7th Oct 2024 — Some Candid Thought and Reflections on the Last Year
I don’t talk about. Of course not! Certainly not in public, rarely in private. Not worth it. If I did I would have to start by explaining how limited the degree of Jewish separation is from those who were slaughtered on 7th Oct. How it is one degree of separation or none and how everything naturally stems from that point. But that’s as far as it would go because I’d be rushing to condemn Netanyahu in the next breath to assuage the unspoken concerns of the interlocutor who, by then, would probably have announced the same. Prove you’re a good Jew first to get a hearing and yeah, I’ve been there before and frankly, fuck that.
15 million Jews in a world of 7 billion people is really all there is. We all know someone, or know someone who knows someone, who was murdered or taken hostage that day. My attachment to Israel is nowhere near as strong as it is for most Jews I know but still, this felt very close to home. One nearby Jewish guy had daughter had a friend at the Nova festival, waited 3 days to find out that she had been murdered. Another had family who turned on FB that morning to see their friend’s torture and murder being broadcast on Facebook live. That’s something the killers did, it wasn’t just GoPro cameras, some took their victim’s phones and broadcast the torment and mutilation to their loved ones. For a laugh. Few of those who saw it have ever spoken about it. A few more I know checked in on family Whatsapp groups to find their loved ones hiding, waiting to die, saying goodbye.
It sounded exactly like the pogroms I’d read about, those which drove my own kin here in 1900. The jubilation in murder, the civilians joining in, the torture, the rape, the mutilation, the bodies as trophies, burning people alive. Close to home doesn’t really cut it. By lunchtime the enormity of what was happening and what was going to happen was overwhelming.
The incursion from Gaza was a sadistic orgy of violence that would shock the world, it would be quelled eventually, then Israel would retaliate more ferociously than ever before. There would be far more Palestinian deaths than Israeli deaths. The ensuing carnage would be beamed onto social media in a way that no war had ever been before, the media coverage would eclipse anything and everything else until it was over which wouldn’t be for a long time and a surge of antisemitism would sweep the West in a way most of us hadn’t seen in our lifetimes. And there was nothing I or anyone else could to do to stop it. Helpless. Hopeless. I’d came to terms with all the above by 1pm on 7th Oct.
Some things, however, I didn’t expect. I didn’t expect that some people would immediately take to the streets to celebrate the massacre, honking their horns, cheering. Did you knew there was fireworks? A speaker for Manchester Palestine Action said that we should pray “the Al Aqsa flood engulfs the whole world.” (The Al Aqsa Flood is Hamas’ name for the massacre). This was said through a megaphone at 2pm on 7th October in Piccadilly Gardens — at this point Hamas were still trying to flush out entire families from their safe rooms to shoot them or burning them alive if they failed.
I didn’t expect that to be eulogised.
A Novara Media journalist then announced it as a day of celebration.
I should have expected it.
Nor did I expect hostage posters to be torn down as ritual. Whatever threat posters of kidnapped Jews posed was unclear but tear them down they did. And I was wrong about the gory details of the massacre shocking the world. Very wrong. The concern mostly lasted a day or two, if it existed at all, or wasn’t feigned in the first place. I remember it being all a bit weird. A collective confusion, people not knowing how to react. You could feel it in the media, you could feel it in the water. Israeli Jews as victims didn’t sit well, felt icky.
And although they’ll never admit it, there was a palpable relief when Israel retaliated and no one who had felt like that had to feel like that anymore. Normal service resumed, it was fine to hate Israel again in that very specific singular way that so many people do. It was fine again to hate anyone expressing any support for it, no matter how caveated or nuanced, the whattaboutism at Jews still coming to terms with the massacre. Normal service. Seemed quite put out they’d been any sort of gap in the service. They took that out on us as well.
But I was contacted by a couple of old (non-Jewish) friends I hadn’t seen for a while — to check in on me, to offer solidarity and to express horror at the massacre. Two of them very much pro-Palestine. Not sure they’ll ever know quite how much that meant.
Started watching the images coming out of Gaza. Still connected to Syrian activists on Twitter I’d befriended during the (still ongoing) civil war. 600,000 dead a conservative estimate, 15x as many people as in Gaza, not that anyone cares. Those Syrian activists I respect more than any other, people who’d swam against the tide, ostracised by parts of the left who blamed The West for Syria and made common cause with Assad and Putin for good measure. They were the only people I know who hated Jeremy Corbyn more than I did. They hate Israel too, like *really* hate Israel and that’s fine. They are consistent, truly internationalist and they understand antisemitism. And least they were appalled by those Westerners who celebrated 07/10 and are distrustful of anyone who views Hamas or Hezbollah — the butchers of their people — as legitimate resistance or as the great man said, a “force for peace and social justice.”
