even eight decades later, are difficult to endure.
With apologies and deepest sympathies to victims and their relatives, Israel must release the films of Hamas’ savagery, as awful as it is, because it may very well be true that “Never Again” is now.

Terry M
Terry M
1 year ago
Reply to  William Amos

Completely disagree. Images are extremely powerful. That is why the leftists so carefully distort and edit them, bending them to their own purposes, and then spread them far and wide. See Jan 6 videos, various images of Palestinian victims, or numerous others.

Greg Leiner
Greg Leiner
1 year ago
Reply to  Terry M

And the very selective George Floyd images. Watch “The Fall of Minneapolis” streaming for exhibit A of this point.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago
Reply to  William Amos

However, there are many kind, misguided, folk who would be turned if they got to see the Bearing Witness video. The fanatics would, of course, find a way to invalidate it because they would rather die than be wrong. But, when all is said and done, I still think it would be worth showing the video to the world.

David McKee
David McKee
1 year ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

Clare, I’m sorry, but it would not work. I wish it were otherwise, but it won’t. There are plenty of people out there who don’t want to believe that the massacre ever took place, and they would pull every trick in the book to ‘prove’ the footage was fake.
Remember, David Irving used to take people on conducted tours of Auschwitz to ‘prove’ that nobody was gassed there.
As they saying goes, there’s none so blind as those who will not see.

laurence scaduto
laurence scaduto
1 year ago
Reply to  David McKee

I think you give far too much credit to a few loudmouths on Twitter. There’s very little to suggest that the proliferation of nutty conspiracy chatter online has had much effect on the voters.
For instance, whoever David Irving is/was his guided tours of Auschwitz had zero effect on our understanding of WWII. Also, the Democratic Party’s effort to get us to refer to Jan. 6th as an “insurgency” has fallen flat. IRL, that is. What happens on twitter is a completely seperate thing; almost like a strange kind of gaming.

Avro Lanc
Avro Lanc
1 year ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

Alas the antisemites will claim it is AI generated.

Bret Larson
Bret Larson
1 year ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

At a guess the issue is that it would be a box office hit, for all the wrong reasons.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 year ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

The protesting idiots would refuse to believe it was real. I’ve already heard people say that the attacks were committed by the Israelis, that they didn’t really happen and if they did,the victims were the ones to blame. I had a fool tell me today that because the hostages didn’t look like their forebears emerging from Auschwitz , they aren’t really victims. Considering the long legacy of holocaust denial, I doubt those that think Jews deserve it would care.

John Tyler
John Tyler
1 year ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

Part of me agrees, but I don’t like the thought of the many anti-semites somehow exulting in the scenes.

Mark McConnell
Mark McConnell
1 year ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

Probably. Just as importantly, there needs to be a definitive book which details the exact events as well as the horrendous aftermath in the west. I’m hoping Douglas Murray is working on it.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 year ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

Yes, and let the most gruesome and horrific win. The milk of human kindness eh Clare?

Sharon Overy
Sharon Overy
1 year ago

A good article, apart from this idiocy:

A few yards in front of me, Tommy Robinson, a latter-day Blackshirt, was forcibly ejected from the march to everyone’s approval. Nasty little man.

Tommy Robinson is no ‘Blackshirt’ – he’s always been a Zionist. Seems there was an ‘establishment patsy’ at the screening after all!

Alan Osband
Alan Osband
1 year ago
Reply to  Sharon Overy

So it’s a wonderful thing for middle class progressives and trendy vicars to protest the gang rape of Jewish girls in Israel by Islamists .And yet a working class guy who tried to stop white teenagers in Rotherham being gang raped by Islamists is ‘a nasty little man’
Hypocritical , snobbish and immoral

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
1 year ago
Reply to  Sharon Overy

Yes, it was the one thing that hit the wrong note. Maybe he was simply removed to avert any trouble, but that is an entirely different thing.

Stephen Bailey
Stephen Bailey
1 year ago
Reply to  Sharon Overy

No Blackshirt at all. Yes, maybe not ‘educated’ in the accepted sense of the word as understood by the trendy clergy, but anyone who has watched his sincere, restrained yet impassioned address at the Oxford Union, and the, probably surprised and surprising, reception he received, would be in no doubt that he is a genuine, concerned, intelligent and courageous individual.

Last edited 1 year ago by Stephen Bailey
Cam Marsh
Cam Marsh
1 year ago
Reply to  Stephen Bailey

I am reminded of Kipling’s Tommy. “Yes, makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep”.

Roger le Clercq
Roger le Clercq
1 year ago
Reply to  Stephen Bailey

“In doubt”? In no doubt surely?

Stephen Bailey
Stephen Bailey
1 year ago

Thank you. Corrected.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
1 year ago
Reply to  Stephen Bailey

TR is anathema because he challenges the ‘tiny minority’ narrative about Muslim violence in which the media and governing class take refuge.

William Amos
William Amos
1 year ago
Reply to  Sharon Overy

It is an unfortunate but inescapable coincidence, then, that the English Defence League appears to have taken both it’s name and it’s modus operandi (provocative street marches) from Colin Jordan’s White Defence League who were in many ways the successor group to Imperial Fascist League, an outfit who thought Moseley wasn’t anti semitic enough.
I don’t know what that signifies or if Tommy Robinson, at this late stage, has any cause or party than his own self promotion but it is a link that cannot be un-known once it has been recognised.

Last edited 1 year ago by William Amos
Alan Osband
Alan Osband
1 year ago
Reply to  William Amos

Go and get help then . Your obsessions are nothing to do with Tommy Robinson

R Wright
R Wright
1 year ago
Reply to  Sharon Overy

I still have no idea why he bothers given how much they hate him. Has he got a martyr complex?

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago

Giles, whatever critical analysis may have transpired with your previous articles, with this one my heart is with you.

Claire D
Claire D
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

I am there too.

