The Jews Who March for the Destruction of Israel

Feb. 20 2024

The theory that Israel is responsible for all the Middle East’s problems may bear a suspicious resemblance to classic anti-Semitic suppositions, but the displays of hatred found regularly in protest marches in the West are much less subtle. The great British novelist Howard Jacobson considers these marches and the Israel-hating Jews who attend them:

Every Saturday in England is now Vilify Israel Shabbes. I meet the marches half-way by not calling them hate marches. I’d like them to meet me half-way by not calling themselves peace marches.

There’s an inevitable carnivalesque quality about a march. The banners, the chanting, the optimism of numbers, the holiday from care and reality. On a march, even the lowliest become kings for a day and briefly, the overturning of the entire old order seems possible.

Exhilarating, these Shabbes-busters must be, if you are a Palestinian. But what if you are a Jew? I don’t mean a Jew watching on the news, I mean a Jew marching in solidarity with people not all of whom like Jews. In these cataclysmic times, aren’t anti-Zionist Jews, too, getting a little something of what they want? The prospect of the end of Israel, say.

Jacobson gets a clearer sense of this thinking by looking at the work of a prominent British feminist novelist and thinker, who happens to be both Jewish and a committed anti-Zionist:

“The answer to racism is to denounce it,” wrote Jacqueline Rose in The Last Resistance, “not to flee behind a defensive, self-isolating barrier of being—and being only—a Jew.” . . . Imagine telling the Jews of Kishinev not to flee but to stay and denounce the racism of the rioters crying “Kill the Jews!”

Read more at Tablet

More about: Anglo-Jewry, Anti-Semitism, Anti-Zionism, United Kingdom

How Did Qatar Become Hamas’s Protector?

July 14 2025

How did Qatar, an American ally, become the nerve center of the leading Palestinian jihadist organization? Natalie Ecanow explains.

When Jordan expelled Hamas in 1999, Qatar offered sanctuary to the group, which had already become notorious for using suicide-bombing attacks over the previous decade. . . . Hamas chose to relocate to Syria. However, that arrangement lasted for only a decade. With the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, the terror group found its way back to Qatar.

In 2003, Hamas leaders reportedly convened in Qatar after the IDF attempted to eliminate Hamas’s founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, following a Hamas suicide bombing in Jerusalem that killed seven people, including two American citizens. This episode led to one of the first efforts by Qatar to advocate for its terror proxy.

Thirteen years and five wars between Hamas and Israel later, Qatar’s support for Hamas has not waned. . . . To this day, Qatari officials maintain that the office came at the “request from Washington to establish indirect lines of communication with Hamas.” However, an Obama White House official asserted that there was never any request from Washington. . . . Inexplicably, the United States government continues to rely on Qatar to negotiate for the release of the hostages held by Hamas, even as the regime hosts the terror group’s political elite.

A reckoning is needed between our two countries. Congressional hearings, legislation, executive orders, and other measures to regulate relations between our countries are long overdue.

Read more at FDD

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, Qatar, U.S. Foreign policy