Demonise Israelis long enough and violence against Jews will happen

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visits Adass Israel Synagogue in Ripponlea. It was destroyed when firebombed last week. Picture: Instagram

“Nothing to do with us” – that has been the cry of every anti-Israel activist in the wake of the firebombing of the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne. As the synagogue’s Torah scrolls still smouldered, as the community still reeled from the fiery fascism that befell their place of worship, the keffiyeh crew had just one thing on their minds: how can we distance ourselves from this?

There was an Israel-bashing protest in Melbourne’s CBD just two days after the barbarous pyromania. Yes, even a fanatical assault on a Jewish temple was not enough to convince the noisy marchers against the Jewish state to pipe down for a while.

And at that protest, speakers slammed the firebombing. That’s anti-Semitism, they said, whereas what we do is anti-Zionism.

“Whoever set fire to that synagogue is a racist, is a fascist, is a Nazi,” hollered one speaker. “They are not us.”

A socialist writer railed against those who had “latched on to the firebombing” to vilify “opponents of the Israeli genocide (sic) of Palestinians”. It was “false and reactionary”, he thundered, to pin the blame for Jew hate on people who only hated Israel.

I’m not convinced. To me, these people sound like bulls in a china shop wondering: “What happened to all those plates?”

They spend every weekend raging and spluttering against the only Jewish nation, then think they can feign astonishment when there’s a spike in hostility towards Jewish people?

They have devoted themselves, with a fervour that can be described only as curious, to slamming the homeland of the Jews as uniquely murderous, as genocidal, as borderline psychotic. Then they think they can say “Oops” when Jews themselves get it in the neck?

They have damned Israel for its “bloodletting”, its “murder” of children, its staggering cruelty. Then they think they can just scratch their heads when ancient libels about the Jews being a blood-lusting people rear their vile heads once more? No, I’m sorry, that’s not how this works. You don’t get to single out the Jewish nation as the worst nation, then act all confused when others single out the Jewish people as the worst people.

To my mind, there is a direct line from the activist class’s frothing obsession with Israel and the staggering back to life of a racial animus for Jews. And we need to talk about it.

The weakness of their plea that low-life anti-Semitism has nothing to do with their high-minded anti-Zionism was brought home by that gathering in Melbourne’s CBD.

The speakers may have denounced the synagogue attack as “fascism” but there were people in the crowd who seemed to hold views that were a tad fascistic. Or at least bigoted.

Amid the sea of keffiyehs, there bobbed a placard featuring the Star of David alongside an image of Benjamin Netanyahu and the word “EVIL”. Worse, Netanyahu was sporting a Hitler moustache.

In short, that Zio-mob in the Middle East are the new Nazis.

Damning the Jewish state as Hitler-like is brazen prejudice. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance includes in its definition of anti-Semitism any drawing of comparisons between “contemporary Israeli policy” and the policies of the Nazis.

And it is right to. For the defamation of Israel as Nazi-esque does something truly horrible: it implies the Jews have become the monsters who once hunted them.

It’s a kind of Jew taunting. The great British Jewish novelist Howard Jacobson once asked why Israel, more than any other nation, was so often likened to Nazi Germany.

There were “thousands of years of pitiless warfare” in human history, he said, yet it was always the Nazis Israel was compared to. It was because, he said, the aim was “to wound Jews”, to “punish them with their own grief”.

It is Jew bullying masquerading as activism.

Also at that CBD demo was a banner saying “Death to the Zionist regime”. That is, erase the Jewish nation, expel its evil from the earth. Listen, if you are on a march at which people are openly calling for the annihilation of a country, then you are not on a peace march – you’re on a hate march.

You do not get to parrot Iranian-style cries for the elimination of the world’s only Jewish state, then say “It wasn’t me, guv” when Jews themselves are targeted. Grow up.

So, at that gathering where the keffiyeh classes sought to make a moral distinction between anti-Israel agitation and anti-Jewish bigotry, we saw flashes of the latter.

Ignorance is the only explanation for people who think they can wave a Star of David alongside the word “evil” and that the descendants of David won’t potentially suffer consequences as a result. All anti-Israel marches are like this now. You’ll see the Star of David mangled with the swastika. You’ll hear wild claims about Israel committing “child murder”. You even may hear cries for the “Army of Mohammed” to return and finish off the Jews, as I did in London.

“It is not racist to criticise Israel,” they say. Sure, whatever. But what we see on our streets is not “criticism of Israel”. It is an unreasoned, unhinged obsession with Israel. A demented rage against it.

It seems to me that ancient hatreds have been given a woke makeover. When I see marchers claiming “the Zionists” control the media, I hear echoes of the old fascist belief that the Jews were the puppet masters of everything.

When I hear activists decry the “bloodletting” of “the Zionists”, I’m reminded of the blood libel that stalked Jews for centuries. Back then they were said to take pleasure in killing Christian children – now they’re said to enjoy killing Palestinian children.

“Criticism of Israel”? Don’t take us for fools. This is something else, something darker. And, yes, something liable to inflame coarser hatreds. A society in which it becomes fashionable to hate the Jewish nation above all other nations is a society in which it will become acceptable to hate Jews.

The activist class may not have started that fire at the Adass Israel Synagogue but it is certainly playing with fire. They need to take the heat out of their Israel hate before things get even worse.