John Solomon
John Solomon
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

Seconded. We need to stand together in the face of evil.

Simon Blanchard
Simon Blanchard
1 year ago

Ejecting Tommy Robinson (I’m no fan, he adds hastily) from the march feels like a tactical error to me, somehow. Polite society doesn’t own the fight against antisemitism.

N Satori
N Satori
1 year ago

I get the impression that Robinson is more anti-Muslim than pro-Jew. As such his presence would have given ammunition to those wishing to discredit the entirely peaceful march. Even his removal drew a lot of media attention.

Alan Osband
Alan Osband
1 year ago
Reply to  N Satori

So what Hamas did and does has nothing to do with Islam ? Get real . Tommy Robinson came to notice originally for protesting the gang rape of white girls by Muslim grooming gangs in places like Rotherham , something the police and MSM and trendy vicars were taking no interest in . Indeed the trendy vicar who wrote this article has boasted on here about how he keeps illegal Muslim migrants from being deported by public pretend conversions to Christianity , thus allowing them to claim it’s too dangerous to send them home .

Of course white working class girls up north don’t seem to interest him as victims , not when there are migrants involved as perpetrators at least .

N Satori
N Satori
1 year ago
Reply to  Alan Osband

What on earth are you raving about? Robinson’s back story is well known by now and of course Hamas are hardline Islamists. Their own declarations clearly demonstrate that. However, it is important not to play into the hands of those in the MSM who would like to draw a moral equivalence between Hamas actions and those of Israel and especially those who would like to depict Palestinians as subject to Islamophobia and therefore “the true victims”.

Stephen Wright
Stephen Wright
1 year ago
Reply to  N Satori

.

Last edited 1 year ago by Stephen Wright
Alan Osband
Alan Osband
1 year ago
Reply to  N Satori

Oh sorry I forgot , everything has to be about the Jews and only the Jews . Wouldn’t want to upset the MSM .

William Edward Henry Appleby
William Edward Henry Appleby
1 year ago
Reply to  N Satori

A case of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”. This philosophy has not worked well in the past (eg Gaddafi, Saddam)

Samuel Ross
Samuel Ross
1 year ago

When the last Hamas terrorist is cold and dead, we will have a permanent ‘ceasefire’. There can no ‘ceasefire’ with Evil. No treaties with the Devil.

George Venning
George Venning
1 year ago
Reply to  Samuel Ross

So keep up the bombing of Gaza, until the very last of Hamas’ fighters is dead – ignoring the toll of civillian deaths. With almost 1% of Gazas’s population already dead and Hamas very much operational, what proportion of the inhabitants of the Strip do you suggest might be a price worth paying?
And then what happens when the cousins, brothers, aunts, nephews and neices of those “collateral” fatalities rise up from the West Bank, from the refugee camps in Jordan? Obliterate them too? What do you suggest when Hezbollah demand revenge for their comrades? When Iran no longer tolerates the slaughter? How many would you kill for “peace”?

Last edited 1 year ago by George Venning
Hazel Gazit
Hazel Gazit
1 year ago
Reply to  George Venning

If we don’t stand up to militant Islam, the civilised world has no future. What you simply don’t understand is the entirely different mindset of Arabs and Muslims. All they understand, and accept, is a strong hand. Anything less is considered weakness and weakness is to be exploited.

Simon S
Simon S
1 year ago
Reply to  Hazel Gazit

What a racist comment

Kevin Godwin
Kevin Godwin
1 year ago
Reply to  Simon S

Please explain why?

Guy Pigache
Guy Pigache
1 year ago
Reply to  Simon S

That you are down thumbed and the previous comment is up thumbed makes me worried about where the readership of Unherd is heading.

George Venning
George Venning
1 year ago
Reply to  Hazel Gazit

Jesus wept, where to start?
I’m happy to accept that there is such a thing as militant Islam and that it’s a bad thing. But a uniquely bad thing? The uniquely bad thing? Give me a break.
As to the idea that Arabs and Muslims have an entirely different mindset (oops, the militant bit seems to have gone astray). Well, yes, some of them do. And some of them have entirely different mindsets from one another too (not all muslims are arabs, not all arabs are muslims).
You know who else have different mindsets? All sorts of people! Nuns, marxists, clowns, Walloons, autistics, Calvinists, competitive weighlifters.
But as to your narrow point – the West has a very difficult relationship with militant Islam. We’re constantly saying what a threat it is but then we keep making more of it. Remember when we funded the Mujahadeen because they wanted to fight the Russians? And then that blew back on 9/11. Then we invaded broadly secular Iraq, in part because of an entirely fictitious connection with 9/11 but that went so badly, that we ended up creating more Islamists. Which we didn’t like, although we did then support them when they looked like the people best placed to bash Assad (not a militant Islamist). And then we invaded the not at all militantly Islamist Libya, for the crazy crime of giving up their nuclear ambitions and screwed that invasion up so badly, that guess who’s now running Libya (to the extent that it isn’t a failed state).
So, I mean yeah. Militant Islam is bad. But the idea that we need to confront it more in order to save western civilisation, isn’t just wrong, it’s a category error.
And, in your formulation at least, rather racist.

R.I. Loquitur
R.I. Loquitur
1 year ago
Reply to  George Venning

“what proportion of the inhabitants of the Strip do you suggest might be a price worth paying?”

Since 80% of them support Hamas, how about 80%?

Guy Pigache
Guy Pigache
1 year ago
Reply to  R.I. Loquitur

Enjoying using your vipers tongue?

George Venning
George Venning
1 year ago
Reply to  R.I. Loquitur

I’m going to make the assumption that you’re less of a genocidal maniac in real life than you are in keyboard warrior mode.
Even so, might be time to reflect on what you’ve just suggested.

Terry M
Terry M
1 year ago
Reply to  George Venning

 almost 1% of Gazas’s population already dead
Assumes data not in evidence.

