Antisemitism after October 7: three surprises and one non-surprise

Did I mention I have a book out this week?

The updated paperback edition of Everyday Hate came out on Thursday, with a new Preface and two new chapters - 20,000 new words in total - about October 7 and all the antisemitism that followed. My publisher is offering a special discount for my Substack subscribers - simply go to the Biteback Publishing website and use the discount code EHPB20.

The original edition came out in early 2023 and tells the story of antisemitism as an idea: where it comes from, what it looks like, who falls for it - and why it proves so enduring and, at times, popular. Then October 7 happened, and everything since confirmed much of what was in the book.

In that spirit, and as a taster for what is in the new chapters, here are three things about antisemitism that have surprised me since October 7; and one thing that didn’t surprise me at all.

Surprise 1: It started early

We are used to antisemitism rising whenever Israel is at war. It happened in May 2021; in summer 2014; in January 2009; during Israel’s second Lebanon War in 2006; and during the Second Intifada. If you go back long enough, it even happened during Israel’s first Lebanon War in 1982. This antisemitism was fuelled by anger about Israel, but was directed at Jews in the diaspora: synagogues, schools, community organisations, or often just random Jews in the street. At best, it involved verbal harassment or threats, or graffiti and online hate; at its worst, deadly terrorism. And usually, this was a reaction to the news and images of Israel attacking and of Palestinians dying.

This time it was the other way around. This wave of antisemitism began as a reaction to those awful images on October 7 of Hamas attacking and Israelis dying. It was the murder of 1,200 people in southern Israel, and the seizing of around 250 hostages, that triggered this outburst of anti-Jewish hatred, and that was new, and shocking. It’s possible to follow the twisted logic of people who get so angry about Israel that they take out their fury on Jews locally - not to excuse it of course, because it is never justified, but it’s possible to understand how the thought process works. This is different: it was the bloodlust of a mob watching excitedly as the pogrom rages.

One incident stuck in my mind so much that I used it as the title of one of Everyday Hate’s new chapters. It involved an ordinary Jewish man walking down a London street, when a random stranger driving past shouted at him: “The war is starting - Free Palestine!” A lot of people saw the war starting in Israel on that terrible October morning and wanted to join in, rhetorically at least, by aggressively declaring their excitement to any Jew they saw.

Surprise 2: They really are ‘all in’

I’ve sometimes wondered what Hamas, Hizbollah, or anyone else would have to do to Israel for their devoted supporters in the West to say “hang on, maybe that’s a bit much.” Now we know: 1,200 dead Israelis is not too much. Nor is rape and sexual violence, or the torture and kidnapping of children. It isn’t too much for Iran to fire hundreds of missiles and rockets at Israel, or for the Houthis to attack international shipping. The Houthis can even crucify gay people and it doesn’t stop some Western progressives cheering for them. So yes, the hardcore of this movement really has bet all its chips on this axis of resistance, with Iran, Russia and China standing behind it, in the hope that they will bring down not just Israel but capitalism and the entire Western political order.

The other side of this is the extent of the denial of Hamas’s crimes on October 7. This was always going to happen: misinformation and denial of atrocities in Ukraine has been a key tool of Russia’s supporters on the Western left, as it was in the Syrian civil war. But the speed and extent of the denial of the sexual violence in particular on October 7 was, for me, a big surprise. I thought it would be ignored, or argued away with some excuse or other, but the straightforward insistence that it simply never happened, despite independent investigations by several different agencies including (eventually) the United Nations, reveals something about the depth of commitment to this cause.

Surprise 3: What if education is not the answer?

