The Rhetoric We Choose to Ignore
Two years ago, while Hamas was raining down rockets on Israel, anti-Jewish hate crimes worldwide rose dramatically. Of all the things that happened to Jews around the world, I was reminded of what happened in London during that time. The pro-Hamas Londoners were caught on camera chanting in public squares “f*** the Jews! Rape their daughters!” One was even heard in one of the largest Jewish communities in London shouting, “Rape their daughters, we have to send a message.“
The dastardly part of this is that when you search it, you’ll find a bunch of articles pretending to debunk it. Because some people think it’s a video from this month following the October 7th massacre. The articles label that false, which is correct, but what many of the articles leave out is that Jews were killed, and daughters were raped just over two weeks ago.
In a society that loves to talk about “dog-whistles,” this is about as plain as you can get. Hamas claims that this attack on Israel was two years in the making. For two years, Hamas planned this attack, slowly gaining Israel’s trust. Over the two years, Israel even granted work visas to Arab Palestinians in Gaza to work in Judea/Samaria (the West Bank). It turns out, maybe not for all of the workers, but for Hamas, it was a play to get intel on Jews living there; houses, number of family members, names, where they worked, etc.
But what keeps striking me is the timeline. Hamas says the massacre was a result of two years of planning, and just two years ago almost exactly, their supporters in London were specifically shouting the very thing that happened to many young Israeli women and children.
Other gross things were said by rioters in 2021, but this one just hit me today.
2021 also resulted in new friends coming into my life. Though the circumstances were terrible, it enabled me to meet some awesome people; one of which I wound up interviewing on my podcast; an Israeli singer named Hadar. I’ll have her back again hopefully this week on this platform, so please stay tuned.
In the meantime, you can find our old interview here.