George Venning
George Venning
1 year ago
Reply to  Terry M

Gaza’s population is about 2m people. The Health ministry – which has accurately reported the death toll in previous conflicts – puts the dead at 15,000. That’s about 0.75%
What isn’t in evidence?

Eleanor Barlow
Eleanor Barlow
1 year ago
Reply to  George Venning

Put the blame for all this carnage where it belongs – on the people who are responsible – Iran and the thugs it hires to do its dirty work.

William Edward Henry Appleby
William Edward Henry Appleby
1 year ago
Reply to  George Venning

Aye, there’s the rub. Hamas is a movement, not a bunch of scoundrels that can be rounded up by the Sheriff and his posse.

Last edited 1 year ago by William Edward Henry Appleby
Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago

It’s an ideology, impossible to eliminate.

sue vogel
sue vogel
1 year ago
Reply to  George Venning

Hamas deliberately endangers its people by storing ordnance and launching rockets from among them, boasting that women, the elderly and children make the best human shields and teaching children from kindergarten age to want to grow up to die while killing Jews.
You’ve been had. Hamas cares less for Palestinians than you do. Israel cares more.

Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
1 year ago

Jeremy Corbyn has always been quick to mention that his mother, Naomi Corbyn, was present at the famous “Battle of Cable Street” in 1936, where Left-wing demonstrators fought police guarding a planned march by Oswald Mosley’s British fascists through a heavily Jewish neighbourhood.
He’s often spoken of his pride that his Mother stood up for what was right and protected the Jews in her community from those who would harm them, from the fascists.
I’d be interested to know from Mr Corbyn how he thinks his mother would have reacted if she’d been told that one day her son, a ‘Friend of Hamas’, would be marching in support of the Fascists and against the Jews?

Alan Osband
Alan Osband
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

The mummy at cable st story was disbelieved by Corbyn’s first wife . She said no one ever mentioned it in her hearing all the years she and Corbyn were together

Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
1 year ago
Reply to  Alan Osband

I hadn’t heard that – but colour me surprised!

Terry M
Terry M
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

Left-wing demonstrators fought police guarding a planned march by Oswald Mosley’s British fascists through a heavily Jewish neighbourhood.
While in the US, even the ACLU defended Nazis right to march in the Jewish neighborhood of Skokie, IL, back in the 70’s. (the march never happened, for other reasons)
Any wonder why Britain is such a mess when it comes to free expression.

William Amos
William Amos
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

A walk down Cable Street as it is today is always a good way to cleanse the doors of perception when it comes to left wing myth making.
Im told a great victory for the working classes was won there.
“And everybody praised the Duke
    Who this great fight did win.”
“But what good came of it at last?”
    Quoth little Peterkin.
“Why that I cannot tell,” said he,
    “But ’twas a famous victory.”

Rafi Stern
Rafi Stern
1 year ago

Tommy Robinson is an unreciprocated friend of the Jews and of Israel. I can understand why the organizers were embarrassed by his presence (I am wary of him and his genre as well) but we cannot always be picky about our supporters.

Leonel SIlva Rocha
Leonel SIlva Rocha
1 year ago
Reply to  Rafi Stern

What exactly is his “genre”, I wonder?

Alan Osband
Alan Osband
1 year ago

Check out his Oxford Union speech on you-tube .

N Satori
N Satori
1 year ago

Mr Fraser tells us that “obsessive Israel-hater Owen Jones” was at the showing of Bearing Witness which he attended. Has there been any indication that Jones was moved or shocked by the atrocities shown? Or has he simply resorted to his reflex whataboutery and talk of ‘hierarchies of suffering’?
Bearing Witness should be shown to the world so that we can all see exactly what the far Left and anti-Zionists would have us believe is an act of resistance by “freedom fighters” which Israel is using as an excuse to crush innocent Palestinians.

Mike Downing
Mike Downing
1 year ago
Reply to  N Satori

I’m sure Dear Owen will be top of the Hamas ‘guest list ‘ at their post-liberation celebration (PBAC).

(Crane)

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 year ago
Reply to  N Satori

No, Israel is not using excuses to “crush innocent Palestinians” but is in fact deeply torn between the need to crush Hamas and knowing full well that Hamas’s human shields of innocent Palestinians will become massive collateral damage, despite Israel’s world-leading tactics for reducing civilian deaths.

sue vogel
sue vogel
1 year ago
Reply to  N Satori

Not from what Jones has written since.

Michael Kellett
Michael Kellett
1 year ago

‘There have been posters of these children ripped down all over London and New York by Hamas apologists, gleeful fools who seem to think it’s a lie that children were ever taken in the first place.’
Not just by Hamas apologists. In London and Manchester by the Metropolitan Police too (although in Manchester the chief constable had the good grace and good sense to admit it was the wrong thing to do).

Andrew Vanbarner
Andrew Vanbarner
1 year ago

Tommy Robinson has, perhaps, an air of the odious.
But would the world even know what happened to hundreds of Rotherham girls if he’d been silent?
The Islamophobia-phobia, or the fear of appearing to be bigoted against Muslims, is precisely what allowed the sex offenders of Rotherham (and likely many other places) to operate with impunity.
It now spurs people to tear down posters of hostages, to pretend we don’t see the occasional swastika, to “both sides” a gory, psychotic mass atrocity, or to pretend what don’t hear the genocidal undertones in those “river to the sea” chants.
“Nasty little” Tommy Robinson was whisked away from the bien pensant on the streets, from a reassuringly large crowd of decent, sensible people.
But is he entirely wrong? Does our fear of offending a group – a minority that’s grown quite large in the UK and France, and that often seems to be at odds not just with Western liberal democracy, but with basic human decency – make us hesitate in taking a stand against obvious evil?
There are of course liberal and moderate Muslims, and in Western countries they may even be in the majority. But very few have criticized Hamas. Very few condemn acts of terror that even the IRA would eschew. Very few loudly condemn antisemitism.
This is something about which we need to be far more clear eyed, particularly those of us on the left-liberal side. Radical Islamism, or Salafism or Wahhabism or whatever it’s properly called, would, if in power, obliterate many of the racial, ethnic, or sexual minorities leftists are sworn to protect, and would obliterate the individual rights the West used to hold dear.
Speech, personal property, worship, due process, self-rule and most of the other civil rights and liberties enjoyed by the citizens of democracies would vanish under a Caliphate, or under an Islamic theocracy.
We should be far, far less naive about such things. They’re quite literally matters of life and death.
I am not Jewish either. As a lapsed Roman Catholic, with Anglican ancestors and a Protestant spouse, I’m well aware of the persecution religious minorities can endure. Attacks on innocent Muslims are no more excusable than blatant antisemitism.
This must not prevent us from calling evil what it is. The violence within radical Wahhabism is evil, and is an obvious threat to Western society.

