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How the Media Has Abused the Memory of October 7, 2023
An aerial view shows the bodies of victims of an attack following a mass infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip lying on the ground in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, in southern Israel, Oct. 10, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ilan Rosenberg
Almost immediately after Oct. 7, 2023, the Guardian began what can be described as the abuse of Oct. 7th memory: failing to acknowledge that, on that Shabbat day, Jews in southern Israel were victims of the worst antisemitic massacre since the Holocaust, while framing the story instead as one about Israel’s military response to that (Trigger Warning) savage pogrom. As we’ve documented, other British outlets’ coverage of the racist massacre and its aftermath have often mirrored that of the Guardian.
This partly explains the legitimization given by journalists at these outlets to the genocide libel against Israel. This toxic and intellectually unserious narrative obfuscates the antisemitic-inspired cruelty and barbarism of those willing Palestinian executioners who carried out the mass murder, rape, torture, and mutilation of men, women and children – an atrocity inspired by Hamas’s annihilationist antisemitic ideology.
Downstream from this Oct. 7th massacre erasure is the widespread failure of these same outlets to acknowledge the scale of the antisemitic surge in diaspora communities since Hamas’ attack, and that pro-Palestinian ‘activists’ have been responsible for the vast majority of this historically unprecedented outbreak of anti-Jewish rhetoric, intimidation and violence.
Why? In part because those who’ve long believed in the purity of the Palestinians and the righteousness of pro-Palestinian movement are – like ideological extremists in previous eras – resistant to even the most undeniable evidence contradicting their beliefs.
So, before pivoting to a Guardian op-ed by Rachel Shabi, which, though putatively about antisemitism, manages to erase both the malign anti-Jewish obsession which inspired Oct. 7th, as well as the British antisemitism which, perversely, the attacks on Israeli Jews spawned, let’s briefly highlight the depth of the problem.
CST’s Antisemitic Incidents Report January-June 2024, released last summer, revealed 1,978 instances of anti-Jewish hate recorded across the UK in the first six months of the year, “the highest January-to-June total ever reported to CST.“ These record figures, CST noted, were driven by anti-Jewish reactions to the war between Israel and Hamas:
Number of incidents, January-June, 2014-2024
The CST also reported that university-related antisemitic incidents in Britain rose dramatically, from 53 incidents in the 2022-23 academic year to 272 incidents in the 2023-24 academic year. CST contextualised the more than 500% increase in antisemitism on campuses to the same wave of anti-Jewish hatred following the Hamas massacre.
It’s important to note that CST is very careful to include in their data only incidents which are clearly antisemitic.
So, though CST “received an unprecedented number of reports of pro-Palestinian campaigning at universities that featured extreme, sometimes violent, rhetoric towards Israel”, and support for terrorism, they didn’t include them in their count “because they did not meet CST’s criteria for recording as antisemitic due to a lack of clear evidence of anti-Jewish language, motivation or targeting.“
So, the numbers would be dramatically higher if the charity included incidents of anti-Israel extremism which, while not falling within the organization’s criteria for labeling something antisemitic, still make most Jewish students feel hated and unsafe.
Further, there’s the antisemitic impact that’s hard to quantify, but to which there’s much anecdotal evidence – such as Jewish artists being excluded from British cultural life because they refuse to denounce Israel.
Not surprisingly, according to a poll by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research in Oct. 2024, nearly three in four respondents said they feel less safe as a Jewish person living in the UK since the Oct. 7th massacre.
Yet, on Dec. 31st, the Guardian continued in its effort to gaslight Jews about this tsunami of anti-Jewish racism largely under the guise of pro-Palestinian activism since Oct. 7th, publishing an op-ed by Rachel Shabi titled “The term ‘antisemitism’ is being weaponised and stripped of meaning – and that’s incredibly dangerous.”
Shabi, who’s been denying the proven link between hatred of Israel and hatred of Jews qua Jews for over a decade at the Guardian, and who rarely if ever has a found a ‘real’ instance of anti-Jewish hatred from the pro-Palestinian left, has clearly not allowed events over the last 15 months, as well as the actual fears of British Jews, to intrude on her beliefs.
