In June 1967 Israel faced threats from its neighbours, for neither the first nor certainly the last time. Charles de Gaulle, the president of France, offered Israel advice on how to protect itself from Egypt, Syria and Jordan: do nothing. Do not fire the first shot, he counselled firmly. Israel disregarded that and destroyed almost all of Egypt’s air force. It then won what is now known as the Six-Day War.
Furious about having been ignored, de Gaulle described Jews as “an elite people, sure of themselves and domineering”. My great-uncle Alex Maguy knew de Gaulle because he had fought alongside him in the Free French movement. But when he heard what the old general had said, he boxed up his military medals and returned them to him. De Gaulle’s words reminded Alex how swiftly even those who look like friends can turn against the Jews.
Last week everyone from the mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, to the UN general assembly gave their thoughts on how Israel should react to the brutal pogroms by Hamas of October 7: like de Gaulle, they think Israel should do nothing. Similarly, more than 150 Labour councillors have signed an open letter demanding “an immediate ceasefire” as well as the release of Israeli hostages (“Oh well, if British Labour councillors demand it ...” you can hear Hamas murmuring).
The photos of the Israeli airstrikes on Gaza are so horrific they make you breathless — the shocking devastation; the corpses of children carried by their sobbing parents. But whereas Hamas deliberately targeted citizens, Israel has been urging Gaza’s citizens to flee south. “A powerful state, with powerful allies and a powerful army, engaged in a retaliatory attack against stateless Palestinians,” one journalist wrote. To which I say: yes, and perhaps Hamas could have considered that before it threw newborn Israeli babies on pyres. Man, those burnt babies really should check their privilege.
More than 280 British lawyers have signed an open letter (I increasingly feel open letters should be added to the list of war crimes) demanding that the UK stop exporting arms to Israel because the country is causing the starvation of Palestinians. It’s strange how much of the blame for the Palestinian suffering is being directed at Israel and not at Hamas, which allegedly had been planning its attacks for more than two years but apparently spent none of that time preparing for the safety of Palestinians during Israel’s entirely foreseeable response. This is in keeping with Hamas’s tradition of using Palestinians as human shields — Gaza has 2,660,000 citizens and 40,000 Hamas fighters — but that fact doesn’t fit in with the western liberal narrative of Israel as a brutal oppressor and anyone on the other side as a noble victim.
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So dominant is this narrative that the massacre of October 7 is increasingly denied or ignored. Near where I live in north London a young woman was filmed last week ripping up posters of the kidnapped Israelis because, she said, she didn’t believe they were real. Vogue Arabia’s November edition is — its editor explained in an Instagram post — focused on “what is currently happening in Gaza, in front of the eyes of the world, one of the biggest disasters in history”. Neither the Israeli pogroms nor Hamas is mentioned. An article ran in The Guardian with the headline “Israel must stop weaponising the Holocaust”. According to the “associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies” who wrote it, while the attacks in Israel were bad, they should be seen within “the context of Israeli settler colonialisation”. So Israel shouldn’t mention the Holocaust — in which two thirds of Europe’s Jews were murdered — when discussing Hamas, whose original charter called for a Jewish genocide (which you’d think a professor of genocide might mention in his article, but no). But the 1948 Arab-Israeli war should be cited — or indeed weaponised — in discussions of this month’s pogroms. Got it.
Israel has released footage from Hamas’s body-worn cameras showing exactly what it did to Israelis (would any other country be forced to prove the slaughter of its citizens to quash conspiracy theories?). Israeli aid workers have spoken publicly about the brutality they’ve seen: a foetus cut out of a murdered woman’s body; elderly women raped. When I read these reports, I absolutely do not feel Palestinians deserve to die in retaliation. But for the western self-described liberals who obscure the evils of Hamas and merrily chant, “From the river to the sea,” while marching through central London and on US college campuses, the existence of Israel justifies violence against its citizens.
Some say Israel is held to a higher standard than its neighbours by the West because it’s a democracy. I think it’s something else: there is racism in the low expectations so many have of the rest of the Middle East. The Palestinians deserve better than Hamas, and it’s strange more pro-Palestine campaigners aren’t saying this. Many are insisting Israel find “a peaceful solution” — yet how does it do that when Hamas is dedicated to its eradication?
Before Israel was founded, Jews were “rootless cosmopolitans”; now they’re “settler colonialists”. Antisemites sneer that Jews went “like sheep to the slaughter” in the Holocaust. But when they fight back against terrorists, they are too elite, domineering and sure of themselves. The prospect of a ground invasion in Gaza fills every Jew I know with dread. More deaths there, more antisemitism here. Even when we “win”, we lose.
