Down the rabbit-hole of hate
How many times will we fall this time? Gazing into the abyss of anti-Semitism flooding across the UK, I can feel it staring back at me
Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end!
As Alice plummeted down the rabbit-hole in Lewis Carroll’s famous 1865 novel, she mused ‘how many miles I've fallen by this time?' Tumbling down the rabbit-hole has become synonymous with getting deep into something, or ending up somewhere strange. As English vernacular for distraction, getting lost and losing track, the idiom perfectly fits the current tragedy of our moment.
The last seven days have born witness to a tragedy of untold proportions unfolding in the levant, as 1,300+ mostly Jews have lost their lives. A calamity which has loosened the always-present risk of a timetable for punch and counter-punch in what is apocryphally known as the Holy Land.
Almost every Jewish household in Israel has spent the last week mourning the dead, young survivors of the horrific slaughter across the Kibbutzim going from funeral to funeral of lost friends, family, neighbours. Speaking to two of my Israeli-British friends - now heading to the maelstrom of the timetable for conflict - the silence is the worst thing. A silence born out of a tremendous grief, the sort that gnaws at the dark recesses of the heart and spirit.
The largest loss of Jewish life since the end of the Holocaust. The same thought crosses my mind as did Alice as she tumbled down the rabbit-hole, how many miles have we fallen this time?
And it isn’t just the Israeli Jews I’m thinking of when musing on the tragic inability of humanity to rise above the tribal desire for conflict, slaughter, death. Palestinians too are hurled into the same darkness as Israelis and the global Jewish diaspora as, once again, the binary of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ rears its ugly head. The Palestinians of Gaza live beneath the same jackbooted shadow of Hamas religious fascism as the Israelis do.
But we can’t admit this essential truth to ourselves can we? If we journey down that rabbit-hole, we might be forced to dispense with the cheap slogans and binary choices. For if we admit to ourselves the real complaining party at the bar here is justice, then we’d need to contend with tough realities.
Facing facts
Fact 1: Palestinians and Israelis are victims of the same carnivorous evil.
Hamas was founded to wage a war to ensure one thing. “From the river to the sea”, destroying the state of Israel. Not a two state solution, not a peace processes aimed at realising the desperate need for justice for Palestinians and safety and security for Israelis. No, the extermination of Jewish people. Hamas is the ultimate wrecker of the hopes of Palestinians for peace, self determination and statehood. The jihadists of the ‘Islamic Resistance Movement’ are in the business of genocide not liberation.
Jewish people of Israel know this, that there is no partner for peace to be had with them. Only an enemy to be confronted, and at this point completely defeated.
Both Palestinians and Israelis lose out.
Fact 2: There needs to be changes of regime in Jerusalem, Gaza and Ramallah
If Hamas is the ultimate roadblock on obtaining Palestinian statehood, then the governments of Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas are wreckers. Netanyahu, ever the populist has long promised easily answers to complex and nuanced questions. Dividing Israeli society as he enjoys the trappings of power, he has weakened Israeli democracy and civil society. We are now beginning to realise the awful price of this. Meanwhile Mahmoud Abbas, President of the State of Palestine and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) is little better. That ageing King Herod clings to his office minus elections amid a sea of corruption so vast the PNA has precious little currency left among Palestinians on the street.
Down the rabbit hole of hate
More depressingly, nobody in the west really cares about any of this. Much better to leap into complex and challenging geopolitical realities with lazy slogans and an ever larger dose of hate.
Here in my home city of Glasgow the ignorant slabber eagerly at the prospects of fighting, conflict, binary paradigms. ‘Palestine under attack’ the screeching wine-bar revolutionaries insist.
“Free Palestine” the hard of thinking shout at Scottish Jews, “don’t forget where you were in 1940”. Even as her friend, perhaps dimly aware of how unhelpful to the cause her friend purports to case about - Palestinians - tries to pull her away. But no, “don’t forget where the Jews were in 1940 and 1941!”
Casual references to the Holocaust aimed at British Jews? Check. We’ve fallen that far this time.
Welcome to the tumbling rabbit hole of hate.
Yet this ignorant hate was nothing compared to events of the capital in London. Down there people allegedly advocating for Palestine decided to prowl the streets shouting “We'll find the Jews here, we want the Zionists, we want their BLOOD!”
What seems lost on all of these foolish useful idiots for Hamas is that nothing they are doing helps the Palestinians one jot. Nor does it convince those of us on the other side to pull back from absolute support for Israel doing what it deems necessary to liquidate the Hamas terrorist regime in Gaza.
If I am to be told that the equation Israel must accept is ‘murder Jewish babies + hide behind Palestinian babies = Hamas gets away with it’ then no.
When the rhetoric becomes ‘Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea’, I find myself suddenly unwilling to criticise Benjamin Netanyahu; rather I feel scared. I suddenly want to hide behind him, even though I know he is a wrecker and part of the problem. But the spectre of a fresh wave of 1940s style anti-Semitism masquerading as anti-Zionism does make you feel strange things.
All I know right now is, there is two Glasgows in front of my eyes.
One - larger and with more people participating gathered to celebrate the butchery of the 7th October 2023.
And the other much smaller, huddled almost fearfully beneath the statue of Donald Dewar. Mournful, hushed but determined.
Those of us with platforms - however small or large - think we can push back against this rushing tide toward chaos, racism blood and vengeance. Yet, slowly you lose the confidence that you once had in that mission.
After a sea of anti-Semitic abuse constantly flung my way, the penny is beginning to drop that perhaps we’re all really just the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dam?
Here’s a sampling of what I have been dealing with following writing my last Substack and also Think Scotland two party essay. (here and here)
Does this mean hate wins? Does this mean fear begets fear and the cascade toward conflict is unavoidable? Today for the first time in a long time, I really don’t know the answer. But I sure thought I did before the events of the last week.
I’m gazing once again into the abyss of anti-Semitism, only this time, for the first time in my life, I really can feel it staring right back at me.
“if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
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It’s a heartbreaking and frightening situation. The incursion of Hamas terrorists into Israel with no other reason than slaughtering and defiling as many innocents as possible, must be unequivocally condemned. It’s also heartbreaking to witness the consequences for Palestinians in Gaza as their Hamas oppressors use them as a shield, nothing more than collateral damage. To witness that hatred spilling over into our own streets makes my blood run cold. What is even more distressing is the simple fact that there is not a viable solution available.