Last edited 1 year ago by Andrew Vanbarner
Gordon Arta
Gordon Arta
1 year ago

There is no ‘radical Islamism’, or ‘perverted version’, or ‘political Islam’. They are the real deal, Islam as it was invented and intended. Hamas, the Taliban, IS, Boko Haram, al Shabaab, and thousands more like them, are what Islam becomes when it is unmoderated by ‘infidel’ laws or influences. Supposedly ‘moderate’ Muslims are those quietly ignore the call to arms that Islam demands, unless instructed to do so. But when a demented ME psychopath issues a fatwa, out they come, either on the streets inciting murder, or enabling the would be killers by excusing their threats; ‘well, they asked for it’. They can’t or won’t face up to the fact that they have signed up to the same beliefs and role model as the groups mentioned above, and think about what that means, so they remain the sea in which the predators swim.

Walter Schwager
Walter Schwager
1 year ago
Reply to  Gordon Arta

The largest population of Muslims, by far, is in Indonesia and there the government has suppressed the few radical Islamists

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 year ago

Gordon won’t like to hear that.

Gordon Arta
Gordon Arta
1 year ago

But as the historic moderation and influence of earlier religions and traditions fades, and that of the Muslim Brotherhood, now controlling one of the major political parties grows, younger generations are going the way of all Islam, ie hardline Islamist. Indonesia’s relative tolerance and secularism are under threat.

Leonel SIlva Rocha
Leonel SIlva Rocha
1 year ago
Reply to  Gordon Arta

Best comment here so far. Thank you!

Last edited 1 year ago by Leonel SIlva Rocha
Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
1 year ago

If Islamic ‘rape gangs’ were to sodomise everything in sight in say Quislington, the howls of outrage would heard on the Moon.

Last edited 1 year ago by Charles Stanhope
Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago

I don’t get your point, Charles.

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
1 year ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

Rape of white ‘council house sluts’ in some remote towns of northern England by Islamic gangs behaving like feral dogs is quite acceptable to the pampered, self styled left wing elites of QUISLINGTON.

Peter Lee
Peter Lee
1 year ago

I think comments should be kept brief and to the point as per Charles Stanhope. I just do not think they get read.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago
Reply to  Peter Lee

Yes, I tend not to read the long, verbose comments which are often essays from would-be journalists. However, Charles tends to favor the obscure non sequiter much like the cartoons in The New Yorker.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago

Will you be, forever, a “lapsed Roman Catholic”? Are you not now a free thinker?

james goater
james goater
1 year ago

An excellent “print-it-out, cut-it-out, pin-it-to-noticeboards-everywhere” comment — your eighth paragraph, in particular, encapsulates the essential divide between Israel and most of the remaining Middle East. (The term for which you seek is probably “Jihadism”).

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
1 year ago

What on earth happened to the mantra “NEVER NEGOTIATE WITH TERRORISTS “ may I ask?
The sooner the IDF continues its ‘Offensive’ the better. Otherwise Hamas will exploit this charade for all it can. It maybe “cruel to be kind”, but there really is NO other option.

Caradog Wiliams
Caradog Wiliams
1 year ago

In isolation Israel probably wouldn’t negotiate with the terrorists. But there is the USA to think about and the politicians there are as soft as can be.

Andrew Vanbarner
Andrew Vanbarner
1 year ago

Several of our leading politicians in Congress – a cadre of junior legislators, at least – are anything but soft.
They appear to be hardline supporters of not just authoritarian socialism, but perhaps of radical Islamism as well. One even has a Palestinian flag outside of her office in the US Capitol.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago

And the annoying hijab wearing by wots’er name.

Rafi Stern
Rafi Stern
1 year ago

The problem is when the terrorists are holding you where it hurts and you are a liberal democracy with a very family based national culture and ethos. The families of the hostages are rightfully demanding that everything be done to return their loved ones. We would all probably do the same or similar. The media chorus to do everything to bring them back is deafening. Only a couple of families are doing the stiff upper lip and on ideological principle, distancing themselves from the campaign. The government deemed that a few days lull in return for women and children would not cause irreparable damage and keep the national unity together behind the military campaign. The vast majority of Israelis support the deal even if (like me) they have misgivings.
Hamas is exploiting this first of all to play with our nerves and show who is boss, but also to improve positions restock and reload. Their Qatari patrons are orchestrating in the guise of being just brokers, and hoping that they will be able to turn the lull into an indefinite lull, to break our resolve to continue and save Hamas from obliteration. The sooner we get back to the offensive in Gaza, the better. Yesterday’s hostages were released from Shaja’ieh just a kilometer or so East of the current front line in Gaza City. It is not impossible that more hostages can be freed by force and not by negotiation. And in any case, after we have tightened the screws some more, maybe they will “find” some more of the hostages, to free by agreement. The hostages we returned are fantastic and I am truly happy for every one of them, but the job of the country’s leadership will be at some point sooner rather than later, to call an end to the party and get back on with the job.

