This evening, I joined Josh Howie on GB News to discuss my new book, Never Again? How the West betrayed the Jews and itself, which will be published in September. It was good to talk about the book; having stepped down as editor of the Jewish Chronicle on Friday, tomorrow I make a start on the writing.
The last time I appeared on the channel, it was rather less convivial. At one point, Kieran Andrieu, an obscure Novara Media contributor (who used to work for controversial Tower Hamlets mayor Lutfur Rahman), barked at me: “How many dead children do you need before you’re satisfied that Hamas has been destroyed?”
I replied: “What kind of a question is that? I don’t want any dead children.” He didn’t seem convinced. So it goes. You can’t move for the blood libel these days.
Andrieu then attempted to discount my point that Israel was fighting lawfully in Gaza by citing all the bodies who disagreed. The International Court of Justice, he cried! the International Criminal Court! Human Rights Watch! Amnesty International! the United Nations! I think he mentioned a few more, but I’d stopped listening.
The thing is, the chap from Novara was right. Not about Jews and the blood of Gentile children, but about the multinational institutions. To a greater or lesser extent, all of those he listed had accepted and amplified Hamas propaganda, from the sexed-up casualty figures to allegations of “genocide”. Indeed, as can be seen in the clip below, Andrieu shamefully accepted those figures himself.
But the fact that so many repeat a distortion does not make it true. It just demonstrates the pervasiveness of the falsehood. Which brings me back to Never Again?. My new book will map the maze of hostility in which Jews now find themselves trapped, and will go on to suggest the only way out: the West must rediscover its confidence in itself.
This seems to me the most important topic of our times. The Israelophobia that has become so commonplace since October 2023 did not come out of nowhere. It was the result of a convergence of cultural, demographic and social changes, combined with deficient political leadership across the democracies and a misplaced complacency that the darkness was behind us. In recent decades, immigration has been allowed to spiral out of control with little concern for the integration of new arrivals, some of which have carried damaging illiberalism into the heart of the world’s most tolerant and pluralistic societies.
At the same time, radical progressive ideologies on race, gender, sexuality and the environment – the bastard offspring of the Cold War and the sexual revolution – have come to dominate social and governmental institutions, even though most ordinary citizens have no time for them. As fidelity for liberal freedoms has waned among the governing classes, a new leftist authoritarianism has sprouted, with the overstretched British police expending disproportionate quantities of energy targeting those expressing unfashionable or offensive views on social media.
These various trends have blended, allowing radical Islamists to operate in plain sight (imams calling for the “destruction” of Zionists from the pulpit have been ignored by the police, who instead clamp down on those making offensive remarks about immigration on Twitter) under the protection of progressives. These various agents of malaise have one common denominator: antipathy towards the Jews.
An alarming study recently revealed that three out of four British Muslims did not believe that Hamas had committed murder and rape on October 7. As a group, they were more likely to have a positive view of the jihadi group than a negative one. Half thought that Jews had too much power over British and American government policy; more than half wanted to make it a criminal offence to show a picture of Mohammad; and a third wanted Britain to be subjected to Shariah, with Islam taken as the national religion.
This makes for uncomfortable reading. Although it must not be swept under the carpet, it would be a mistake to allow it to eclipse the many Muslims who contribute profoundly towards society in the West and resist authoritarianism, corruption and brutality elsewhere in the world. As these people demonstrate, Islam is not necessarily the problem; but the radicalism within their broad demographic cannot be denied. With that community already accounting for between six and ten per cent of the population of Europe, it is understandable that many Jews, who comprise a tiny fraction of that proportion, feel uneasy. And when Jews feel anxious about their future, warning signs should blink on the dashboard of wider society.
The problem is hardly restricted to immigrant populations. Across the West, Islamism has blended with the rise of a new progressive radicalism via the overlap of “decolonisation” theory, which was born in the academy in the Fifties and Sixties. Once again, Jews have been scapegoated, shamefully conjured as the personification of colonialism and white supremacy regardless of the facts. The principle of intersectionality – which demands solidarity among diverse radical groups – has acted as a call to arms for fanatics who otherwise campaigned on radical race, gender, sexual and climate platforms.
The election of Donald Trump in the United States runs contrary to this trend. His muscular support for Israel and intolerance of progressive activism on campus and elsewhere has been refreshing, but it is impossible to ignore his flirtation with conspiracy theorists and Holocaust deniers, such as Nick Fuentes and Kanye West, who are hardly friendly to the Jews. Led by the likes of Tucker Carlson, Trump’s online base often indulges in the sort of old-fashioned antisemitism that does not even feel the need for the mask of “anti-Zionism”. The very fact that this populist firebrand is widely seen as the only hope for the West’s beleaguered Jewish communities is a damning indictment of our political class. Many Jews find themselves caught in the middle, unable to find safety on either side of the aisle.
Although the far-right is a menacing force in the United States and parts of Europe, the fact remains that the progressive left often commands far more sympathy amongst the governing elites and thus wields greater influence over the culture. After October 7, this burgeoning movement, which had already mobilised under the banners of Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellion, coalesced in devotion to the Palestinian flag. If the Jews were now ciphers for western liberalism, the red triangle and green, black and white stripes became code for revolution.
With startling speed, Gaza activists expanded their blast zone to include Western culture itself, both sublime and quotidian. The Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes were torn down or burnt, war memorials were defaced and the statue of Winston Churchill outside Parliament required protection. Banks, clothes shops and supermarkets were vandalised.
Harnessing a following from trans, race and climate activists, the Gaza marches sparked an insurrection against the societies which had bequeathed the world the greatest human flourishing it had ever seen, and which had given the young activists the liberty to protest. These luxury revolutionaries did it all while glued to TikTok, a subversive Chinese social media platform (viewed on devices that doubtless contained Israeli components) and cosplaying as the very people who would kill them.
In this way, as the forces of hypocrisy, ignorance, narcissism, digital brain-rot and petulance combined with imported Islamism, the Palestinian cause won pride of place in a suite of views that are advancing deep divisions in our societies, imperilling our collective future. Meanwhile, the social media-fuelled backlash from the far-right has unleashed demons that we thought we would never see again in our democracies. As ever, first in the firing-line – from both angles – are the Jews.
Many Jewish communities now find themselves fearing a future in which safety is far from guaranteed. Israel’s significance as a haven has been shaken more profoundly than any time in the last fifty years, while around the world many Jews are hiding their identities and views. The result is the degeneration of Jewish selfhood on a scale that has not been seen since the War. While the Palestinian flag is now ubiquitous, many Jews are removing their kippot from their heads and their mezzuzot from their doorposts and would never dream of flying an Israeli flag.
These are the principal ideas that I will explore in the book. Leaving my position as editor of the world’s oldest Jewish newspaper was a big decision. But at this time of great global turbulence, in which Jews have been shunted against their will into the very epicentre of the debate, it seemed vitally important to explore the unnerving story of how we got here and the dangers that lie ahead.
My book will conclude with a manifesto for standing up for the world’s oldest and most cultured minority at this dangerous time, which means preserving true liberal values and restoring sanity to the West. The Jewish Chronicle is in its healthiest state for years, and the new editor, Daniel Schwammenthal, seems excellent. My battle now lies elsewhere.
And I’ll be Substacking much more, too.
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