“Oct 7 2023”

Best video you will see all week. pic.twitter.com/OqBONIBkP7

— Marina Medvin 🇺🇸 (@MarinaMedvin) November 13, 2023

The plight of families desperately seeking the return of their loved ones abducted from Israel on Oct. 7 is painfully familiar to Aviram Shaul.

His brother, Oron Shaul, was serving in the Israeli army when he was killed in 2014, during the last major war in Gaza. Israel says Hamas still has his body, along with that of Hadar Goldin, who was killed in the same war. The group is also believed to be holding two living Israeli civilians, Avera Mengistu, who crossed into Gaza in 2014, and Hisham al-Sayed, who entered Gaza in 2015. The Israeli government has said both suffered from mental health issues before they crossed out of Israel.

By and large, Biden administration officials have said all the right things about Israel’s obligation to neutralize the intolerable threat posed by the Iranian proxy groups on its borders. But that resolve dissipated rapidly when Israel embarked on its mission to destroy Hamas, which suggests the Biden administration supported it only in theory.

He was a fat bloke with a swastika tattooed on his beer belly and a teardrop inked beneath his eye. Let’s call him the cartoon fascist. The Guardian describes another: “a Port Vale fan supping a can of Stella Artois.” There were several hundred of them on Saturday, boorishly shouting “En-ger-land” around the Cenotaph. East to spot, easy to despise. And I do.

“Has died.

She didn’t drop dead mysteriously, she was gruesomely murdered by Hamas terrorists. https://t.co/SdVI2k6cpP pic.twitter.com/Fpjc7nRm8T

— ~Jachnun Supremacist~ נפתלי בן מתתיהו (@JachnunEmpire) November 14, 2023

We are approaching a tipping point: what unites us may soon be weaker than what we disagree about

Over a weekend that felt like the last days of Weimar, “patriots” chanted “England till I die” at the Cenotaph, and a pro-Palestine marcher declared that “Hitler knew how to deal” with the Jews. These thugs do not speak for the thousands who protest in good faith on either side. But hate speech will be used to smear each cause, posted as proof that it is out for blood. Meanwhile, millions of us feel paralysed by the moral complexity of the Israel-Gaza conflict, and silenced by fear of causing offence.

If you say “I sympathise with you, but…”, you’ll likely get called a coward, for the marchers see no “but” – not a glimmer of light on the other side of the argument, not a shadow over their own. London has become the theatre for a new wave of tribal politics.

Events around the world, arising out of the Oct. 7 pogrom in southern Israel, have exposed multiculturalism’s core weakness, namely that ancient hatreds prevalent in certain cultures do not dissipate in the journey from there to here. Normally dormant, a trigger thousands of kilometres away can activate them. Jews are the primary target of angry Islamists’ hatred, but we are also witnessing a disruptive ripple effect that spreads in every direction, turning public spaces into contested cultural terrain.

This contest, best exemplified in London, England, in recent days, is played out in small ways and large.

The Washington Post’s deletion of an anti-Hamas cartoon has exposed the moral depravity of the left.

Last week, the Washington Post published a cartoon which featured senior Hamas member Ghazi Hamad with women and children tied to his body as human shields. The cartoon featured a speech bubble, in which Hamad says: ‘How dare Israel attack civilians.’

The Jews. The Jews.

It is always, so sadly, the Jews. Always.

There is not a humiliation, a torment, an affliction or misery, not a savagery, or horror, either contemplated or put into merciless execution, known to the human mind in its darkest most ungoverned contemplation — none — that with full rage-powered hate and sadistic purpose has not been visited on the Jewish people.

The White House says that a three-year-old American whose parents were killed by Hamas is among the hostages in Gaza.

President Joe Biden raised the issue of hostages, including the toddler, with a call with Amir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad al-Thani of Qatar on Sunday.

It comes as the White House says “urgent” efforts to free hostages taken after the 7 October attack by Hamas are continuing.

The “pro-Palestinian” demonstrations that have taken place in the US and some European countries over the past few days are all about hating Israel and Jews, not about helping the Palestinians – especially those who have been living under the rule of the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group in the Gaza Strip since 2007.

People who are really pro-Palestinian would be demonstrating for them to have leaders that do not siphon off billions in international aid, or who shoot at them when they try to flee to safety, or who do not store weapons and ammunition in and near their homes and schools.

The protests against Israel around the world purport to be demanding a ceasefire, but that is not their real agenda. The not-so-hidden agenda is a demand for the end of Israel and support for Hamas. The protests began the day after the Hamas massacres of 1,200 Israelis and the kidnapping of more than 200.

Israel has revealed documents it says belong to Hamas which suggest the terrorists had planned to ‘systematically rape women’.

The documents allegedly belonging to the terror group contain an Arabic-Hebrew glossary with sexual terminology including ‘take your pants off’.

Israel shared some 50 translations on its official X account and claims the statements within the pages are ‘evidence’ of Hamas war crimes.