How dare people victim blame the Israelis for defending the Jewish state

As the husband of an Israeli born wife, and a proud British Jew myself, I share the emotions of every Jew this past week.

They have been visceral and existential. The Hamas attack was the greatest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. If we ever wondered what our fellow citizens would be doing during the Holocaust it would be: exactly what they are doing right now.

Whilst the UK government and Labour opposition leaders have been commendably emphatic in standing by Israel, the deafening silence from too many of our friends and neighbours will have been painful and frightening.

There can be few massacres more unambiguously evil than last week’s attack on Israeli civilians. Mothers being raped, as terrorists burnt their babies in front of them. Kidnap and murder on a scale and with a savagery that demeans humanity.

So why the silence from so many? Why wasn’t the Israeli flag flying from every town hall as the Ukrainian flag was within days of the Russian invasion? Why was Wembley’s arch left dark? Why could the BBC not bring itself to call members of a proscribed terrorist organisation, “terrorists”? Why not the outpouring of grief and rage from our valued non-Jewish friends and colleagues? What could possibly be so special about the world’s only Jewish state?

Was the silence down to some cognitive dissonance in progressive minds that supporting murdered Israelis might tarnish their woke anti-colonialist narrative? The same progressives who, if they happened to be gay, would be thrown from the rooftops in Hamas territory before they could unfurl their “Free Palestine” flag. (Yet, ironically, could proudly join Tel Aviv’s annual gay pride march in the nation they scorn and demonise).

Was the silence simply awkwardness or fear of the complexity of the situation? Or, do too many just not care enough, or worse? Is it, to adopt David Baddiel’s phrase, that “Jews don’t count”?

And what of the not so silent? What of the thousands of “Free Palestine” marchers in our major cities and universities jubilantly exulting in the deaths of 1300 Jews whilst chanting “Palestine will be free from the river to the sea”.

If “freedom” means living under Hamas’ medieval theocracy, then God help them. But we are assured, by those who should know better, that they are marching in support of innocent Palestinians and not Hamas. Yet a cursory look at a map quickly reveals that the chant can only mean the destruction of Israel and all the Jews within.

“Never again” means Israel doing exactly what it is doing now. It means meeting murderous genocidal intent with overwhelming force to defend the Jewish people. If only we could have done that in the past then 6 million would not have perished.

However, unlike Hamas, whose intent is to kill as many Jewish civilians as possible, which is simply the implementation of their Charter, Israel seeks to avoid civilian casualties wherever possible. That accords with international law.

If Hamas choose to shield behind their own civilians whose lives they clearly despise as pawns in their death cult philosophy, or else deter them from evacuating in response to IDF warnings (a luxury never offered to the massacred Israelis), then every civilian death is down to Hamas.

I weep for the innocent Palestinian lives lost in this war as I do for every Israeli killed. But how dare people victim blame the Israelis for defending their sons and daughters and the Jewish state. The blame is Hamas’, and theirs alone. They are the war criminals.

• Gary Grant is a London-based barrister