by Geoff Vasil
While Europeans have been looking on as their streets are taken over by belligerent mobs of pro-Palestinian and/or pro-Hamas protestors, with concomitant protests and violence against Israel supporters in the United Kingdom, there has also been a rising wave of anti-Jewish protests, attacks and violence across the Anglosphere beyond the UK, the rest of the English-speaking world.
In the extreme leftist stronghold of Seattle, Washington, in the United States, where the evening news carries openly sympathetic explanations of Hamas’s violent attacks against civilians in southern Israel on October 7, massive pro-Palestinian protests were followed by a series of mailings to four synagogues of white powder with threatening notes. Seattle police, fire and now the FBI are investigating this as an act of terrorism. The mailings were followed by white powder and threats mailed to four county election offices still engaged in counting the November 7 ballot results. An accompanying note said “End the election now.” Traces of fentanyl were found in two samples from the Seattle and Spokane areas mixed with baking soda.
In nearby Tacoma pro-Hamas activists blocked the loading of a military cargo at the port there for 10 hours, in solidarity with a similar blockade at the Port of Oakland in California which lasted 17 hours, organized by the same pro-Palestinian NGO. JTA reported a Jewish man was killed in Los Angeles when a pro-Palestinian activist hit him in the head with a metal megaphone on November 5.
In neighboring Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada–also a bastion of the Far Left in Canada where the local CBC Vancouver affiliate hasn’t bothered to even report poor showings by the Canadian Conservative Party in provincial elections for the last 10 years–vandals painted the slogan “Free Palestine, Kill Jews” on buildings in the historic Chinatown district there, accompanied by medium-sized pro-Palestinian protests in Canada’s main Pacific port city. Jewish families in Vancouver reportedly are afraid to send their children to school.
Pro-Palestinian protests were staged in other major Canadian cities with similar expressions of anti-Semitism. In Montreal, which has traditionally had both a large Muslim immigrant population and a history of attacks against Muslims and mosques, the Montreal Police Department reported a sharp rise in what they categorize as hate crimes and hate incidents as compared to last year’s number: 98 so far this year compared to a total of 72 for all of 2022. That number includes attacks targeting Muslims, although around three quarters of the attacks and incidents targeted Jews this year to date. This someone threw a lit Molotov cocktail against the doors of the Congregation Beth Ahavat Shalom Nusach Hoari Synagogue and a Jewish community center across the street in Montreal, causing only minor damage to the synagogue’s doors. Montreal Jewish community members told the CBC they’re experiencing verbal abuse in daily life and increased anti-Semitism. A brawl erupted at Concordia University in Montreal between pro-Israel and pro-Palestine groups with one person arrested for assaulting a security guard.
Australia kicked off its love affair with terrorism with a large protest in front of the iconic Sydney Opera House where crowds of mainly non-Australians chanted “Gas the Jews.” This was just after the October 7 attack, before Israel responded. At another protest at the same location later, police arrested a man for carrying an Israeli flag. More recently a silent pro-Israeli vigil was disrupted by loud Palestinian boosters. A group of white Australian Hamas supporters then crashed a private $5000-dollar-a-plate dinner with prime minister Anthony Albanese in Darwin, disrupting the event with chants before being removed by police and security forces. On October 28 an elderly Jewish man was physically attacked in the Sydney suburb of Arncliffe, where he took “at least 12 punches to the head,” Australian Sky News reported, a “major anti-Semitic attack.” He was reportedly surrounded by a large crowd of men and women, taunted and beaten severely by three men, leading to broken vertebrae and hospitalization. According to media reports he called police before the assault but they failed to appear. There have been numerous other physical attacks on Jews by pro-Palestinians across the country, but mainly in Sydney and Melbourne. Also in Sydney a series of propaganda posters were placed in public locations showing Adolf Hitler hiding behind a Benjamin Netanyahu mask.
