Israel, antisemitism, and the choice before us

It is no longer shocking to see university students chanting “intifada revolution” or masked agitators tearing down posters of kidnapped Israeli children. What is shocking is how quickly this ugliness has become socially acceptable in polite company. On city streets and social media, young Westerners shout slogans they don’t understand for causes they don’t comprehend—fuelled not by lived experience, but by ideology. In 2024–2025, antisemitism doesn’t always wear a swastika. Sometimes it cloaks itself in ‘decolonisation’ and speaks the language of human rights.

To the reasonable, open-minded people who find themselves swayed—whether loudly or subtly—by those cheering on Hamas: you are being deceived. You are being manipulated and triggered by monsters who know exactly which strings to pull. This isn’t just about the destruction of Israel—it’s about dismantling the civilised world, including the one you live in. As Robespierre learned, revolutions always consume the dimwits who ignite the fuse. The same fate awaits today’s kaffiyah-clad keyboard warriors and their naïve enablers.

Those waving the Hamas flag are not demanding Palestinian freedom—they are cheering for theocratic fascism, gender apartheid, and the elimination of the Jewish people. These are not values confined to Gaza. Hamas’s ideology is exported, adapted, and echoed in the West—in classrooms, on TikTok, and even in parliament. If civilisation does not stand firm now, we are complicit in its slow undoing. Today’s appeasement will not buy peace; it will embolden violence. The Islamists marching for blood in Gaza do not stop at Tel Aviv. London, Paris, Sydney, and New York are next.

As Elie Wiesel warned, “We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” This is one of those moments. The siren song of antisemitic propaganda—whether broadcast in the streets or whispered through academic respectability—is a moral test.

And as Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminded the world in even darker times, “The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.” That test is here again, and it will be judged not by hashtags, but by courage and clarity.