I’m a Jew at ‘The Guardian.’ I Don’t Feel Safe at Work. By an anonymous employee at Britain’s foremost left-leaning newspaper.
I check the news. Hamas has entered southern Israel. They’re in a kibbutz. My partner’s family is in that kibbutz. His cousin is nine months pregnant. He’s in contact with them; they’re in the safe room. Terrorists are outside. …
On Sunday, we get more information about what happened to my partner’s family, about how Hamas set the family’s house on fire when they thought it was empty, how my partner’s cousin screamed for her life when the room filled with smoke, how her husband had to pin her down to stop her cries, how Hamas laughed when they realized the family would need to crawl out of the room, how they refused to leave the burning building. We hear that they somehow survived and walked out through pools of their neighbors’ blood, pieces of dead children littering the street; kids who’d been playing on a Saturday morning.
I’m safe, I’m fine, but I can’t comprehend the color of the sky or the rustle of the trees. I look around at people enjoying their Sunday and I think: Do they not know what is happening? …
I listen to the radio, one Israeli interviewee and then one Palestinian. I can hear that the interviewer is struggling as defenders of Hamas justify terrorism. I don’t understand. Is this how they reported the Russian invasion of Ukraine? Did they platform Putin’s people?
Left-wing friends and colleagues:
I check social media. A friend has posted: “They’ve broken out of jail.” Another has said: “Today is a day of celebration,” and someone else has shared an infographic of “Settler colonialism for beginners.” My old flatmate tells her followers she will be at the demonstration outside the Israeli embassy and she invites people to join her.
On Monday I go to work. How are your family, a colleague asks. When I answer, she squirms. Can’t they just leave, my colleague says. No, they can’t actually.
I see a colleague who had posted about “decolonization” all over social media over the weekend. They’re laughing with the rest of their team. They’re having a great day. I used to love their podcast, full of hot takes and celeb gossip. Now they’ve evolved into an expert on the Middle East. It doesn’t look like their family is in the middle of it, though.
No one else at work speaks to me about it. I nod my way through conversations about fonts and I stumble home.
I go back the next day. I look at the front page. A photo of Gaza and “violence escalates.” Israelis “dead” but Palestinians “killed.” If they can’t empathize with the Jews now, they never will.
I email the editors. I tell them that my newspaper’s coverage has been upsetting. They tell me that their thoughts are with my family but they stand by the paper’s reporting.
I hear colleagues complaining about the newspaper’s “American readers. They’re always accusing us of antisemitism.” They’re laughing. …
I’ve seen on social media that I know people going to a demonstration. Later, I see photos of it: people on lampposts, red flares, Jews hiding inside, the Israeli embassy boxed in. All kinds of people are united in the chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” In Sydney, they are shouting: “Gas the Jews.”
On Tuesday, I find out that my friend’s friend at the music festival is dead. I remember the day I’d spent with him on the beach in Tel Aviv last month. He’d gotten back from South America and was excited to travel again. He had been gentle and sweet. I don’t understand. …
Back at work I see someone pointing to a photo of the Israeli flag burning in the newspaper. They laugh, “This is my favorite picture.”
I remember telling my family that when I next went to Israel I’d lie to my colleagues and tell them it was Spain. I’d lie because my colleagues had said to me of Israel: “You gotta go while you still can.” …
The newspaper I work for is covering the bombardment of Gaza and I watch in horror. I think that Israel must defend itself. Yet when I say this, people will tell me I am justifying the murder of children. They will tell me it is a genocide. …
In the weeks that follow, I will apply for other jobs and speak exclusively to Jewish friends and family. I will hide myself away from the streets of London and the waves of social media.
Must be a fair bit of red-pilling going on. The anti-left coalition of outsiders grows and grows.
The woke gang is taking over the left, horrifying and repelling the more intellectual or the more talented with their socialism and brutality. Like the Nazis did to the communists in prewar Germany. The Nazis tended to be midwits.
The fascists started as the communist party. Soldiers returning from WW1 figured that nationalism was more powerful than communism, because the working class on both sides of the trenches fought each other rather than uniting and throwing off their capitalist bosses like Marx said they would. So the soldiers (starting with Mussolini) injected nationalism into communism, and the fascist movement was born. The Nazis were National Socialists, an amalgam of German nationalism and communism. (Ever notice that the Nazis put group rights ahead of individual rights? The essence of leftism.)
As the fascists learned that canceling their opponents was more effective than arguing with or persuading, the cancellers in the fascist movement took over from the arguers and persuaders. The same is happening in the left today.
