As Labor politicians in Britain continue to prove themselves to be anti-Semites, their party has taken to pointing to the Tories’ “Islamophobia problem” in order to change the subject. Brendan O’Neill comments:

[I]t is wrong, and historically infantile, to speak about anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in the same breath. This isn’t to say that there is no anti-Muslim prejudice. Of course there is. Some people are deeply suspicious of Muslims and even view them as the despoilers of our apparently hitherto pristine European civilization. And some Tories—very minor Tories—appear to have shared memes or articles that contain such views. That’s bad. But anti-Semitism is different.

Anti-Semitism is older. It is far more entrenched in certain European circles. It is far more historically given to mass acts of violence, from pogroms to extermination. And—the really crucial bit—its re-emergence always tells us something important about the destabilization of society and its descent once again into irrationalism, conspiracism, scapegoating, and fear of modernity. That is why the recent return of anti-Semitism, . . . leading to the casual spread of pseudo-radical conspiracy theories and even to horrific anti-Jewish violence . . . in countries like France, Belgium, and Sweden, deserves our serious attention. Because this return of the old hatred speaks to an unhinging, a moral disarray, a crisis of reason. And yet if we focus too hard on this, and try to have a reckoning with it, the opinion-forming set will breathe down our necks: “And Muslims? What about them? You don’t care?” It looks increasingly like a tactic of distraction.

Anti-Muslim prejudice unquestionably exists, but Islamophobia is an invention. Don’t take my word for it. Take the word of the Runnymede Trust, one of Britain’s leading race-equality think-tanks. It openly boasts that it is “credited with coining the term Islamophobia . . . in 1997.” And what does this term mean? It doesn’t mean racial hatred. Runnymede’s definition of Islamophobia, which has been adopted by [London’s] Metropolitan Police, includes any suggestion that Islam is “inferior to the West,” and even the belief that Islam is sexist. If you think Islam is “unresponsive to change,” you are Islamophobic. And, get this, if you “reject out of hand,” “criticisms of the West made by Islam,” you’re an Islamophobe. So even to ridicule Islam’s view of the West is apparently to be infected with the “cancer” of this so-called racism. . . . That is chilling.

The war on Islamophobia is in essence a demand for censorship. To compare this “racism” invented by the chattering classes twenty years ago to millennia of outbursts of violent hatred for the Jewish people is historically illiterate and morally repugnant.

Yohanan Tzoreff, writing yesterday, believes that Hamas still wishes to return to the truce that it ended Friday morning with renewed rocket attacks on Israel, but hopes it can do so on better terms—raising the price, so to speak, of each hostage released. Examining recent statements from the terrorist group’s leaders, he tries to make sense of what it is thinking:

These [Hamas] senior officials do not reflect any awareness of the changed attitude in Israel toward Hamas following the October 7 massacre carried out by the organization in the western Negev communities. They continue to estimate that as before, Israel will be willing to pay high prices for its people and that time is working in their favor. In their opinion, Israel’s interest in the release of its people, the pressure of the hostages’ families, and the public’s broad support for these families will ultimately be decisive in favor of a deal that will meet the new conditions set by Hamas.

In other words, the culture of summud (steadfastness), still guides Hamas. Its [rhetoric] does not show at all that it has internalized or recognized the change in the attitude of the Israeli public toward it—which makes it clear that Israel still has a lot of work to do.