In her op-ed, for instance, she legitimises the incendiary libel that Israel is committing genocide, while saying nothing about Hamas’s medieval-style barbarism – including their live-streamed torture, mutilation and beheading. She decries that “accusations of antisemitism raised to counter criticism of Israel have gone into overdrive“ — while ignoring the weekly anti-Israel marches in London routinely infested with justifications for, and outright celebrations of, the terror groups’ sadistic murder spree, as well as outright antisemitism and the intimidation of Jews.
Shabi, as Guardian columnists so often do, defends those participating in the anti-Israel demos as merely Britons “crying out for an end to the bloodshed in Gaza” — as if they were peaceniks opposed to all violence, ignoring that condemnations of Hamas, or calls for the terror group to surrender and release the hostages, are never heard at such rallies.
In fact, the cruel tearing down of hostage posters by ‘pro-Palestinian’ activists has become common in London and other major cities.
Further, as The Times revealed, the main groups organising the London marches include some, such as Palestinian Forum in Britain, with reported links to Hamas, and others which supported the Oct. 7th massacre.
Shabi’s egregious dishonesty is especially evident when when she admits that ‘real’ “antisemitism is” indeed “increasing globally“, and that “Britain’s Jewish community has experienced verbal and physical attacks“ — while failing to call out the far-left anti-Israel extremism that’s behind this historically unprecedented spike in anti-Jewish incidents.
While Shabi’s obfuscation of pro-Palestinian antisemitism and her claim of Israelis “weaponising” antisemitism are morally indefensible, it’s, as we noted, completely in line with the editorial direction at the outlet regarding Oct. 7th and its aftermath, content which, for instance, included a Oct. 24, 2023, op-ed accusing Israel of “weaponising the Holocaust,“ and another one more recently accusing Israelis of “weaponising” Oct. 7th commemoration.
What we’ve seen day after day at the outlet since Oct. 7th is antisemitism atrocity deflection, inversion, revisionism and erasure that’s redolent of attempts after World War II – by the Arab and Muslim world, the extreme Left and the extreme Right – to deny and distort Holocaust history and its memory.
What’s truly disturbing however is that, unlike Holocaust deniers and revisionists, who have generally been consigned to the political fringes and rarely given platforms by major media outlets, the whitewashing, obfuscation and inversion of Oct. 7th – one of the most vicious and deadly antisemitic rampages in Jewish history – is not only socially acceptable, but has become de rigueur within mainstream journalistic circles.
The moral rot within institutions that have effectively normalized the rendering of Oct. 7th as a non-event can’t be overstated.
The author is the co-editor of CAMERA UK — an affiliate of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), where a version of this article first appeared.
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Majority of New York City Hate Crimes Targeted Jews in 2024, New Data Shows
Anti-Israel protesters target a synagogue in Queens, New York on July 14, 2024. Photo: Screenshot
Jews were targeted in the majority of hate crimes perpetrated in New York City last year, according to new data issued by the New York City Police Department (NYPD).
On Monday, the NYPD released its end-of-year crime report, which recorded a precipitous drop in crime overall but also the disturbing numbers on antisemitic hate crimes. Out of the 641 total hate crimes tallied by the NYPD, 345 targeted Jews, which, in addition to being a 7 percent increase over the previous year, amounted to 54 percent of all hate crimes in the city.
As The Algemeiner previously reported, antisemitic hate crimes in 2024 posed a major threat to the quality of life of New York City’s Orthodox Jewish community, which was the target in many of the incidents. In just eight days between the end of October and the beginning of November, three Hasidim, including children, were brutally assaulted in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. In one instance, an Orthodox man was accosted by two assailants, one masked, who “chased and beat him” after he refused to surrender his cellphone in compliance with what appeared to have been an attempted robbery.
In another incident, an African American male smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the heavily Jewish neighborhood. Less than a week earlier, an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face as he was walking in Brooklyn.
Days after the week-long antisemitic hate crime spree, three men attempted to rob a Hasidic man after stalking him through the Crown Heights neighborhood.
The explosion of hate continued a trend. In 2023, antisemitic incidents accounted for a striking 65 percent of all felony hate crimes in New York City, according to a report issued in August by New York state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. The report added that throughout the state, nearly 44 percent of all recorded hate crime incidents and 88 percent of religious-based hate crimes targeted Jews.