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
1 year ago
Reply to  Rafi Stern

Spot on Sir!

Hazel Gazit
Hazel Gazit
1 year ago

If it wasn’t for the presence of the hostages, the war would have been over on 8th October and no Israeli soldier on the ground would have died.

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
1 year ago

This excellent article is a voice for what so many of us are feeling. Congratulations.

René Descartes
René Descartes
1 year ago

Great article Giles.
I was on the march. “Never again is now” and “Bring them home” were slogans of such devastation power and importance they had me near tears.
What horrified me was that when a young man handed me a sticker supporting Jewish unity I hesitated before putting it proudly on my jacket, wondering if it was safe to wear it.
What has become of our country?

Last edited 1 year ago by broglets
Nell Clover
Nell Clover
1 year ago

The headline reads “The brutal truth about ‘Never Again’” and the byline reads “Don’t be fooled by the temporary Israel-Hamas ceasefire”. The same headline and byline could be read in the Guardian or Jewish Chronicle, albeit with very different slants in the articles beneath. The implication is the same though: when it comes to deciding what to do, through Western eyes at least, it is all Israel’s responsibility.

Palestine, Palestinians, Hamas: there is little in the Western headlines and bylines that implies they have any choice at all, no matter which way an article leans. This is curious because surely we all have agency? Is there some intangible factor that we implicitly recognise is not so easy to negotiate away here? If it isn’t antisemitism I can only conclude most Westerners implicitly accept this is a clash of two civilisations, not a political argument, and the only thing that can be decided is precisely where the border should be between these two civilisations. There is no soft middle ground to build a shared peace, and so all there is left to do is pick a side.

There is such a thing as Western civilisation: a consistent and distinct orthodoxy of goverment prevails in economics and social affairs, and when this orthodoxy changes all Western countries quickly follow the new orthodoxy. Whilst there might be wars between Western states, these are political not civilisational. I’d argue that, be it defined as Islamic or Arabic, there is a different civilisation dominant in the Middle East with its own orthodoxy and when that orthodoxy changes it too quickly cascades throughout the Middle East. Israel happens to be a Western civilisation outpost on the border with a Middle Eastern civilisation.

Everywhere in the world where there are recent changes to civilisational borders and populations have not yet shifted in either perspective or location to reflect the new political borders there is conflict. Israel and Palestine is not unique today let alone this year. A glance at current conflicts and disputes on a map reveals civilisational tectonic plates ringed by fire.

No matter which civilisational mass we belong to, those of us living a peaceful existence are benefiting from the dividend of huge existential wars that conquered peoples, homogenised civilisational principles, and replotted the borders over centuries. The brutal truth is that in civilisational conflict there is no ceasefire until one side faces not just defeat, but utter ruination and conversion or displacement. The future for Israel and Palestine looks exactly like the past: either constant low level fighting or an attempt by one side for a decisive crushing defeat of the other side.

Last edited 1 year ago by Nell Clover
Charles Joseph
Charles Joseph
1 year ago
Reply to  Nell Clover

It’s anti semitism

Terry M
Terry M
1 year ago
Reply to  Charles Joseph

That is only part of the issue. Decapitating school teachers and downing the World Trade Center had little to do with anti-semitism, and a lot to do with Western Civ.

Lindsey Thornton
Lindsey Thornton
1 year ago
Reply to  Nell Clover

It’s antisemitism. But not as we’ve known it before in history. As Giles says the speed of the news cycle has ignored the ‘tectonic significance’ of what happened to Israel on 7th October. And we are not prepared for what is to come.

Andrew Vanbarner
Andrew Vanbarner
1 year ago

The antisemitism is a symptom, not a cause. The base conflict is indisputably civilizational.
Cry, the Beloved Country. Two neighboring societies that have almost nothing in common can’t be integrated.

AC Harper
AC Harper
1 year ago

How is it that some people fall for all this manipulative rubbish?

The best manipulators realise when they are pushing against an open door. Being mealymouthed is now the default for most Western politicians. I suspect they dread inciting upset ‘at home’, or losing voter support, but in the end they make it more likely.

Andrew E Walker
Andrew E Walker
1 year ago

“A few yards in front of me, Tommy Robinson, a latter-day Blackshirt, was forcibly ejected from the march to everyone’s approval. Nasty little man.”
You’re a splendid knee-jerker. Watch TR’s talk at the Oxford Union, and then revise your opinion, based on knowledge and not stupid prejudice.

Neil Turrell
Neil Turrell
1 year ago

I quite agree Andrew, having watched the talk myself. Rough diamond he may be, but he loves his country and has not been frightened, unlike the craven wretches who sit in Parliament or the spineless cowards of the Fourth Estate, to point out the cultural fault lines that make the Elite’s prospectus of benevolent multiculturalism nothing more than blatant propaganda to benefit themselves and themselves only.

Arkadian Arkadian
Arkadian Arkadian
1 year ago

Has Owen Jones commented?

Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
1 year ago

Owen Jones is confused about a lot of things but none more so than his stance on Islam. Anyone who questions whether mainstream Muslim opinion on a number of issues might be at odds with what the rest of us would deem basic, liberal values – is shouted down by the increasingly ludicrous short-trousered Marxist for displaying “obvious and disgusting Islamophobia”.
So, when a poll found that HALF of all British Muslims think homosexuality should be illegal? Silence from Owen Jones and his cohort.
When Owen was confronted about Muslim attitudes to LGBTQalphabet people he refused to criticise out of “broad-minded respect for other cultures”. Oh, how noble!
But when poor old downhill SirKeir made a trip to a poorly vetted Church last Easter, where the vicar, in accordance with the well-known tenets of his faith, had suggested that homosexuality should not be promoted as being equal to heterosexuality, suddenly wee Owen had a pearl-clutching fit of the vapours, and fulminated against the intolerance of the Church.
Owen Jones would be welcome in Gaza, he really should go. I’m sure I heard that Hamas would like to throw him a roof-top party – at least I think that’s what they said.

