Today is the second anniversary of the worst atrocity against Jews since the Holocaust.
At the end of World War II, which saw around 6.5m Jews murdered, there was universal agreement on two words: “Never again.”
Israel created by UN in 1948
Such was the sincerity of this agreement that in May 1948 the United Nations (UN) spoke into existence the modern state of Israel – a homeland for a people who until that moment did not have one.
But the world’s oldest hatred didn’t die. Today’s answer to Hitler’s National Socialist Party lives on in the form of various Iran-funded proxies across the Middle East, including Hamas, whose operatives hide under Gaza in tunnels funded by foreign aid money intended to feed and care for the 2.1m souls who live above ground.
Hamas were voted in 2006
On October 7th, 2023, 17 years after being voted into power by the Gazan people, Hamas terrorists crossed Gaza’s northern border into Israel and slaughtered more than 1,200 people. They didn’t seek out armed opponents. IDF soldiers are rather competent in fending off such threats. No, instead these marauding antisemites sought out women, children, old folks, unarmed civilians.
They filmed their depravity, sending back videos to their families a few miles south, shouting joyous slogans – and knowing that, once home, they would benefit from Hamas’s lifelong ‘pay to slay’ stipend afforded to anyone who kills a Jew.
Embodiment of evil
These events of two years ago were the embodiment of evil. Every right-minded person around the globe was revolted.
In the days afterwards Hamas, true to its charter, vowed, if given the chance, to repeat the atrocity again and again until the job (eradicating all Jews and Israel) was done – prompting an understandably fierce response from Israel.
50 hostages still not returned
But since October 7th, 2023, as 50 (estimated 20 still alive) hostages still languish in Hamas’s dungeons, something arguably more sinister has taken root.
Across the West a bizarre marriage has taken place between Islamic terror and the progressive “liberal” left – a marriage founded on falsehood and the inversion of truth, framing Israel as the aggressor and Hamas as the noble freedom fighter.
Sickening public displays of antisemitism
This has led to sickening public displays of brazen antisemitism that, even after last week’s murder of two Jews at a synagogue in Manchester, continued to take place just hours later in that city and in London.
For so many millions of Western people – in the US, the UK, Europe, Australia, Canada – to be so profoundly hoodwinked by Hamas propaganda is hard to fathom.
They gather in city centres and chant “globalise the intifada” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine must be free” as they, wittingly or otherwise, discover a faux righteousness in the perversion of Hamas.
Israel is right to remove Hamas
There is no doubt, the devastation and death of civilians in Gaza is awful. War is messy and ugly. We will and pray it stops soon. But for countless Westerners to gloss over what Israel is trying to do – remove an enemy that vows to kill all Jews and hides below Gaza’s civilian population – and instead shout hate-filled falsehoods at increasing volume is as absurd as it is depressing.
And when Western heads of state, including Keir Starmer, recognise a state of Palestine – a state which no one can find on a map – they do two things: firstly, they reward terrorism, and secondly, they legitimise the antisemitic hatred that grows ever louder on our streets.
Jews are not safe in Britain like they used to be
Last week I wrote that Jews once fled Europe for the sanctuary of Britain. Sadly, those days are gone. For the first time in UK history, Jews have now been slain in their place of worship – and on Yom Kippur, no less, the holiest Jewish day.
After suffering the most egregious attack since the Holocaust on October 7th, 2023, one might have naively presumed the Jews would attract universal sympathy.
Oct 7th has unleashed anti-Jewish hatred
But no, the opposite. Instead the world’s oldest hatred has been unleashed and emboldened, fuelled by endless bad ideas on social media and afforded a permissive environment in which to thrive by limp leaders who appease Islamic terror rather than confront it.
This is shameful. Britain has a proud history of being on the right side of history, most notably when Hitler tried to eliminate the Jews in the 1930s and 40s.
Two years on from October 7th and Israel’s guns will eventually fall silent. Hamas will eventually, if half-heartedly, sign an agreement. And a fragile peace, which probably won’t last long, possibly authored by Trump, will be ushered in.
A huge problem remains in Britain
But in Britain, as in other Western nations, it does not end there. That’s because we have a larger, less solvable problem to grapple with: a Government and a sizeable portion of our population who, unlike World War II, can’t tell right from wrong and are volubly and violently on the wrong side of history.
Never again
So, as we must, in hope if not expectation, we say: “Never again.”