Other major cities and states have recently reported increases in antisemitic hate crimes.
In Los Angeles County, antisemitic hate crimes rose 91 percent in 2023, from 127 the prior year to 242 in what the LA County Commission on Human Relations (LACCHR) described as “the largest number of anti-Jewish crimes ever” in the city.
Additionally, the state of Massachusetts saw more antisemitic hate crimes in 2023 than at any time since government officials began tracking such data eight years ago, according to a report issued by its Executive Office of Public Safety and Security (EOPSS).
A striking 119 antisemitic hate crimes were reported to law enforcement agencies, EOPSS said, a total which, in addition to eclipsing 2015’s total of 56 incidents, amounts to a 70 percent increase over the previous year. Antisemitic hate crimes also constituted 18.8 percent of all hate crimes reported in 2023, a figure which trails only behind the percentage of hate crimes which targeted African Americans.
The report added that 68.9 percent of the antisemitic incidents involved property destruction or vandalism, a total of 82, while another 19 percent involved intimidation. Some physical assaults, six, were recorded or reported to the police.
“The local increase reflects national trends. Our data showed that over 10,000 antisemitic incidents were recorded in the US since Oct. 7, 2023, an over 200 percent increase compared to incidents reported to us during the same period a year before,” Peggy Shukur, vice president of the ADL’s East Division, told The Algemeiner when the information became public. “Behind every one of these numbers are people who have experienced the harm, fear, intimidation, and pain that reverberates from each of these incidents. The fact that numbers increase by 70 percent is a grim reminder that antisemitism continues to infect our communities in real and pervasive ways.”
Overall, anti-Jewish hate crimes in the US spiked to a record high in 2023, and American Jews were the most targeted of any religious group in the country, according to a report released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in September.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Trump Vows ‘Hell Will Break Out in the Middle East’ if Gaza Hostages Not Released by His Inauguration
US President-elect Donald Trump makes remarks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, US, Jan. 7, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria
US President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday reiterated his threat to seek retaliation against Hamas if the Palestinian terrorist group does not release the remaining hostages in the Gaza Strip.
“If [the hostages] aren’t back by the time I get in office, all hell will break out in the Middle East, and it will not be good for Hamas. And it will not be good, frankly, for anyone. All hell will break out,” Trump told reporters.
Trump made the comments during a wide-ranging press conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. He stood alongside Steve Witkoff, the recently appointed special envoy to the Middle East for his incoming administration.
“They should’ve never taken them. They should’ve never been the attacker of Oct. 7, but there was. Many people [were] killed. They’re no longer hostages,” Trump added.
On Oct. 7 of last year, Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages to Gaza during their invasion of southern Israel. During the onslaught, 45 Americans were killed and 12 were abducted.
About 100 hostages, both dead and alive, remain in Gaza, including seven Americans. Three of them — Keith Siegel, Sagui Dekel-Chen, and Edan Alexander — are thought to still be alive. Three others — Itay Chen, Gadi Haggai, and Judi Weinstein Haggai — are believed to be murdered by the terrorist group, with their bodies still in the Palestinian enclave. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) revealed last month that Israeli-American hostage Omer Neutra was killed during the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks, and his body was taken by terrorists into Gaza. Neutra was initially presumed to be among the living captives.
In total, 100 hostages remain in Gaza, and at least a third of them are believed to be dead.
Trump said on Tuesday that families of hostages have approached him in tears, desperately begging for a deal to secure their loved ones’ release from captivity.
The president-elect emphasized the importance of dispatching a “great negotiator” to broker a ceasefire deal to halt fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and free the remaining hostages, gesturing to Witkoff. Trump added that although he does “not want to hurt the negotiations,” he believes that reiterating his threats to unleash “hell” across the Middle East will incentivize Hamas to reach a deal in the upcoming weeks.
Trump has repeatedly vowed to take aggressive action to secure the return of the remaining hostages. He has previously promised that Hamas will have “hell to pay” if the terrorist group does not release those still held captive in the Gaza Strip.
“Everybody is talking about the hostages who are being held so violently, inhumanely, and against the will of the entire World, in the Middle East – But i’’s all talk, and no action!” Trump posted last month on the social media platform Truth Social. “Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that if the hostages are not released prior to January 20, 2025, the date that I proudly assume Office as President of the United States, there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against Humanity.”
“Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!” he added.
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US Lawmaker Says Washington Funding Taliban, Pens Letter Urging Trump to Halt Aid
US Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) on Dec. 5, 2024. Photo: Mattie Neretin / CNP/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
US Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) recently penned a letter to President-elect Donald Trump claiming that Washington is “funneling” money to the Taliban government in Afghanistan and calling on his incoming administration to stop such foreign aid, citing the Taliban’s extensive history of supporting Islamist terrorism.
“I write to express my strong concerns with foreign aid being funneled to the Taliban and my desire to work with your administration to stop tax dollars from going to terrorists,” Burchett wrote in the letter dated Jan. 2. “It was brought to my attention the US State Department, under the Biden administration, was funneling money to the Taliban.”
Burchett claimed that after questioning US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the top American diplomat “admitted that non-governmental organizations paid nearly $10 million of foreign aid to the Taliban in taxes.”
The lawmaker said that sending foreign aid to the Taliban undermines US national security, arguing that American government agencies are incapable of tracking how the Islamist movement spends US dollars.
“The larger issue, which Secretary Blinken failed to acknowledge, is the shipments of cash payments in United States dollars to Afghanistan’s central bank,” Burchett wrote. “These cash shipments are auctioned off and after that, they are nearly impossible to track. This is how the Taliban is being funded and plans to fund terrorism around the world.”
We have got to quit funding the Taliban under @realDonaldTrump. $40 million a week to our enemies is a slap in the face to those who served. pic.twitter.com/MVgMnSo1Gn
— Rep. Tim Burchett (@RepTimBurchett) January 6, 2025
The lawmaker did not provide any direct evidence in the letter to support his claims, although the US has provided extensive aid to Afghanistan. According to an October 2023 report from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the US has provided nearly $2 billion in humanitarian assistance for Afghans since mid-August 2021, making Washington the largest humanitarian donor in Afghanistan. It is unclear how much of that money has ended up in the hands of the Taliban, which the US and other countries have designated as a terrorist group.
“The United States of America should not fund its enemies abroad. I implore you to take action to put an end to wasteful foreign aid spending and to support efforts in Congress to put Americans first,” Burchett wrote. “I look forward to working with you during your second term as president.”
Burchett added that he plans on reintroducing legislation that would require the State Department to “discourage foreign countries from providing financial or material support to the Taliban, and to report on direct-cash assistance programs and Taliban influence over Afghanistan’s central bank.”
He claimed that while the bill — first introduced in 2023 — passed the US House “unanimously,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) refused to bring the bill to the floor for a vote.
Following the release of Burchett’s letter, billionaire and X/Twitter owner Elon Musk, who will serve in the Trump administration as co-head of the Department of Government Efficiency, sparked a debate online regarding the allegations.
“Are we really sending US taxpayer money to the Taliban?” Musk wrote on X on Monday.
The distribution of American taxpayer dollars to Afghanistan has emerged as a hot-button issue for Republicans in recent months. In December, US Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) blasted Blinken over the transfer of US dollars to the country.
“There’s an American citizen out there, literally woke up this morning losing 30% of their paycheck. And a good percentage of that is going to the Taliban or other programs abroad,” Mast said. “And this is something that we all need to think about, and we will be thinking about deeply for the next two years. There’s a joke that’s made often out there about kids going to college to learn basket weaving, and what a joke that would be. But the United States right now is literally sending tens of millions of dollars to the Taliban. 14.9 million, to be exact, to teach Afghans how to do carpet weaving.”
“Even worse, by the numbers, we spent $9 billion to resettle 90,000 roughly Afghan refugees here since the fall of Afghanistan. My simple Army math tells me that’s about $100,000 a person. That’s absurd. So my question for you. We do not even have an embassy in Afghanistan. We have no diplomats there. What are we doing giving them $1?” Mast continued.
The Taliban infamously provided a safe haven for al Qaeda before the 9/11 attacks and was accused of sheltering Osama bin Laden and his terrorist group afterward. A US-led military coalition subsequently removed the Taliban from power in Afghanistan in 2001.
In 2021, however, the Taliban once again seized power in Afghanistan, amid US President Joe Biden’s military withdrawal from the country.
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