OPINION: When it comes to Israel, you know what they say about assumption…
By Rebecca Simon, board member of Labour Friends of Israel (LFI)
Kay Burley’s preposterous interview with Israeli spokesman Eylon Levy saw her ask: “Does Israel not think Palestinian lives are valued as highly as Israeli lives?”
She was asking in relation to the hostage negotiations and Israel’s agreement to release 150 prisoners for 50 hostages. Levy’s now famous eyebrows rose aloft, as he expressed his astonishment and disgust.
I watched the clip over and over, trying to make sense of it, but kept coming up with 2+2=5.
Burley’s question, and her arrogant refusal to acknowledge its absurdity, symbolises the inverse logic, distortions, and perversions of accepted wisdoms, that have come to characterise this conflict. It presents a troubling new status quo.
There are no useful recent precedents for the events of the last two months. The Hamas massacre of 7 October has been compared to 9/11, the rise in global antisemitism likened to Kristallnacht and Nazi Germany, the mass kidnapping of over 240 hostages likened to the actions of Boku Haram in Nigeria.
But none of these are perfect parallels. Hamas’ attack, even by fundamentalist standards, was unfathomably barbaric. And there is no comprehensive playbook for how a sovereign, civilised, democratic, nation should respond to a violent massacre on their soil – involving filmed and glorified mass rapes, mutilations, decapitations – from a genocidal jihadist group.
Hamas is literally on Israel’s doorstep, purposefully embedded into densely packed civilian infrastructure, comfortable using its own people as human shields. Adding to the complexity of Israel’s response is the debate over what is deemed ‘acceptable’ by the international commentariat, policy makers, and agencies.
The events of 7 October shook our world. Imagine a snow globe. The first few weeks are characterised by chaos, grief, trauma, but as the ‘snow’ starts to settle, it does so in an incomprehensible new world order.
Parameters have shifted to make room for a new paradigm for political and social discourse. Israel has always been judged by a different standard to any other western democracy and there is no surprise that her full throttle response has come under intense scrutiny and widespread vehement criticism.
Even with that being the expected case, I still held assumptions about how some may respond, but most if not all, reactions have been completely confounding.
Since 7 October the world has been like a circus hall of mirrors, you think you knew what you expected to see but the distortions that look at back at you are disturbing and unrecognisable.
I assumed organisations and institutions, establishments I trusted to uphold truth and justice, to protect the vulnerable, would deliver a more circumspect, compassionate and empathetic response to the hideous and impossible predicament Israel has found itself in.
I assumed that globally significant media outlets like the BBC would call terrorism out for what it is.
I assumed they would verify facts when reporting on such tense and significant developments such as an alleged hospital bombing – and if they didn’t then once they realised how their actions had sparked a tsunami of rage and hate – they would emphatically correct themselves, to compensate for their egregious malaprop.
I assumed that if tunnels and guns were found under a hospital substantiating claims that Hamas were operating there, would not be disregarded as legitimate hospital kit and infrastructure, the kind you might see in the Royal Free.
I assumed that the notion of impartiality and balance did not extend to moral equivalences being drawn between terror and war. Between innocent hostages dragged from their homes and Palestinian prisoners, incarcerated for their crimes.
I assumed that it wouldn’t even cross a Sky News reporter’s mind to view the hostage negotiations through the lens that Kay Burley applied.
I assumed that humanitarian organisations like the Red Cross would follow its own foundational principles.
I expected that in an effort ‘to prevent and alleviate human suffering wherever it may be found’ they would demand access to hostages – to innocent civilians, many of them children – being held in Gaza by Hamas and its affiliate gangs. And that once hostages were released that they would insist on access to those still in captivity.
I assumed that UN women, the global champion for gender equality, would rush to condemn in the strongest possible terms, the rape and extreme sexual violence suffered by Israeli women and girls at the hands of Hamas fighters.
Why wouldn’t they? #metoo exploded into a global campaign several years after the event. We championed the bravery of the victims for speaking out and hashtaged away before any evidence was sought let alone proven. And rightly so.
The sisterhood know that it is our sacred duty to believe. With the evidence so apparent, the use of rape as a war crime so outrageously paraded by Hamas’ own Go Pro cameras, the pictures of bloodied pants transmitted across the world, I assumed there was no question of doubt, no hesitation to believe.
But it took 57 days for a paltry statement of ‘alarm’ at the ‘numerous accounts of gender-based atrocities’ from UN women.
I assumed that heralded titans of scholarly leadership in the world’s finest universities wouldn’t be duped into thinking that there was some kind of alignment between LGBTQ rights and a Hamas led, IRCG inspired world view.
I assumed that caution would be exercised, and that globally significant and influential institutions would tread carefully with words like genocide and chants like ‘from the river to the sea’.
We expected that esteemed medical royal colleges leaders would stay neutral, that train drivers on our public transport services would refrain from leading Palestinian protestors in song, that a democratically elected European Prime Minister wouldn’t debase the gravity of the hostage situation with a derisory ‘lost and found’ tweet.
I assumed that on some level it would be apparent that Hamas’ plot to terrorise, to provoke, to delegitimise, to derail talks with Saudi Arabia, to propagate hatred, is a threat to western values and civilised societies everywhere.
But you know what they say about assumption – it is the mother of all messes.
And it does feel like something pretty messed up has been unleashed without too much provocation, as one by one these important trusted institutions have all fallen foul of our previous held assumptions and now act in accordance with the loudest activist opinions.
I guess we should’ve seen it coming – over 20 years ago the UN itself hosted a festival of hate in Durban, condemning Zionism as racism, Israel as an apartheid state, guilty of ethnic cleansing. The world wasn’t in uproar then, the scene was set and now here we are.
The illusion is unmistakably shattered and the snow around our globe is settling on a new dystopia – one where Iran chairs the UN Human Right Committee, where Jewish rape victims don’t matter to the UN, Jewish hostages don’t matter to the Red Cross, where journalistic integrity is absent from our principle media outlets, where antisemitic hatred can be posted by journalists and presenters from the BBC to the Guardian and they can remain on payroll.
A world where South Africa and Spain can kick out their Israeli ambassadors without recourse, where pretty much anyone can pontificate on what constitutes a war crime or a genocide without jurisprudence.
A world where Ivy league campuses victimise their Jewish students.
A world where nuance, history, rigour, diligence have been abandoned, dismissed as fake news. Where there is my truth, their truth but no actual truth.
Surely this is Hamas and its backers’ major strategic victory: that despite committing one of the most atrocious, monstrous crimes in several generations, they can invoke sympathy for their cause to eradicate Israel; that despite filming their work, openly stating their intentions to go again if given the chance, they are not vilified as the villains, terrorists, rapists, and murderers that they are; that despite the rise in global antisemitism, organisations from every corner of civilised society have been manipulated into silence at best.
Masters of their craft, they have shifted the tectonic plates and disappeared underground with almost impunity. 2023 – but not as we knew it.
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