There is a special place in hell reserved for people who exploit the pain of others – and it’s becoming very crowded. It’s filling up with those who look at the war between #Israel and #Hamas, and the grief and fear it prompts in the hearts of Jews and Muslims especially, and see not tragedy but opportunity – a chance to advance their own interests. ...
... But nor does she care whether she ignites a tinderbox. British Jews have been in a state of anxiety and fear since the brutal murders committed by Hamas in southern Israel on 7 October. Antisemitic incidents have surged by more than 500% compared with the same period last year, each day bringing word of more. ... Islamophobic attacks have risen by a similar proportion. ...
In service of the cynicism and the exploitation is the distortion of the Israel-Palestine conflict, forcing it into a pre-existing ideological frame. In this field, Braverman has company. Witness the associate editor of the Spectator, Douglas Murray, who has long railed against what he sees as the threat that Islam and Muslims pose to Europe and the west. He is using the current crisis to press that case, telling one US interviewer this week that Humza Yousaf has “infiltrated our system”, and that he is not really first minister of Scotland, but rather “first minister of Gaza”. Murray has thoughts too on the future of #Gaza, writing that “it could be a good time … to clear all the Palestinians from that benighted strip”.
The pro-Palestinian left will look on all this and rightly be appalled. And yet the left is not free of its own tendency to flatten and squeeze Israelis and Palestinians into a shape that fits its worldview, even if that means riding roughshod over some pretty elementary facts. ... Activists from the Black Lives Matter movement have been quick to identify Israel-Palestine as simply another front in the battle for civil rights, one that can be smoothly mapped on to the racial politics of the US. ... It also rests on an assumption that Israeli lives are “white lives” – when in fact about half of all Israeli Jews are not white by any definition, but Mizrahi, with roots in north Africa and the Arab world, most of them the descendants of refugees pogromed out of their homes in Iraq, Yemen, Morocco or beyond in the aftermath of Israel’s creation in 1948. ...
The point is, this conflict has its own complex history and its own shape. It should not be bent and twisted to fit the doctrinal dogmas of others, and it should not be used by politicians and hucksters to push an agenda, build a brand or pursue their own selfish ambition. There are too many people grieving on the ground there and racked by fear here for that. If you’re looking for fuel to feed your own hellfire, back off – and find some other agony to exploit.