Last edited 1 year ago by Paddy Taylor
james goater
james goater
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

Great comment! Your excellent point…”Anyone who questions whether mainstream Muslim opinion…might be at odds with what the rest of us would deem basic, liberal values — is shouted down by the increasingly ludicrous short-trousered Marxist for displaying obvious and disgusting Islamophobia”… is a perfect example of how horribly powerful this cheap propaganda term has become and, sadly, it is not only “short-trousered Marxists” who are doing the “shouting down”. The term has gained currency almost everywhere, it seems to me.

Mike Downing
Mike Downing
1 year ago

I gather he’s looking for ‘a couple of broody lesbians to make a baby with ‘.

Michael James
Michael James
1 year ago
Reply to  Mike Downing

Poor kid.

Jeffrey Mushens
Jeffrey Mushens
1 year ago

My prayers were with you after reading your testimony. I couldn’t watch it. I’d have been sick. So glad so many, Jews and non Jews, made the march, to show our Jewish brothers and sister they are not alone.

Edward Seymour
Edward Seymour
1 year ago

As a non Jew I went on the march, largely motivated by the sheer evil of Kay Burley’s casual remark on air that the IDF devalues Palestinian Arab lives by swapping 3 Arabs for 1 Jew. That is the kind of common or garden, every day antisemitism that runs right through the broadcasters and bien pensants generally. And just look at who is swapped for whom: little children kidnapped from their beds swapped for teenagers and young adults who have attempted murder. The Israeli spokesman could visibly not believe his ears at Burley’s remark. Israel would prefer to just get their people back without any swaps or at least one for one, but it is actually the case that people like Burley act as useful idiots by their continual harping on the plight of the poor Palestinians, the only demographic to have professionalised generations long “refugee” status. How odd that despite so-called “genocide” the Palestinian population continues to grow and grow. The Jewish world population by contrast is only partially recovering after an actual genocide and holocaust. October 07 changed my whole life and views about everything. And I say that as someone nearing 80.

james goater
james goater
1 year ago
Reply to  Edward Seymour

A valuable statement of considerable power, thank you. I identify with your sentiments entirely.

Gordon Arta
Gordon Arta
1 year ago

Owen Jones has not, and cannot, change his opinions. What passes for a brain has been programmed, and nothing’s going to alter the way it ‘works’.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
1 year ago
Reply to  Gordon Arta

Yes. But why does anyone care what Owen Jones thinks?

Sharon Overy
Sharon Overy
1 year ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

Because he has a public voice, he has ‘reach’, and therefore a certain degree of influence on others.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 year ago

As an Irish person, I am utterly ashamed by the response of both the political and the chattering classes in Ireland. Varadker’s response is particularly baffling considering that, given his lifestyle , Hamas would see him swinging off the end of a crane. He and Higgins seem to be in competition to say the most offensive thing without admitting that they are antisemites.

Leonel SIlva Rocha
Leonel SIlva Rocha
1 year ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Forgive the ignorance, but who’s Higgins?

Niall Cusack
Niall Cusack
1 year ago

Michael D Higgins is the President of Ireland.

Kirk Susong
Kirk Susong
1 year ago

“face down extremism and bigotry and antisemitism and islamophobia and all forms of racism”
I don’t understand why the vicar can’t see how misleading this kind of language is. Both the Israelis and the Palestinians claim to be the object of extreme, irrational bigotry from the other side. These moral equivalences utterly misunderstand the conflict and lead to yet more conflict, since everyone is on the side of vague ideals like “peace.” They are empty slogans that paper over genuine differences, differences that must be examined and resolved for actual peace to be achieved.
The real debate here isn’t between Jews and Muslims, or even between Israelis and Palestinians, but between the West and the Rest. Is it OK that a bunch of European Jews moved to this little patch of Arab land, and transformed a backwards society into a free market, open democracy? Or should the locals have been free to do things their own way, however negative their chosen outcomes might be? That’s the question at the heart of October 7.

Charles Joseph
Charles Joseph
1 year ago
Reply to  Kirk Susong

At this point 70% of Israeli Jews are descended from Jews forcibly expelled from Arab countries. And the 20% of Israelis who are Arab do not want to live in a different country or culture.

Hazel Gazit
Hazel Gazit
1 year ago
Reply to  Kirk Susong

You forget the point that there has been a continued Jewish presence, however small, for 3,000 years. To forget this buys into the “white, colonial” construct. And no-one ever mentions that Jordan, Iraq and Pakistan were entirely created by the white, colonial winning side in 1918.

Kirk Susong
Kirk Susong
1 year ago
Reply to  Hazel Gazit

Until the middle part of the 19th century native Jews were a tiny portion of the Palestinian population. They became a much more significant (though still minority) portion of the population thanks to many striking world events that began in the late 19th century and carried on right through 1948 and beyond – everything from pogroms to global Zionism to the Holocaust. The problem (from the perspective of the woke) is that they were so darn successful in building an estimable society. In the words of Thomas Sowell, if the Jews want to end anti-Semitism, all they have to do is stop being successful.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
1 year ago
Reply to  Kirk Susong

Most Israeli Jews are descendants of Mizrahi (IE: not European).

Rafi Stern
Rafi Stern
1 year ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

Probably not true. Nearer half and half, ashkenazim – sefardim/mizrahiim.

Guillermo Torres
Guillermo Torres
1 year ago
Reply to  Kirk Susong

Two cents – The European Jews didn’t transform a backwards society on “Arab land,” as much as they created their own, renewed society from scratch (the old Yishuv notwithstanding), on their ancestral land.