Watching their feeds I felt the Arab rage at Israel, really understood it for the first time, sympathised, felt it myself. This was the first time I’d ever seen an Israeli bombardment in real time. It was completely shocking. Amongst many things in early November was watching a father in Gaza search for his kids under the rubble, screaming at the heavens because he knows it’s pointless but doing it anyway because, well, what else was there to do? Can’t unsee that. Is anything worth this? Can anything justify that? Long-held suspicions that Israel is unsustainable in the long term returned stronger than ever. That this will never ever end until something cataclysmic happens. Hopeless. Helpless.
Then more uncomfortable questions, the dishonesty, even with the self.
Knowing that Israel had to respond. Knowing that any country with the means would go after the Einsatzgruppen who perpetrated Oct 7th. Knowing they’d stop at nothing to retrieve the hostages. But how do you attack an enemy hiding under densely populated areas in tunnel networks the size of subway systems who say they love death more than we love life?
How do you do this without inflicting civilian casualties? What’s the alternative except do nothing and allow rockets to be fired on you, no country would ever be expected to do that would they? No answers forthcoming, difficult thoughts unwelcome. Push them away. Conflicting thoughts and emotions not for public consumption, this is Israel/Palestine after all, we deal in simple binaries only. Are you for child murder or against it? That’s about as far as it goes. But no one comes away with clean, we all lose something, we all dehumanise someone. Listen least of all to the pious, they lie.
Plus there was the knowledge that if Oct 7th had happened here we’d do the same, or worse, and if all of us knew someone (or knew someone who knew someone) who had been butchered or kidnapped and we feared Oct 7th might happen to our families, to our children, we’d make peace with a retaliation of some kind, despite what we may tell ourselves.
Turned to the appalling situation in the West Bank instead, fewer difficult thoughts, especially for those of us who owe an old allegiance to the anti-occupation movement. There to find hope, perversely. Found it in Standing Together. A progressive grassroots movement flowering out of the scorched Earth where once stood the Israeli left who built the country.
Standing Together are “mobilizing Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel against the occupation and for peace, equality, and social justice.” Some Jewish members of Standing Together lost family on Oct 7th, some Palestinian members lost family in Gaza and watching how they worked together as allies did at least inspire.
In last year they have consistently guarded aid trucks headed to Gaza from extremist settlers, ensuring heightened police presence and legal consequences for the attackers. They’ve led peace demos, held solidarity conventions, heroically provided support for victims or discrimination and political persecution (mostly Arabs) collecting food for those in need and so on. Website https://www.standing-together.org/en
So why haven’t most people who follow this conflict heard of them? Why are they not heroes?
lol
Because Standing Together are not promoted by any of the official Palestine solidarity orgs in the UK. Not only that, they are have been placed on the BDS boycott list.
An organisation whose numbers include *checks notes* Arabs and Palestinians are boycotted by pro-Palestinian Western activists. That’s why you won’t hear their speakers at marches and on demos, you won’t see their emblems. The boycotters wrote that Standing Together was “an Israeli normalisation outfit that seeks to distract from and whitewash Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.” https://forward.com/.../bds-movement-targets-standing.../
This is why I detest so much pro-Palestinian activism in the West. Unashamedly and proudly. I don’t doubt that most who go out on demos or go to fundraisers do not follow the official lines and understand the nuances of the positions, it’s not them I hate, some of their number I count as friends. It is that puritanical, obsessive form of activism that flows from this conflict and this conflict alone. The conformity of thought, the outing of heretics, the coercion, the navel gazing about who is a ‘Zionist’, whatever that means. When a banner which says ‘Hamas are Terrorists’ is uniformly seen as provocation during a march it should be clear there is something very wrong. The comparisons with South Africa stop right at the point where the ANC urged a boycott of anti-apartheid organisations. Because that never happened. It would be laughable, absurd. But that’s what passes for pro-Palestinian activism in our time.
And then there was the inevitable antisemitism, although I didn’t expect to find I’d internalised some of it myself. The surge began straight away, before Israel had even retaliated, lest anyone think it was anything other than an excuse for what they wanted to do anyway. Almost as much hate crime against Jews was recorded in the first year after Oct 2023 than in the previous three years combined.