At Melbourne University in Australia’s second-largest city and a bastion of the Labor Party, a sort of war of the handbills is taking place: posters of Israelis taken hostage by Hamas have been covered with stickers reading “Zionist propaganda.” Australian foreign minister Penny Wong is also facing criticism for meeting with and posting a selfie with a pro-Palestinian activist who has called publicly for the destruction of Israel. Staff from the Australian state broadcaster ABC have also accused Israel of war crimes as about 200 of them complained the ABC’s coverage was too pro-Israel and they weren’t allowed to accuse Israel of genocide, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. The local council of Merri-Bek (formerly Moretown) in the Melbourne inner city voted to fly the Palestinian flag for six months at the Council’s Coburg Civic Center to protest “genocide in the Gaza Strip” as part of an extended resolution condemning Israel, calling for a report to “explore options” for the council to boycott companies that support Israel’s “illegal occupation of Palestine.” One of the four dissenting council members, Oscar Yildiz, who also serves as justice of the peace and was twice elected mayor of Moreland, began receiving death threats to him and his family shortly after the council vote.
In the island country and Far Left stronghold of New Zealand, thousands of protestors have taken to the street to “support Palestine” and Green Party MP Chlöe Swarbrick faced criticism for a “river to the sea” comment she made while speaking at a pro-Palestinian rally. This is an old PLO formula calling for the mass murder of Jews in Israel, demanding they be driven from the Jordan River and drowned in the Mediterranean Sea. Calling for the commission of genocide is part of the crime of genocide under the UN Convention for the Prevention of Genocide and international jurisprudence. Te Pāti Māori (Maori Party) and the Green Party have publicly called for Israel to end its bombing campaign in Gaza and have voiced support for the Palestinian if not the Hamas cause. Pro-Israel groups also held rallies throughout New Zealand and in some locations pro-Palestine and pro-Israel groups clashed with heated verbal exchanges.
In South Africa, the number of anti-Semitic incidents in October wass nine times higher than the average recorded for that month over the past decade, according to David Saks, associate director of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies.
The Modi Government in India has taken a hard pro-Israel line, banning pro-Palestinian protests outright in Muslim Indian-controlled Kashmir, and a strong police response stopping pro-Palestine demonstrations elsewhere in India. India has been called the only country in the world with no history of anti-Semitism and the general sentiment in the halls of power and on social media seems to be sympathy with Israel as a fellow victim of Islamic terror. India also voted against a cease-fire resolution at the UN General Assembly. Earlier governments going back to Gandhi have been sympathetic towards Palestine, even blocking the UN resolution for the foundation of Israel, and the current government adheres to the formula of a two-state solution.
In one incident, a woman who shared a link to information about a protest calling for the release of Israeli hostages being held in Gaza was abused online, including a post that said “we’ll come for her babies next”.
Across the Anglosphere the pro-Palestine and pro-Israel camps have mainly followed party lines, with the strongest support for Israel coming from the different conservative factions: the confusingly named Liberal Party of Australia (conservatives) with a few associated rightist parties and a single but very vocal conservative news channel; Republicans in the US; Conservatives and conservatives in exile in Canada. Various Green factions have seized upon pro-Palestine protests as a source of political capital with different Labor/Labour/Democrat groups divided and mainly sympathetic towards the Palestinian rather than the Israeli cause. The logic of Leftism demands the more moderate factions be assimilated to the extremist “progressive” agenda, meaning the Democrats in the US will eventually come around to supporting an anti-Israel agenda, with the same phenomenon at work throughout the English-speaking world. The attitude of both sides or all sides seems to be that the conflict involves the life and death of civilization itself, which makes the situation ripe for exploitation by other great powers and real players on the geopolitical stage. Calls for “interfaith dialogue” such as the well-meaing recent call issued by German president Steinmeier fail to address the real issue, which is geopolitical rather than religious.
The views and opinions expressed are purely those of the author.