Daily Alert Archives

Unhinged Anti-Israel Sentiment Has Become Dangerous

(Spiked) Brendan O'Neill - For all the talk of racist Israel gunning down Palestinian families, the events in Jenin last Thursday were a fairly straightforward military clash between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants who were plotting attacks. Seven of the people killed were gunmen who had opened fire. Palestinian militants themselves have said it was mostly their people who died. Yet instead of this being a conflict between a state and those who oppose the existence of that state, it all comes to be seen as a cosmic showdown between evil and good, between Israeli wickedness and Palestinian victimhood. Every shade of grey is ruthlessly chased out when Israel is demonized and the Palestinians are infantilized in order to weave a simplistic black-and-white narrative that does little to shed light on the truth. Have we really lost the ability to morally differentiate between an armed confrontation between soldiers and militants and the mass murder of unarmed civilians in their place of worship? These are not the same thing. "Explaining" the synagogue massacre as if it were an understandable expression of broader tensions shows just how unhinged anti-Israel sentiment has become. Nothing makes the mass murder of Jews for being Jews a comprehensible thing.
2023-02-02 00:00:00
Full Article