GAZA  IS ‘LIBERATING’!

Gaza  has liberated people across the world to openly express their hate for Jews.

By David E. Kaplan

It sounds disgusting because it is disgusting.

The more pictures and video clips of suffering Gazans flood the media market, the more people across the world feel free – nay I say feel “liberated” – to once again publicly and proudly release their suspended or suppressed hatred of Jews. No longer the type of ‘civilized’, accepted or sanitized antipathy of the 1950s and 1960s that I recall from my native South Africa in the shape of refusing membership to Jews at golf clubs or being called “Hymie” at school.  No, Gaza has now presented a free pass to all across this planet that Jews anywhere are legitimate targets for abuse and very much worse.

The result is they turf you off planes even if you are a group of 50 French Jewish youth movement kids returning home as a Spanish airline saw fit to do; kick you out of restaurants and camp sites, refuse your booking at hotels, spit at you, punch and kick, set fire to you when you are in a synagogue and even shoot you dead as you leave a Jewish event. This is not the Germany of the 1930s but much of the world in 2025 and Gaza opened the floodgates of this ‘liberated’, unabashed hatred! While the verb ‘liberate’  would normally be understood to mean “to free”, here it is a return  to the automatic position of antipathy held over millennia now explosively unleased by Gaza.

The more the people of Gaza appear via the media to be suffering, the freer the people of the world  feel to safely return  to their default position of not only comfortably despising Jews but publicly expressing it – whether verbal or by violence. There is a calibrated correlation. When confronted over their dastardly acts against random Jews whether in Europe, UK, US, Canada or Australia, they respond in amplified verbiage containing the word “GAZA” – as if it’s an obvious satisfactory explanation or accepted legal defense. As he was dragged away after gunning down dead two Israeli embassy staffers outside the Jewish Museum in Washington, 31-year-old Chicago-born Elias Rodrigues, shouted:

“…I did it for Gaza.”

This is reminiscent of the Middle Ages when killing Jews was not a universally illegal act and was often not punished, and sometimes even encouraged by authorities.  For much of the Middle Ages, the GAZA then was the Black Death, when pogroms against Jews were permitted or even instigated by government officials across Europe.  What has really changed when corruption of the truth back then and corrupting the truth today results in the same  mass hatred leading to persecution of Jews?

Google ‘current rise in antisemitism’  – as I did – and you will be instantly met with endless links  to articles like:

• Gaza conflict leads to rise in antisemitism

• Reflection & Resilience: A Year of Unprecedented Antisemitism

• U.S. Antisemitic Incidents Skyrocketed 360% in Aftermath of Attack in Israel

• Driven by Israel-Gaza War, Antisemitism in U.S. Reached an Unprecedented High in 2023

• Protracted war in Gaza partly to blame for ‘unprecedented’ wave of Australian antisemitic attacks, experts say

• SWC Alarmed by Unprecedented Surge in Anti-Semitic Incidents in Germany

• Huge rise in antisemitic abuse in UK since Hamas attack, says charity

What do all these articles – and can go on and on –  have in common? All record increasing violence against Jews unleashed by the media mania’s contrived coverage of Gaza portraying Israelis as Nazis on a murderous spree of innocent Palestinians.  Intentionally neglected in this narrative is that Israel:

– is engaged in an existential war with an enemy that perpetrated the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

– that this enemy had proudly pledged to repeat such massacres in the future and

– that they are holding hostages in horrendous conditions facing imminent death.

FUELING THE FRENZY

With the mass hysteria against Jews persisting unabated, it does beg the question that if the war in Gaza was suddenly brought to an end, would the incidents of antisemitism commensurately dissipate? Probably because there would be much less visual media coverage which is fueling the frenzy.  But then again, it would only be a question of ‘when’ and not ‘if’ that some other peg will appear for willing folk to happily hang their antisemitism on.

All this begs the question:

Have we crossed a bridge beyond what Israelis would commonly respond with “Kacha ze” (ככה זה) meaning “This is how it is” or has a threshold been breached where the lives of Jews globally are in mortal danger? Simply put:

Is there today no safe place for Jews anywhere on this planet without the provision of serious security?

A disturbing harbinger is the language of Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, who after accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza said:

“We have no atomic bombs to stop Israel”.

Accusing Israel of a false genocide, the leader of a country that has a notorious history of antisemitism, threatens the Jewish state with a real genocide. The Spanish PM laments, “If only I had an atom bomb.”

The Iberian prime minister’s careful word choice reveals his deep-rooted national inclination – what the Spanish Inquisition did not ultimately achieve – wiping out any trace of Jews!

With the way the world today looks upon Jews is an unsettling reminder why there is not only the need of an Israel but a strong defensible Israel that can safeguard a Jewish future to ensure in the words of Israel’s illustrious late foreign minister, Abba Eban:

“Israel’s future will be longer than its past”

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).