Further to that horrendous demo outside the BBC against the BBC’s perceived pro-Israel bias, Douglas Murray has a serious piece on the Gatestone Institute blog.
Behind their smiles and the increasingly competent public relations that the pro-Hamas faction is managing in Britain, it is possible for some people to forget that what brings these people out is one simple thing: a hatred of the Jewish state and a desire to see it annihilated by the terrorists of Hamas or anyone else at hand.
There are those who will say this is a not-sufficiently-nuanced observation, that the motives of those protesting Israeli action are motivated by something other than a great hatred of Jews and the Jewish state. But if this were true, why would their posters say, "Stop the Holocaust in Gaza?" There is no "Holocaust" in Gaza. Anybody can see there is no similarity between the organized and systematic murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis and the precision targeting of some Hamas rocket sites, some of which are deliberately hidden under hospitals, in the Gaza Strip. Why do the protestors say "Holocaust" then? They know that this way they will hurt Jews as deeply as possible. By using the term "Holocaust" for this, they will either give the impression that the Holocaust was a small and minimal thing in the history of war -- such as the confrontation between Hamas and Israel currently is -- or else that the Israelis are, in their view, currently carrying out precisely the same barbarism which made the creation of the state of Israel such an added necessity for Jews in the 1940s, and that by supposedly becoming the Nazis they are meant to abhor, the Jews have forfeited any right to be regarded as part of acceptable humankind.
It’s about this kind of demo, and what this says about our country. This atmosphere is getting very 1939ish. Douglas concludes that hate-filled masses are more harmful to us than they could ever be to Israel, but I’m not so sure. If the BBC is pressured into appeasing the angry mob, spreading hatred hither and thither, affecting governments everywhere, till Israel is on its own-io in the way the boycotters and exterminators desire. If it’s not too late already.
That is a very powerful and, I would think, undeniably true point from Douglas Murray. Our surprisingly large Electronic Intifada readership (yes, we know you're watching us!) might do well to read it and think about it.
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