The recognition of a Palestinian state, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, led to the murderous attack in Sydney. Albanese flatly rejected the claim and, in this case, he is right. And this may be the only claim related to the attack in which he is right, because Israel has also recognized a Palestinian state. That is, Netanyahu’s Israel. Not once, but again and again. So is Netanyahu to blame for previous attacks?
There are far more serious accusations to be made against Australia and against all the countries of the free world. Yes, they too bear responsibility for murder. Yes, they too gave tacit approval to masses of rioters, consumed by burning hatred, to run amok in the streets of every Western city. They are guilty, and Israel is guilty as well, of allowing obscene propaganda produced by the antisemitic campaign to dominate front-page headlines.
It is legitimate to report on the suffering of Gaza’s residents. But it is not legitimate, and it is a grotesque distortion, to ignore the fact that Hamas, which rules Gaza, is an Islamo-Nazi organization that marches under the banners of the swastika in its demonstrations. It is not legitimate to ignore the fact that Hamas leaders repeatedly call for the destruction of the Jews, all Jews, as well as Christians and Hindus. It is not legitimate to ignore the fact that Hamas leaders say, in their own voices, that the goal is not Israel, but the entire world. It is not legitimate to ignore the fact that Hamas could have ended the war on October 8 if it had only been willing to release the hostages and demilitarize the Strip. Hamas chose war. Not Israel.
But Australians, like hundreds of millions across the West, do not know this. On the contrary. The sheer volume of times the words “starvation” and “genocide” appeared even in Australia’s leading newspapers functioned as brainwashing.
There is no need to be a Muslim listening to radical imams in mosques, though of course there were such people. One just needs to be exposed to information sources considered somewhat more respectable and reliable. The conclusion any rational person reaches is that Israel is a Nazi state and anyone who supports it, like most Jews around the world, is a Nazi collaborator.
We already know the usual culprits. Al Jazeera stands at the forefront, with nonstop incitement. But in recent years, and certainly over the past two years, most of the world’s leading media outlets, from the BBC to CNN, from Le Monde to The New York Times, have fallen into line with the Qatari channel’s narrative
It is not necessary for millions to believe that action must be taken against these Jews. A few are enough. And that is exactly what happened in Washington in May, when two Israeli Embassy employees, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgram, were murdered by Elias Rodriguez, a radical leftist whose hatred of Israel moved from thought to action. The same occurred in the Yom Kippur attack in Manchester by a Syrian migrant, Jihad Al-Shamie, who embarked on a stabbing spree in which two Jews, Adrian Dawlby and Melvin Kravitz, were murdered. And now Sydney, Australia.
We already know the usual culprits. Al Jazeera stands at the forefront, with nonstop incitement. But in recent years, and certainly over the past two years, most of the world’s leading media outlets, from the BBC to CNN, from Le Monde to The New York Times, have fallen into line with the Qatari channel’s narrative.
And yes, there are Jews and Israelis as well. An Israeli, Professor Raz Segal, rushed to publish an article accusing Israel of genocide as early as October 13, when Israel was still collecting bodies from the border communities. A long list of academics continued the same libel, including Lee Mordechai, Omer Bartov, Daniel Blatman and Amos Goldberg. One can assume that had we been in World War II, they would have accused Britain of committing genocide against Germans. Their moral compass has gone awry. When a vast academic world engages in propaganda instead of research, in concealing facts instead of exposing them, the result is incitement to genocide. And when these academics receive positive coverage in the newspaper Haaretz, presented as preachers on the front page, what grounds do we have to complain about Al Jazeera or the leading newspapers of the West?
It is unclear whether a day of reckoning will ever come. Countless scholars study Nazi propaganda of the 1930s. They should know that the common denominator then and now was incessant lies against Jews. But many of them are impervious. In his monumental book “Worse Than War,” Professor Daniel Jonah Goldhagen describes massacres and genocides since World War II in which more people were killed than in both world wars combined. The common denominator, Goldhagen noted, was incitement and brainwashing that prepared hearts for mass murder.
Then as now. Radical Islam preaches murder. Its propagandists, academics and media figures, together with bot farms and vast Qatari funding that point the accusing finger at Israel, including Israelis among them, bear responsibility for the consequences. They do not promote reconciliation. They do not help the Palestinians. On the contrary. They cultivate hatred in the first stage that leads to attacks in the third stage.
We are once again in the 1930s, with two differences. Today the incitement is far more dangerous because it involves a much broader coalition. Far-left. Far-right. Islamists. Qatar. Mainstream newspapers. Academia. And today, unlike the 1930s, there is a Jewish state. And the time has come for it to act.