Shameless, free-for-all bigotry without reproach. By Carli Philips.
Anti-Jewish sentiment has moved far beyond bias and backyard whispers, past done-in-the-dark swastikas and behind-the-scenes boardrooms or masked keyboard warriors. Day after day, abhorrent vitriol rages across placards, loudspeakers, posters and graffiti calling for Jews to be gassed. Circulated across social media, it’s an endless stream of content with no reprieve.
Faces aren’t disguised, names aren’t blurred out — it’s shameless, free-for-all bigotry without reproach.
An Instagram account that “names and shames” those ripping down hostage posters bears no weight any more. The woke TikTok generation parrots from the pulpits of their safe homes and local cafes to “ceasefire now!” and to “free Palestine from the river to the sea” – a death chant that calls for annihilation of the world’s only Jewish state. Call it what you will, but we see you — and you may as well be wearing white hoods and cloaks.
The pro-Palestinian movement is not protest in context (Hamas has struck Israel’s Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon three times since the start of the war yet nobody seems to care), nor is it advocating for Palestinian people in good faith (that would require condemnation of Hamas). Rather, it is about a fundamental, deep-rooted hatred of the Jewish people – and this “cause” is as good an excuse as any.
Anti-Semitism has always bubbled away at the surface, Hamas has just given it licence to explode. The result is untenable vulnerability and isolation. And because the reality is that there is power in numbers, Jews are being bullied into submission: hiding at home for fear of gangs like the one in Melbourne asking passing motorists if they knew “where to find the Jews”; taking off traditional Magen David jewellery in public to avoid anything that may be a “dead giveaway”; encouraging our children not to wear school uniforms on public transport.
The Nazis were also a bunch of socialist midwits who dominated by bullying, and who rather disliked western civilization and Christianity. And hated Jews.
