October 7 exposes the ‘true colours’ of people’s hate against Jews worldwide
By David E. Kaplan
“We’re the first generation to rediscover the colour of the work,” exclaimed an exuberant Sébastien Allard, director of paintings at Paris’ Louvre Museum. He was of course referring to the long-awaited unveiling of the restored Eugène Delacroix‘s La Liberté guidant le peuple (“Liberty Leading the People”), one of the most iconic paintings of the nineteenth century which has become a universal symbol of liberty and democracy.
Charcterised by a bold bare-chested woman leading French revolutionaries, the six months painstakingly restored Delacroix revealed last week its – true colours.
Watching this report on a TV news channel while exercising on my stationary bike, the metaphor was not lost on me. If the ‘true colours’ of La Liberté guidant le peuple was finally revealed following the removal of decades of varnish and grime, then the rest of the news of mass protests revealed the ‘true colours’ of people’s feelings towards Jews.
What vanished this varnish was Oct. 7!
Beneath the veneer of accumulated guilt in the wake of the Shoah was suddenly ripped away by the Stormtroopers from Gaza. Suddenly, there were no longer any constraints. If it was unfashionable to be antisemitic in the post Holocaust years, Hamas brought it back into fashion. From across Europe to the elitist Ivy League campuses in the USA, antisemitism is once again in vogue. Jews are uncomfortable or feeling “unsafe” on campuses; families in California are removing mezuzahs (encased scrolls) from their front doors, and Jews are ridiculed and violently threatened in public. It is no safer in Canada. In Edmonton, South African friends of my brother who have been living there for over 40 years reveal:
“Our rabbi is leaving; he is emigrating to Israel and Jews are removing their mezuzahs from their front doors.”
We should not be surprised from the country, whose response by a high-level Canadian government official when asked how many Jews should be accepted into the country during the time of the Nazi persecution was:
“None is too many”
As recent as 2019, the Edmonton Journal ran a cartoon of a hacker in a wallet with a black beard and a large nose reminiscent of antisemitic caricatures of Jews.
With antisemitic hate crimes in Canada rising by 182 % between 2015 and 2022 according to the Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre, Hamas can be credited to a massive jump since its attack on Israel on Oct 7, 2023.
The situation in the US is much worse. Writing in The Jerusalem Post, Howard Blast from New Haven, Connecticut, USA reveals on a recent visit for his yearly health checkup being asked by his doctor’s non-Jewish partner:
“Don’t you usually wear a small hat on your head?”
Quickly realizing she was referring to the knitted kippah she was accustomed to seeing him wear, he replied:
“You have a good memory. I usually wear a yarmulka on my head. To tell you the truth, these days, I really don’t feel safe. I now wear a baseball cap.”
Now Howard’s kippah remains in his pocket, out of sight only to be worn when it is “safe”.
Today, it is no longer “safe” for Jews in countries from Belgium to the US, Brazil to South Africa, and Italy to Australia according to a recently released report on global antisemitism for 2023 by researchers at Tel Aviv University (TAU) and Anti-Defamation League (ADL). This too should come as no surprise. However, if the report cautions “concern” for the “future of Jewish life around the world” based on what transpired in 2023, then what has subsequently befallen Jews in 2024, the current level of “concern” might soon be reset to “panic”.
And no Jew is spared; celebrity status offers little protection. While Amy Schumer was busy this March during a shoot in Brooklyn of her latest movie ‘Kinda Pregnant’, in which she plays a woman who pretends to be pregnant to get attention, she does receive “attention” but not the type in the movie script. A passerby interrupted one of the scenes and yelled at her:
“Fuck you, Amy Schumer! You’re a Zionist You love genocide!“
Not only are Jews celebrities being accosted but also non-Jewish actors and for failing to publicly criticise Israel. Last month, actor Alec Baldwin was aggressively confronted at a New York coffee shop by an anti-Israel protester who repeatedly demanded that he say “Free Palestine.” Alec would have none of it but the protestor persisted.
“Alec can you please say ‘Free Palestine’ one time? Free Palestine, Alec, just one time, and I’ll leave you alone. I’ll leave you alone, I swear.”
Her conduct then morphed into the ugly with:
“Fuck Israel, fuck Zionism,” please say it.”
Baldwin finally knocked the camera out of her hand.
The level of hate against Jews is now so intense that no place is sacrosanct – even Auschwitz!
Earlier this month, a video was posted on X showing footage of a Palestinian man visiting the Auschwitz-Birkenau Holocaust Memorial Museum, where he called on Jews to return to the site of the extermination camp, a place he claimed is “where they belong.” Footage of the man can be seen walking through the Auschwitz memorial, calling to free Palestine.
“From these ghettos from which the Zionists came, I say Allah have mercy on all the Palestinians and our martyrs. Free Palestine.” Such was this Palestinian’s message from Auschwitz!
Make no mistake, his calling from the world’s worst extermination site in history, would find resonance with many of the protestors in the US. This was born out when the news broke three weeks ago that Iran had launched 300 missiles targeting Israeli civilians, crowds at anti-Israel rallies across North America erupted into cheers and celebration. The veneer was removed and the “true colours” of many of the protestors were chillingly revealed.
Prof. Uriya Shavit, who heads the Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry and the Irwin Cotler Institute, warns that while “The year is not 1938, not even 1933,” if current trends continue:
“… the curtain will descend on the ability to lead Jewish lives in the West – to wear a Star of David, attend synagogues and community centers, send kids to Jewish schools, frequent a Jewish club on campus, or speak Hebrew. We are concerned that the curtain will descend on Jewish life in the West.”
WAR AND REMBERENCE
All this came into focus when watching last night the Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) ceremony at Yad Vashem. Lighting one of the six candles commemorating the 6 million Jews murdered, a survivor of the Holocaust recalls how he finally made his way to Palestine only to be captured by the British and interned in Cyprus before finally making it to the newly declared state of Israel. There “I immediately joined the new Israeli army and I was given a number – a number I was proud of; not the Auschwitz number I had tattooed on my arm but a military number of belonging to the IDF.”
These are the NUMBERS that will assure “Never Again”.
What has befallen Israel and Jews across the world, we are reminded of the need for not only an Israel but a strong Israel.
While I would not normally subscribe to the philosophy of Niccolo Machiavelli, Hamas has made me make an exception. While the world criticizes Israel for the way it is prosecuting the war in Gaza, I say since October 7 and my understanding of a world that has little love of Israel:
“It is better to be feared than to be loved.”
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