Pupils at my old school instructed to cover uniforms on public transport, bomb threats, extreme placards on demos which wouldn’t be out of place in Der Sturmer. The Holocaust inversion was a given, arriving punctually on October 8th although I surprised it took that long. Everyday another story, in educational institutions, at the workplace, synagogues graffitied, terrorist plots against UK Jews foiled (for now) but no one really expected the British Medical Association to become riddled with antisemitism. Some of the humiliating, degrading treatment meted out to Jewish patients is an unknown scandal. Only yesterday, another story in Ireland, an Israeli woman married to an Irishman was in hospital preparing for a C-section, doctor came in and “decided to utterly smash into me with her political views about Israel.” We all know that this is the new normal now.
Obviously it was alarming. Considered posting about it on social media but backed away, ‘I mean this is really small beans compared to the suffering in Gaza’ I thought. See what I did there? I made a special case for Jews that I don’t make for anyone else. If there’s a domestic Jihadi terrorist attack and a group of thugs surround a mosque in response I would never equivocate and think, ‘well that’s small beans compared to the kids lying dead in the MEN Arena.’ Of course not. This is my land, these are our norms and racism is racism.
But I did it with it Jews, even if fleetingly. Why? And if I’m capable of internalising antisemitism then what is everyone else capable of? The problem is that too few people care enough to confront this in themselves, to properly examine, to self-audit their reflexive responses when it comes to their attitude to Jewish people in. They see it as an affront, beneath them, a distraction, a trick and enough with the whining already.
During the recent race riots (which were actually just anti-Muslim riots) we had the pleasure of parts of the far-right claiming that it was the Jews who were actually behind Muslim immigration and parts of the left claiming ‘Zionists’ were behind the riots. Same as it ever was. One anti-fascist org advertised a counter-demo and urged attendees to ‘get the Zionists out of Finchley.’ Thought about what forcibly removing all the Zionists from the most Jewish area in the country would look like.
Glastonbury was fine, mostly. I don’t mind at all being amongst the sea of Palestinian flags but, although the absence of any memorial to the Jews killed at the Nova festival was a given, I’d be lying if I said it didn’t rankle a bit. Of all the artists who spoke about Palestine, which was everyone I saw, the idea that it would be controversial to say something like “and may we also remember the 362 people murdered at a festival just like this one” is completely bizarre but we’ve all accepted this as normal.
It isn’t.
That simply noting a massacre which included rape and mutilation would be controversial, unseemly. The unspoken fear that people would heckle and jeer because it would be seen as running in opposition to Palestinian solidarity. Is this really who they are, who we are?
Ruth Peretz, a profoundly disabled 16 year old girl with cerebral palsy and muscular dystrophy was taken to that festival in her wheelchair by her father Erik. Hamas murdered them both in cold blood.
We all lose something. We all dehumanise someone. No one comes out clean.
We’d heard that a couple of people were wandering around with a Nova Festival flag but it wasn’t until the 4th night, at 3am, that my sister and I accidentally wandered past their campsite, two very sweet young Israelis sitting there alone. We embraced. Our hearts full. They told us the good and the bad — people had frequently stopped to thank them and offered kind words. Their campsite however didn’t respond in kind: the neighbouring tent dwellers asked them to take the flag down because they feared their own tents “would get pissed on.” The Israelis refused, explaining that it isn’t a political flag, it is just “to commemorate the dead.” The lad explained that they too are on the left and have been out protesting the government in their own country, I grimaced. Oh you sweet summer child. In response, their neighbours purchased ‘Boycott Israeli Apartheid’ stickers and flags and hung them on all tents surrounding the Israelis. An ideological vaccine to shield them from the infection in the middle.
Worse still was at NYC Downlow where part of the installation nods to the old Jewish Quarter. One building has M Levine Kosher Sausage daubed on it straddled by two Star of Davids. It is the only overt reference to Jewishness in this behemoth of a festival which celebrates so many cultures. This year they removed the Jewish symbols. Probably through fear rather than malice. That same unspoken fear that it would be defaced. And a fully justified one.
And then there was the denial of what happened on 7th Oct. Ferocious, unremitting and, by December, firmly in the mainstream. That was the point I checked out and checked out for good. The rape denial especially I will never be able to unsee. Guess it had to happen, when people are glorifying the resistance and said resistance includes sexual violence it has to be denied.