Martin Smith
Martin Smith
1 year ago

Robinson ejected, Johnson celebrated.

laurence scaduto
laurence scaduto
1 year ago

“…Those Hamas 20 somethings…were surprised that they got thru the fence…I don’t think they were quite prepared for it.”
This is very significant. Footage I saw in the NYTimes that day showed that there was a second wave of attackers, larger than the first; with no green headbands, carrying a hodge-podge of weapons.
Our understanding that the civilians are all innocent bystanders/victims needs to be re-examined. I think that when it became clear that the IDF was caught sleeping, a lot of devout Muslim fathers, sons, brothers and husbands decided to have a bit of a spree themselves.
Even after what I saw in NYC on 9/11, I can only imagine how endangered the Israelis must feel; “…their world will never be the same again.”
The Jews of the world obviously need a defensible homeland.

Last edited 1 year ago by laurence scaduto
Dengie Dave
Dengie Dave
1 year ago

I was there at the march too. I’m a half-Jew who lives in a small town of 25,000 where I know of only two Jews. One I met because she proudly wore her star of David, which encouraged me to do the same. Now she hides it. By wearing mine I’ve learned how deeply rooted antisemitism is, particular among middle-class liberals, who see my star and pile in with ill-informed opinions and condemnations of Israel. I say to them: “Funny, I though I was English. Why do you think I should somehow account for the actions of Israel?” Then I ask them if when they meet English Muslims do they then offload and interrogate them about the actions of Muslim countries? That stumps them. At a dinner party I heard someone say of a couple: “She’s English, but he’s Jewish.” No one called the comment out, and I felt as if transported back to a Berlin salon of the 1920/30s. Would this same person say of her cousin?: “She’s English, but her partner’s black.” Of course not; these are proud self-proclaimed antiracists! That was the last dinner party I went to.
I travelled to London to take part in the march because I needed some community and to feel less alone. On several occasions I was so overwhelmed by the warmth there I teared up. I hooked up with a university professor who teaches in New Zealand, and for an hour, as we walked and talked, I learned of his story and his roots, and told him of mine. His father, now 97, had lived through Kristallnact in 1938, and escaped Germany in 1939, just in time.
At the end, we hugged, welled up in each other’s embrace, and parted. Now I feel less alone.

R Wright
R Wright
1 year ago

“since the fascists were pushed back by a similar number of indignant cockneys at the Battle of Cable Street”
There was no ‘battle’ at Cable Street. Just communists setting up barricades, fighting the police and then the whole damn squib getting mythologised. There weren’t even Blackshirts at Cable Street. Their march was cancelled. The amount of propagandising over interwar British history otherwise intelligent people fall for is absurd.

Last edited 1 year ago by robertdkwright
Citizen Diversity
Citizen Diversity
1 year ago

It’s not just antisemitism that rots the brain. Evidently centrism does the job just as well. To describe a little girl kidnapped by murderers as being lost and found, as if she turned up at the lost property office at Waterloo Station, is the rotting made plain.
Or it would be but for the odour of violets, the appearance of moderation and even-handedness and non-judgmentalism, that this form of rotting takes. How can the good be rotten at heart? How can a statement of rejoicing over a girl returned to her father put a twist in the speaker’s soul?
The trouble with influencing is that anyone can do it. Smearing grease over the lens that looks at merciless murder can equally be done with any incident. And after all, the Taoiseach is busy dealing with the images of new Troubles brewing in his own country. Nothing that some grease cannot smooth away.

Tyler Durden
Tyler Durden
1 year ago

Does the European and Anglo Marxist Left want to see the Jews eradicated from the Middle East like the Islamists do in the Arab parts of Israel?
It would appear so – what a sad thing to observe in 2023. I’m happy to take myself as personally at war with the Left as well as their fundamentalist allies.

Kristin Shewfelt
Kristin Shewfelt
1 year ago

I live in Los Angeles. One of my clients, an Orthodox Jew, came in this morning. I asked him how his family in Israel is doing. He said they were all doing fine. He also added that his Palestinian friends were so far doing ok as well. He prays for them all. God bless him. So do I.

Vesselina Zaitzeva
Vesselina Zaitzeva
1 year ago

A very powerful article. Thank you.

Anthony Roe
Anthony Roe
1 year ago

It is unfortunate that the march was not fronted by some men of substance, military veterans, engineers, scientists, statesmen etc; rather than the ‘luvvies and celebrities’.

Keith Merrick
Keith Merrick
1 year ago

I think Richard Hanania is right. The best policy for Israel now is to give Palestinians no hope their dreams will ever be realised, just as the Allies bombed Germany and Japan into the realisation that for them it was over. And once hope is gone, so is the anger. You only get angry with people you think you have a chance of defeating.
And after all, what does Israel have to lose? Neither Palestinians, nor the corrupt UN, nor useful idiots in the west could hate Israel more than they already do, so what does it matter what they think? They will all hate Israel regardless of what they do. The more considerate Israel is, the worse the response because the more Palestinians think they have a chance. Okay then, gloves off and finish this once and for all. Ignore all the hand-wringing from the usual suspects who would have Israel return to it’s impossible pre-7 October state and quash Palestinian dreams once and for all.

Last edited 1 year ago by Keith Merrick
UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 year ago
Reply to  Keith Merrick

The words of someone absolutely bereft of morality or humanity.

Gorka Sillero
Gorka Sillero
1 year ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Ok jihadi sympathiser

Ray Andrews
Ray Andrews
1 year ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

He does have moral clarity tho. It’s either justice or extermination. He favors extermination just like Hitler did. But, as my dad used to say, the Jews are the one people on earth who should know better than to dehumanize other people.

Adolphus Longestaffe
Adolphus Longestaffe
1 year ago

Those willing to view some unforgettable footage in a similar vein (though obviously not comparable to that which you saw) should seek out Ervin Leiser’s documentary Mein Kampf (1960), which introduced the phrase “Never again” into the discussion of the Holocaust.
Being taken by my father to see that film was a formative experience for me, a Gentile. (The link below is to a year-old essay on the subject at hand, not to the documentary.)
https://thefamilyproperty.blogspot.com/2022/11/never-draws-near.html

Peter Lee
Peter Lee
1 year ago

I think comments should be kept brief and to the point as per Charles Stanhope. I just do not think they get read if they are too long.

