The Antisemitism Is the Point

By Sean Durns

Saturday, May 31, 2025

 

Eight decades after the Holocaust, many European leaders are still struggling with the reality that they can no longer tell Jews where and how to live — or, for that matter, how to protect themselves. For some, it is proving to be an exceedingly difficult habit to break.

 

On May 19, 2025, President Emmanuel Macron of France, Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the U.K., and Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada issued a joint communiqué warning, “If Israel does not cease the renewed military offensive and lift its restrictions on humanitarian aid, we will take further concrete actions in response.” Nor were they the only leaders who called on Israel to end its efforts to destroy Hamas, the genocidal terror group that calls for Israel’s destruction and rules Gaza with an iron fist.

 

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz asserted, “Harming the civilian population to such an extent, as has increasingly been the case in recent days, can no longer be justified as a fight against terrorism.” Merz added that he “no longer understands what the Israeli army is doing in the Gaza Strip, with what goal.”

 

Notably, these leaders, along with the United Nations and much of the mainstream media, are relying on casualty claims from the Gaza Health Ministry — an entity controlled by Hamas, which has both a clear incentive to inflate such statistics and a track record of doing precisely that. Indeed, the stats supplied by Hamas don’t even distinguish between combatants and civilians. It would be unthinkable for the press and policymakers to treat al-Qaeda or the Islamic State as trustworthy sources, but revealingly, a terror group whose priority is destroying Israel gets a pass.

 

Indeed, from the war’s onset, major news outlets including the Washington Post, USA Today, and others have uncritically regurgitated Hamas claims. The Gaza-based terror group hopes to rally public opinion in an effort to constrain Israel. For this reason, Hamas relies on what former Pentagon official Doug Feith called a “strategy of human sacrifice,” intentionally using civilians as human shields and storing operatives and munitions in schools, hospitals, and other population centers

 

And the media seem happy to help.

 

The Washington Post, for example, recently asserted, “A genocide is happening in Gaza. We should say so.” Post columnist Shadi Hamid claimed that “a new consensus is emerging” on the notion that “Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza.” Picking up on the theme, the New York Times warned, “Criticism of Israel mounts.” A May 25, 2025, dispatch by Axios’s Barak Ravid claimed, “Israel is losing almost all of its allies as it forges on in Gaza.”

 

Virtually all of these reports rely on Hamas claims parroted by the United Nations and others. The timing of the media offensive isn’t a coincidence.

 

Israel is ratcheting up operations in Gaza. And a new aid-distribution system, meant to circumvent Hamas thieves who hoard and wield food as a weapon, is being implemented. Hamas is fighting desperately to save itself and counting on its allies to help.

 

In addition to the press and the United Nations, Hamas has another ace up its sleeve: antisemitism. The famed Soviet refusenik and author Natan Sharansky noted one of the calling cards of antisemitism: double standards. Both the Jewish state and Jews themselves are held to a different standard when it comes to self-defense. History shows as much.

 

When Israeli agents captured wanted Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Argentina in 1960, the Washington Post “chastised Israel for wanting to ‘wreak vengeance,’ rather than seek justice,” as the historian Francine Klagsbrun documented. The United Nations, various European nations, even the United States, condemned Israel for seizing the infamous Nazi.

 

Similarly, when Israeli fighter jets took out an Iraqi nuclear reactor on June 7, 1981, the New York Times editorial board called it “an act of inexcusable and short-sighted aggression” — never mind that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had called for Israel to be wiped off the map. The Times added that then–Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin “embraces . . . the code of terror” and “justifies aggression by his profound sense of victimhood.” In his 2016 book, Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn, the historian Daniel Gordis noted that the Los Angeles Times responded to the 1981 strike by comparing Israelis to Palestinian terrorists. Years later, the United States, which had also condemned the strike, would express relief that it didn’t have to contend with a nuclear Iraq during Operation Desert Storm.

 

During the 1950s, when Israel carried out counterterrorist operations targeting the fedayeen who were perpetrating cross-border raids and murdering Israelis, often on their farms, the same cast of characters — the press, the U.N., Europe — frequently denounced Israeli efforts. Israel, it was clear, was not permitted to defend itself. And such limitations predated Israel’s 1948 recreation.

 

The 1920 Nebi Musa riots were a seminal moment in the history of the Zionist-Islamist conflict. In an effort to oppose Jewish social and political equality in British-ruled Mandate Palestine, Arab terrorists gathered weapons and plotted to attack Jews. Some Zionist leaders, having heard rumors of an impending attack, had acquired arms for self-defense, many of which were confiscated by British authorities. When the riots did erupt — to chants of “the Jews are our dogs” — British authorities refused to allow groups of armed Zionists to intervene. The authorities made the same decision during a similar pogrom in 1929, in which many Arab policemen, paid by the British, took part. Jewish leaders such as Ze’ev Jabotinsky, an advocate for the right of self-defense, were arrested and eventually banished.

 

The claim that Israel is ruining the “goodwill” that it received after October 7 is risible. In fact, pro-Hamas demonstrations occurred on Western city streets and college campuses before the blood had even dried.

 

History, recent and otherwise, also shows us that, contrary to the Washington Post’s insinuation, the charge of “genocide” isn’t new either. More than 1,200 Israelis and others were savagely murdered, a monstrous crime that Post columnist Karen Attiah unapologetically hailed as an act of “decolonization.” Both Attiah and fellow Post columnist Ishaan Tharoor accused Israel of “genocide” within days of that massacre — long before Israel had fully commenced military operations in Gaza.

 

As the scholar Alex Joffe has noted, Israel has been accused of “genocide” since 1949 — a year after its establishment. The attempt to accuse Jews, and the Jewish state, of crimes that have been perpetrated against the Jewish people is both libelous and antisemitic. It is also a clear attempt to reverse the victims with their perpetrator.

 

In a March 4, 1961, press conference, Amin Al-Husseini, the founding father of Palestinian nationalism and the culprit responsible for the 1920 and 1929 massacres, asserted that “what the Jews have done” in Israel “is similar to what the Nazis did to them in Germany.” Husseini himself was a Nazi collaborator and personal friend of Eichmann, one of the architects of Hitler’s “Final Solution.” Such charges are not only disinformation, but they are also often projection, whether uttered by friends of Nazis or by those who seek to save their modern-day descendants, Hamas.