Watching Owen Jones’ Youtube video brought home how acceptable and normal it was becoming to pick holes in tiny details of a massacre as if this would, in any way, obscure the whole. The UK’s leading left-wing commentator planted seeds the worst aspects of denial whilst preening about how he abhors all injustices. (I wrote about it here at the time). Of course, he was Only Asking Questions, he never outright denied anything, just his well-honed sleight of hand. He speculated on everything that cast doubt on the sadistic acts of Hamas — from deliberate child murder to rape — but then refused to speculate on why for example, in the footage he’d watched, dead Jewish women lay with their lower torso exposed. He would only say, “that’s not what you would call conclusive evidence of rape” and then loftily called for an investigation as cover. Nothing on the testimony or the other evidence in the public domain. And that’s the rub really, because we hear this all the time. It’s the most difficult crime to prove and that we must believe women. Well some progressives finally found a clause in the small print.
I got off quite lightly compared to other UK Jews, so far anyway. Found myself being weirdly glared at in disgust a couple of times, unsure as to why, I checked behind me to see if someone else was the target only to realise that I’d unwittingly ‘come out’. Or rather my Star of David necklace had. It is usually hidden, back in it went. I did it reflexively, apologetically. I still feel shame about this.
Although not ever posting in support of the war or in support of anything didn’t quite spare me from being stalked on my local FB group. We play snooker in a tiny Muslim-owned club round the corner. No bar obviously but me and a mate love it. The only white people who go in there and we’ve never felt so welcome anywhere. It’s not very well known so I posted about it in the local group to drum up custom. Someone who seems to know who I am (from a show I used to do about antisemitism) responded that it’s vital that all Muslim-owned businesses in the area become aware that there is a supporter of child killing and genocide in the area. He said it was “a safeguarding issue.” Thought about telling him that the snooker table we play on is directly under a massive Palestine flag. The stalker isn’t a Muslim. He is one of the Good People who stands at the end of my road waving a Palestinian flag. I worry for my son.
Thought a lot about the late Edward Said recently, the most revered Palestinian intellectual. Reading his words now seem all too strange. “If there is one thing that has done us more harm as a cause than Arafat’s ruinous regime, it is this calamitous policy of killing Israeli civilians which further proves to the world that we are indeed terrorists and an immoral movement. For what gain, no one has been able to say.”
“As for Hamas…I know that the organisation is one of the only ones expressing resistance, yet for any secular intellectual to make a devil’s pact with a religious movement is, I think, to substitute convenience for principle.”
I think of Jeremy Corbyn describing Hamas as his “friends” and as a “force for peace and social justice in the region.”
I think of that poor man in Kibbutz Be’eri being decapitated with a rake whilst he was still alive, his assailant screaming “yahud, yahud.” (Jew, Jew).
It was Edward Said’s birthday recently, as usual the famous photo of him throwing rocks did the rounds but the accompanying text that never mentions the breadth of his ideas and accomplishments such as the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra he co-founded with Israeli-Jewish conductor Daniel Barenboim. He would be denounced and ostracised for normalisation now.
I think about him and about the call to “globalize the intifada” at the marches and demos on our streets.
Rarely has an intellectual’s legacy been so openly and brazenly betrayed by those who revere him.
I think about Mandela. His steadfast opposition to the ANC committing acts of violence against civilians. His oft quoted words, “our freedom in incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians” are still with us. His other words, that we recognise Zionism as “a legitimate expression of Jewish emancipation” do not, else he would have to be denounced as well.
I think about a video I watched on Twitter in November. A Gazan man asking his little boy where his mum is right after an explosion. “She died” he says. The same age as my son. I think about that a lot.
Some of the Palestinians I follow on social media posted yesterday. A couple of tweets (in pics). People who have lost close family members during the never-ending Israeli onslaught on Gaza. And still they condemn Oct 7th, unequivocally, the kidnap and murder of defenceless civilians.
I think about Rivkah Brown and Michael Walker for Novara Media respectively announcing Oct 7th as a day of ‘celebration’ and an act of ‘decolonization’ that we must support.
I think about those survivors of the Nova Festival massacre who have since committed suicide because of what they saw Hamas do to people, especially the women. I think about how they were all on MDMA or psychedelics during their murder or escape. I think about that a lot.
I think about the artists at Glastonbury ‘speaking out’ for Palestine and why they would never dare to express on stage the same sentiment that two bereaved Palestinian people did on Twitter yesterday.
I think about how far we done fell.