William Edward Henry Appleby
William Edward Henry Appleby
1 year ago
Reply to  Peter Lee

Well, that depends on the reader’s attention span. Not every opinion can be expressed as some pithy aphorism; sometimes less is not more.

martin logan
martin logan
1 year ago

The ur-mistake was to create an ethno-nationalist state in the Middle East.
It simply replicated the disastrous nationalisms that killed more than 100 million in Europe and elsewhere in the last century.
It made some sense to create a refuge for persecuted Jews. But so were the US, Britain, and many other places.
But creating a nation based explicitly on a particularly ethnic group is a horrible idea, and can only lead to bloodshed.
Now we have a deeply traumatized Israeli Army attempting to keep 6 million Palestinians in check. They’ve seen the same videos and many will be out for revenge against all Palestinians. Moreover, they will enable the half million Israeli settlers to terrorize and steal more Palestinian land.
Unlike Ukraine, this is a conflict where both sides are wrong. It’s very unlikely that any outside force can stave off the many atrocities to come.
So our only real option is to totally disengage, to take on as little of the guilt as possible.
What has happened–and what happens next–will condemn the perpetrators forever…

Kolya Wolf
Kolya Wolf
1 year ago
Reply to  martin logan

So what you are saying is that the ur-mistake of creating the ethno-nationalist state of Israel should be corrected by creating the ethno-nationalist state of Palestine, with the difference that whereas 21% of Israelis are Arabs, the state of Palestine would be judenrein.

Alan Gore
Alan Gore
1 year ago

Good article! Vestiges of the old British spirit still exist, and not just overseas.

Juan Manuel Pérez Porrúa
Juan Manuel Pérez Porrúa
1 year ago

Indeed. The Russian-Ukrainian War is still raging, with no end or resolution in sight. History never ends.

Ryan K
Ryan K
8 months ago

Now it is April. Who knows how many hostages are still alive? Held by the “humanitarians.” As I was told on the WCK page on FB…”at least they are being fed.” Gee, what a relief. Arabs are starving while Jews get to eat. I ripped a Palestine flag “free Palestine” sticker from outside a heavily used S Asian market. Or as much as I could. My friend chided me aren’t I doing the same as those ripping down the hostage posters. I was surprised. I felt very good about ripping off the poster. Now one never sees a hostage poster. the pro hamas disrupters will be gearing up for NY’s annual Israel parade….like all the ethnicities here we get to have a parade….I’m sure that this year there will be a massive pro hamas counter demonstration to disrupt this bit of ethnic cheering. No Turks disrupt the Greek independence Day parade. No one bothers with the Puerto Rican Day parade…the largest. Or Orange men here to disrupt the Irish on St. Patrick’s day. Oh well, that is what it is to be a Jew. We don’t have a parade without massive counter demonstrators.

Max Rottersman
Max Rottersman
1 year ago

Leave it to a Vicar to speak for God, who is good and who is evil.

George Venning
George Venning
1 year ago

I’m glad the march took place and I should say that I’m hardly surprised that it was an entirely peaceful affair. The fact that the march was peaceful and the fact that there were no counter-demonstrators rather underscores the fact that the hundred and hundreds of thousands who marched for Gaza don’t hate Jews – they want an end to the oppression of the Palestinian people.
But there’s some irony in Fraser mocking the gullible fools and useful idiots taken in by the Hamas PR machine and then segueing straight into an account of a screening of horrific footage organised by the IDF.
I don’t doubt that what he saw was unimaginably gruesome. But, has he reflected even for a moment on just how inconceivable it would be for the Palestinian Authority – let alone Hamas – to organise an official screening of curated horrors from Gaza under the bombs?
Has he taken a moment to imagine what he might have seen in such a screening? Would it have seemed any less barbaric simply because it was “unintended”? would there have been fewer “lifeless bodies of children in their Mickey Mouse pyjamas,” would “the contortions of the dying, the endless pools of blood” have been any less distressing? Would the bodycams of the IDF have revealed tearfully reluctant warriors, wracked with conscience over their actions?
“Never Again is Now” read the posters from the march but, to Fraser “this time, the resistance to evil will be deafening. So don’t let a temporary ceasefire fool you. The horror is far from over.”
Irony is dead.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 year ago
Reply to  George Venning

Excellent riposte. Remember the first and most important stage for any fascist regime. Control the press and control the narrative. Exactly what Isreal has done and continues to do.

Gorka Sillero
Gorka Sillero
1 year ago
Reply to  George Venning

“Let alone Hamas – to organise an official screening of curated horrors from Gaza under the bombs”

I would say that this is actually happening right now, with the propaganda machinery working at full speed on every social network as well as on some Mass Media retailers like The Guardian or the BBC. Including the isis sympathiser who appears in every Hamas psyop working on a range of professions: from radiologist to milician and surviving death at least once

George Venning
George Venning
1 year ago
Reply to  Gorka Sillero

No it is not. Don’t be silly. The screening of this film was organised by the Israeli military and, presumably, facilitated by the Israeli diplomatic service.
Whatever you may think about the BBC or the Guardian, they are not officially tied to either of the participants in this conflict.
Moreover, if you think that either of those organisations is biased in favour of Hamas, you’re going to have to do better than your final sentence. Who are you talking about?

Peter Lee
Peter Lee
1 year ago
Reply to  George Venning

“just how inconceivable it would be for the Palestinian Authority – let alone Hamas – to organise an official screening of curated horrors from Gaza under the bombs?”. The fact that they don’t is probably more indicative of how they exaggerate than not having the capability. See the bombing of the Hospital that was subsequent proved to be an errant palestinian rocket in a parking lot.