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Source: https://quillette.com/2025/10/28/a-perfect-storm-israel-gaza-palestine/
Anti-Israel Demonstrators Don't See Hamas for What It Is
(Quillette-Australia) Benny Morris - Muslims - whether born in the U.S. or Europe or recently arrived - have been at the forefront of the demonstrations chanting "Death to Israel," "Death to the West," and, occasionally, "Death to the Jews." In many European cities, Muslims feel empowered and, with their growing numbers, are able to cow politicians. After Hitler's destruction of European Jewry, for a time antisemitism became politically taboo in Western Europe and the U.S. But by the 2020s, the memory and impact of the Holocaust had faded and the Gaza war witnessed a convergence of Western and Muslim antisemitism. Old-style Muslim antisemitism now washed across Europe, persuading ignorant Europeans that their fathers' antisemitism had actually been legitimate. Anti-Israel sentiment is encouraged by the way the country has constantly been depicted in the Western media. Almost all that the West's largely ignorant young people see and know are images of dead and wounded Arab babies and women - never of jihadi fighters. They know nothing about the Arab terrorism that stalked the Zionist effort to settle in the Jews' ancient patrimony. They know nothing about the wars Palestinians and Arab states have waged against the Jewish state, nor do they know that the Palestinians consistently rejected the periodic peace offers made by the Zionists/Israel and the international community for a two-state compromise. These young people are probably even unaware of the treaties Israel signed with Egypt and Jordan, to those countries' mutual satisfaction. Hamas are close cousins of ISIS and though they have had the public relations smarts not to broadcast the slitting of hostages' throats, they have been just as murderous. Hamas kindergartens and schools in Gaza systematically inculcated hatred of Jews and Israel, in line with Hamas's foundational charter of 1988. So the mass slaughter of Israelis by Hamas on 7 October, with its accompanying rapes and beheadings, was prophesied by Hamas documents and ideology long before any blood was actually shed on that day. Why the keffiyeh-wearing Christian students and professors marching through America's campuses and Europe's capitals don't recognize Hamas's homophobia, misogyny, totalitarianism, and their anti-Christian/anti-Western core beliefs is beyond comprehension. But somehow the demonstrators don't see Hamas for what it is. The writer is professor emeritus of Middle Eastern history at Ben-Gurion University.