This is more of a question than a surprise, but it needs to be asked, and the answer might upend our most basic assumptions about how to tackle antisemitism. Education is often held up as the antidote to hatred and prejudice. It’s the ultimate example of optimistic rationality: racism is due to ignorance, therefore enlightenment leads to tolerance. Except, this does not explain why the last seven months have seen an explosion in antisemitism in schools and universities. According to figures from the Community Security Trust (my employer, for full disclosure), antisemitic incidents rose by over 200% in both schools and universities in Britain last year, and the vast bulk of that increase came after October 7. Since then we have seen a proliferation of protest encampments at universities in the United States and the United Kingdom, and while many of these student protestors may have honourable motivations, there are plenty of examples of antisemitic behaviour: whether this involves physically preventing Jewish students or staff from accessing part of their own university, saying “Zionists don’t deserve to live”, or shouting “Go back to Poland” at them. Antisemitism has never been the preserve of the uneducated, and that seems to be as true now as it ever has been.

There is some research suggesting that an American college education actually makes people more antisemitic, not less, and while I don’t know how robust this research is, it is definitely worth asking whether the education that people are currently getting - about Jews, antisemitism, the Holocaust, Israel and Palestine - is helping or not. Perhaps people are simply not getting any education about those things, or what they are learning in school or college can’t outweigh what they are ‘learning’ on TikTok and Instagram. In some cases, what they are taught by their own lecturers and college professors is itself part of the problem. I’m not willing to give up on education yet - what else do we have, after all? - but like anything, if it is done badly it can make things worse, not better.

Non-Surprise: The antisemitism was obvious and the organisers didn’t care

This was the most predictable of all: we’ve seen straight up blood libel claims, antisemitic conspiracy charges, allegations of Zionist media control, and all the greatest hits of antisemitism over the past seven months. You don’t need to do a deep exegesis of anti-Israel discourse to find antisemitism in the pro-Palestinian movement: just look at the placards, listen to the speeches, and remember your Protocols of the Elders of Zion and your Shylock.

This is not a coincidence. Antisemitism has been with us for centuries, and its central ideas, myths and tropes are built into the conceptual architecture of our world. This work has not been done by fringe voices or extremist cranks, but by some of history’s greatest authors, thinkers and artists: Shakespeare, Voltaire, Martin Luther, Marx, and so on. Plus of course Kanye West and (semi-ironically) South Park. Antisemitic ideas endure because they are useful, resonant and familiar, and at times like this, when there is turmoil and suffering with Jews at the centre of it, some people find them irresistible.

I’ll take on trust that many of the people who go on pro-Palestinian marches are there for honourable reasons. There is an important question to be asked why they are so motivated to march for Palestine and not for the Kurds, the Uighurs, Yemenis, Syrians and so on, and that’s a question I answer at greater length in Everyday Hate (did I mention it was published this week?) Then there is the contradiction of people claiming to want peace when they are chanting for Intifada and Resistance, neither of which, in this context, are very peaceful. But for now, let’s just focus on the fact that while most of the demonstrators are not saying or doing anything antisemitic, at every march there is a minority of people carrying antisemitic placards, sometimes with swastikas on them, or expressing support for Hamas, or chanting blood-curdling chants. The police have been arresting some of them, but the organisers do not help . According to senior officers who gave evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee in December, up to that point they had not received a single report from march stewards or organisers of illegal activity by any demonstrators, even though such illegal activity was visible to observers every time. It’s like a nightclub owner who knows that the same people are dealing the same drugs on their premises every week, but who refuse to tell them to stop.

Imagine if the march organisers had said, right from the start, that supporters of Hamas are not welcome on their protests. It is a proscribed terrorist organisation after all, and it committed unspeakable atrocities on October 7 that brought calamity down onto Gaza. Or they could have told their supporters not to bring placards with swastikas comparing Israel to Nazi Germany or saying that Gaza is another Holocaust, because of the grotesque offence it causes to so many people. This would have sent a powerful message to the Jewish community and could have helped to calm tensions. But the fact is, they did neither of these things. I don’t know why. Perhaps they don’t want to admit there is any antisemitism in their movement. Maybe they don’t think it’s a problem, or they were worried about alienating parts of their supporter base. I don’t know. Whatever the reason, they didn’t do it, and here we are.

Everyday Hate: How Antisemitism Is Built Into Our World And How You Can Change It is available from Biteback Publishing with the discount code EHPB20 for my Substack subscribers.