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Antisemitism Is an Early-Warning Siren for Western Society
(Spiked-UK) Douglas Murray interviewed by Brendan O'Neill - From the moment news emerged on Oct. 7, 2023, that Hamas terrorists were tearing through Israel, butchering, raping and kidnapping civilians, a sizeable proportion of Westerners, including among the elites, failed to understand what was at stake. Here was a Western liberal democracy under attack by an army of Islamist antisemites, hell-bent on the destruction of the Jewish state. Yet every attempt by Israel to defend itself has been cast as an act of unjustified aggression - or worse, an attempt at genocide. Douglas Murray, author of the new book, On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel, Hamas and the Future of the West, explains that on Oct. 8, "I saw a pro-Hamas demonstration taking place in Times Square. At that time, the massacre was still ongoing in the south of Israel. Yet here were hundreds of people in New York, all celebrating and waving placards saying things like 'by any means necessary.'" "I just thought, what is happening? Of course, it's possible to favor the creation of a Palestinian state. But why would you choose the moment when Hamas's massacre is still going on to support the people doing the killing? This was before Israel had even done anything in response." "It occurred to me that there is something about the Israelis in the minds of some of the general public which makes them uniquely undeserving of empathy. Survivors of the Nova festival - young people who were...set upon by Hamas terrorists, massacred and raped - are treated wherever they go as if they themselves are the culprits." "Israelis are accused of things which they haven't done or aren't doing, by people who either want to do those things themselves, or would like the Israelis to suffer those things, or who have been told that these are things that their own nation has done....We see young people from Britain to Australia, Canada and America, who...accuse the Israelis of things like colonialism, genocide and white supremacy - all of which are offenses that these young people in particular have been told that they themselves are guilty of." "It is unclear what you are to do, as a generation taught that you are guilty of crimes for which you have no responsibility. It is an unsolvable situation. But the Jewish state presents an answer - a scapegoat on to which you can project all the crimes you were told you were guilty of." "In Britain we have hundreds of thousands of people who are sympathetic to Hamas....We need to be able to say that if you want to bring down the West, if you want to kill the Jews, if you hate liberal democracy and you want to subvert it, then there are lots of places you can live, but this ain't one of them."