Friday essay: to tackle the dreadful rise in antisemitism, we must speak the truth about Israel’s war crimes

Résumé détaillé

Robert Manne calls for thinkers like Simon Schama, publishers, and leaders of the Israel and Jewish lobbies like Jillian Segal, to speak the truth about Israel’s war.

Over the past weeks I have watched with interest the ways, following the horrific Hamas-led massacre of 1,200 Israelis on October 7 2023, prominent Jews with a connection to Australia have justified, in response, the killing by the Israel Defence Forces, or IDF, of around 75,000 Gazan Palestinians, the majority of whom were innocent civilians, or more than 20,000 babies or children.

Recently, the British historian, Lord Andrew Roberts, was interviewed by Geraldine Doogue on the ABC Radio National program Global Roaming. According to Lord Roberts, the massacre of the Israeli Jews by Hamas and Islamic Jihad was an unspeakable moral crime, while the killing by the IDF of perhaps 40 or 50 times as many innocent Palestinians, was the kind of thing that, alas, happens in fighting a just war.

Even the propaganda department of the IDF has barely challenged the estimates of the numbers of civilian deaths. However, without pointing to any evidence, Roberts claimed the number of innocent Palestinians massacred by the IDF had been greatly exaggerated.

What was more interesting, however, was Roberts’ contrast between the killing of the Jews and Palestinians since the massacre of October 7. According to Roberts, the October 7 Hamas killers were in a “frenzy”. The things they did were “foul”, “vicious” and “disgusting”, resembling the accounts of warfare during “medieval” times and in recent history of the Japanese at “the rape of Nanking”. With “civilised countries”, this kind of “frenzied killing” did not take place.

In Gaza, the IDF’s killings were “totally different you see”. He said:

The IDF’s post-October 7 destruction in Gaza involved anything but conventional warfare. Anyone who has followed the Israeli campaign knows the Palestinians were killed according to an AI program called “Lavender”. It was first revealed in an article in the 972 Magazine on April 3 2024, written by Yuval Abraham, one of the filmmakers of the documentary NAZA.

When NAZA was shown at the Venice Film…

If…

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