Maniacal hatred of Jews festers in cocoon of denial

In the hazy, floating, no-man’s land between Christmas Day and the new year, I read two books: one by a former journalist at this newspaper, Dan Box, called The Man Who Wasn’t There. I highly recommend it. The other, by best­selling children’s author Alex Ryvchin, isn’t for kids, though perhaps in hindsight a modified version should be.

Ryvchin’s The 7 Deadly Myths, chronicles and attempts to explain anti-Semitism from the time of Jesus to today.

I’m pretty well versed about the scourge of anti-Semitism in current times but my historical knowledge was shamefully non-existent. The book methodically outlines the most wild and mind-boggling stories of Jew hatred through the ages. The most fantastical, maniacal unthinkable tales, all historically documented, have been used to persecute Jews and no sane person reading about it can make it make sense.

What about the Enlightenment, I thought? What about the Renaissance? What about civilised minds of the 20th century?

Timing, as they say, is everything and I was halfway into The 7 Deadly Myths when The New York Times, well known as a predominantly left-leaning paper (that’s important, stay with me) published a devastating feature about the weaponisation of sexual violence by Hamas.

This long-form feature is the result of interviews with more than 150 people, including survivors and witnesses to the slaughter of October 7. It cites first-hand accounts and multiple primary sources, and meticulously explains how facts were verified. I don’t know how they managed. I could barely get through it. Their words dripped with grief, measured yet urgent with the weight of responsibility. The cadence of every line whispered: the world must know, the world must know.

Reading the responses to this article were an exercise in despair. Almost all expressed horror at the savagery of what had been documented, and thanked the reporters and the paper for bearing witness. Many more concurrently dived into the filthy waters of moral equivalence; this was savage and barbaric, they said. But, also, Israel sort of deserved it.

I realised in that moment there is a bloodstained thread that bound Ryvchin’s book to the article and the comments that followed. Denial. Denial of truth. Denial of facts. Denial that a moral centre has been violated.

I see no difference in the societal elites who centuries ago concocted the most ridiculous blood libel tales to violently enact pogroms on Jews across Europe and those who today are responding to the unthinkable sexual violence of Hamas with, well, Israel really is the oppressor.

Surely this thinking is a kind of sickness?

The NYT report details verified images of women’s corpses with nails driven into their thighs and groins. It verified a video showing two dead female IDF soldiers who had been shot directly into their vaginas. They interviewed a survivor who, hidden and feigning death, watched Hamas fighters mutilate a woman’s breasts while she was being raped.

I don’t want to go on, to keep recounting these horrors, but we must, as long as there are still people whose response is conditional. Who respond with, yes … but.

Let’s bring this closer to home and tease it out further, because we must. Nobody wants to have their world tipped upside down. Denial is a form of weakness. It is the ultimate form of self-preservation. It’s the person who stays with a cheating partner, ignoring the signs because the pain of dealing with it seems greater than the humiliation of the status quo. It’s the parent that refuses to accept their child is on drugs.

Vision has been released of 21 year old Mia Schem running towards her mother, after she was released from… Hamas. Ms Schem was abducted from the Supernova music festival in early October and appeared in a video released by Hamas 10 days later, pleading for her release. Mia was More

In corporate life, where I spend 99 per cent of my days, it’s the dysfunctional board that denies the existence of red flags, hiding behind the notion of stability, unable to acknowledge that this stability is a Band-Aid by another name.

It’s in myriad situations in everyday life where denial has consequences at only a personal level.

But, as a friend of mine said earlier in the week, what we’re seeing here is so different. It is uniquely directed at Jews, and at Israel and its right to exist. I can’t recall any other manifestation of hatred and denial on this scale.

French-Israeli hostage Mia Schem has given details of her ordeal during her 54 days held in Gaza. She was held captive by a Palestinian family. She talks of being confused – why is there a woman here? Why is there a family here? Then the penny dropped.

The same media that have been so swift, say, to believe all women, believe any woman who says anything about sexual violence, published an insulting disclaimer to Schem’s words, saying her account was yet to be verified. By all means, pop over to Gaza and ask the family that held her. I’m sure they will be honest and transparent.

Ah, but to believe Mia Schem means a brick in the protective wall of ideology comes down. Perhaps the wall itself. To deny her story is to stay in the same cocoon that refuses to accept a ceasefire, without Hamas surrender and the safe return of the still living hostages, is a fool’s errand.

How many would need to completely reframe their political thinking, perhaps even parts of their identity? Mia Schem’s testimony says what history taught us. Just as not every German was a Nazi, there were many enthusiastic Nazis in German society. Not every Gazan is Hamas, but only the greatest fool would deny that a proportion of everyday Gazans are complicit. That they know where the hostages are, and are happily complicit.

Denial feels safe, but it never is. It simply postpones the inevitable pain of realising what was there all along. To the many who continue to say, oh but sexual violence has always been a weapon of war, you are in denial. You are minimising the most atrocious acts of femicide in our times.

The blood of every innocent civilian life lost in Gaza is on Hamas. Not only has it rejected every ceasefire offered, refusing to release the living hostages, it has promised it will repeat October 7 until Israel, Jews and Christians are wiped from the map. Hamas is not denying this and neither must democracies in the West.