The state-backed drive to present Israel as the ‘enemy of humanity’
How certain news media, politics and educational institutions are fuelling a global surge in antisemitism
At a major international forum in Doha, UN Special Rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, described Israel as the “enemy of humanity.” Not a government under criticism or a military accused of wrongdoing, but the ultimate evil, the enemy of humanity.
When language reaches that altitude, history tells us something, it does not remain abstract. It migrates, legitimises and licenses action that goes well beyond words and we are now watching the consequences of this play out across the Western world.
This ecosystem of influence is far less complex than those seeking to deny its existence would have us believe. Qatar hosts Hamas leadership in Doha. Qatar funds and owns Al Jazeera. Qatar invests billions into Western universities, cultural institutions, infrastructure and media partnerships.
These are not allegations, they are documented realities.
At the recent Al Jazeera Forum in Dohs, Khaled Mashal, the Hamas leader living comfortably under Qatari protection, declared openly and proudly that Hamas would not disarm and that violence would continue. He went on to celebrate the erosion of Israel’s legitimacy among younger generations in the West.
At the same event, Francesca Albanese did not merely accuse Israel of genocide or apartheid, although she did both, but she escalated to declaring it the “enemy of humanity,” while praising Al Jazeera as a truth-teller challenging Western narratives.
That language matters, because once a state is framed as the enemy of humanity, those who believe in its existence become morally contaminated by association. They become legitimate targets on our streets, in our schools and at the ballot box.
And that framing does not stay in Doha, it spreads, like wildfire, becoming a global pattern.
Look at the United States, where campus activism exploded, not merely in protest of Israeli policy, but in chants calling for intifada, in demands that Zionists be excluded from public life, in open celebration of 7 October.
Look at Canada, Jewish schools shot at, synagogues firebombed, Jewish students harassed in plain sight.
Look at Australia, in the aftermath the Bondi massacre, where 15 Jews were murdered for the singular crime of being Jewish, with many antisemitic incidents recorded since in honour of the perpetrators of this horrific crime.
Look at Britain, when Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby were murdered in the Manchester synagogue attack on Yom Kippur, the days that followed recorded the highest daily totals of antisemitic incidents across the entirety of 2025, more than 40 incidents on the day of the murders and more than 40 the day after.
A spike in expressions of hate not in response to a government policy, but in response to Jews being killed, in celebration of Jews being killed.
Celebration is not protest, celebration is ideological conditioning meeting opportunity. So, while one can dismiss much, the numbers do not lie. The Community Security Trust recorded 3,700 anti-Jewish hate incidents in 2025, the second highest annual total ever.
For the first time in British history, more than 200 incidents were recorded in every calendar month. Damage and desecration of Jewish property rose sharply by nearly 40%. This is not episodic outrage, it is sustained, emboldened hostility and sustained hostility does not sustain itself without narrative reinforcement.
Which brings us to a remarkable and highly relevant moment inside Britain’s own public broadcaster. Jonathan Munro, interim Head of News at the BBC, recently and with great pride, said BBC Arabic had reached the promised land of respectability and integrity, because “it was now almost as trusted as Al Jazeera.”
Almost as trusted as Al Jazeera!
Al Jazeera, the state-owned network of Qatar, a regime that hosts Hamas leadership. Al Jazeera, banned across multiple Middle Eastern states, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Jordan, over accusations of destabilising coverage and extremist amplification. Al Jazeera, platforming conferences where Israel is described as the enemy of humanity and a stage is given to the current leader of Hamas and Foreign Minister of Iran.
There is a staggering irony here, that while much of the Middle East treats Al Jazeera as too politically destabilising to permit, here in the West, we increasingly treat it as a benchmark of journalistic legitimacy.
Soft power succeeds when its influence becomes invisible, when it is absorbed rather than interrogated, embraced rather than kept at arms length. Jonathan Munro and others like him are doing just that and they’re telling us in clear, unequivocal terms that this is their continued intention.
From Al Jazeera, via the BBC to a quaint seaside town here in Britain, from “Enemy of Humanity” to “Apartheid-Free Zones”. Because in Brighton, activists are going door to door in an attempt to launch “apartheid free zones”.
Around 90% of British Jews identify as Zionist in the most basic sense, believing Israel has a right to exist. So when activists, describing themselves as “anti-Zionist”, go door knocking as part of their attempts to boycott Israel and make an area “apartheid free”, they are not engaging in nuanced policy debate. They are marking the overwhelming majority of British Jews for exclusion.
If Israel is the enemy of humanity, then those who believe it should exist become defenders of something portrayed as evil. Once that framing is accepted, exclusion feels righteous. This is how moral inversion works.
This is not a conspiracy theory, it is an ecosystem. A state invests billions in Western institutions, funds a global media platform that legitimises eliminationist rhetoric, international officials amplify that rhetoric, activists absorb it, antisemitic incidents rise, Jews are afraid, Jewish communities feel the impact.
Money, microphone, migration of narrative, across Britain, America, Canada, Australia and Europe, across the democratic world.
But, there is a choice – and here is where this stops being abstract. You can choose to see the pattern or you can pretend these are disconnected events.
You can choose to scrutinise funding flows, narrative platforms and institutional complicity, or you can dismiss anyone who raises these questions as alarmist.
So, understand this clearly:
If you refuse to call out eliminationist rhetoric when it is dressed up as sophistication. If you refuse to question state-backed influence when it flatters your politics. If you stay silent while “Zionist” becomes a civic slur and Jews are excluded from public spaces…
You are not neutral, you are participating.
Democracies do not collapse only because extremists shout, they weaken because respectable people look away. When a state is declared the enemy of humanity, history does not ask whether the language was nuanced. It simply asks who challenged it and who chose comfort.
The line is visible now, you either shine a light on it or you help the darkness spread.
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