Four simple truths about Israel...And why multiculturalism is failing

Ramesh Thakur I 19 October 2024 I Spectator Australia

After the unimaginable events of last year and the perverse pile-on of Israel, Jews have been faced with those who deny, minimise or justify the horrors of 7 October 2023. In a grotesque example of victim-blaming and shaming, Israel stands condemned in many quarters for refusing to be a passive spectator to the mass slaughter of Jews and fighting back with all means necessary to defend itself against enemies on multiple fronts. Individuals waving Nazi swastikas and terrorist symbols to terrify Jews while chanting slogans to dehumanise them add to the trauma. Comparable and worse humanitarian atrocities in other countries and theatres are glossed over and ignored in order to target Israel as uniquely evil. Whole neighbourhoods, workplaces, campuses, cultural events and cities have become unsafe places for them, from Australia, South Africa, Canada, the US and UK to Europe. Antisemitism has been normalised and is moving centre stage.

Of the four US presidential candidates and deputies, J.D. Vance – a Catholic married to a Hindu – has demonstrated the sharpest moral clarity. In the vice presidential debate with Tim Walz on 1 October, he described ‘the right approach to take with the Israel question’: ‘It is up to Israel what they think they need to do to keep their country safe. And we should support our allies… when they’re fighting the bad guys.’

The 7 October mini-Holocaust was a catastrophe for Israelis and a communal trauma for Jews who feel abandoned by fair-weather friends. The state of play a year later also offers useful lessons to the West on the liberal illusions of peace, the limits of international law and diplomacy, the seductive trap of appeasement and the critical importance of deterrence and resolve. This explains the paradox of why Israel wants to win but America, Britain and Australia want to restore the status quo ante of endless conflict, ceasefires and wars. That would recreate the very conditions that enabled the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust.

A surprising number of Westerners have forgotten four simple truths. What happened to Israel on 7 October was said initially to be as collectively traumatic as the attacks on America on 11 September 2001. However, a better US point of comparison is the more than 50,000 Americans who died in the Vietnam war. Except most of the dead and kidnapped on 7 October were not soldiers but civilians (including babies, children, women and elderly), not killed in action over many years but murdered, mutilated, raped and taken hostage as bargaining leverage in and from their homes and a music festival on one day.

Second, if only Hamas could, it would empty the entire region, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, of all Jews, by means of mass slaughter and ethnic cleansing. That’s what the dog-whistling chant ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ means. The legal and emotional term for this is genocide. By contrast, Israel has the means to commit genocide in Gaza but instead goes to extraordinary lengths to limit civilian casualties. The behaviour of the Israeli Defense Forces in teaching the tenets of international humanitarian law (IHL) and investigating and prosecuting any alleged breaches withstands comparison with Western militaries, including Australia. By contrast, Hamas and Hezbollah don’t even bother to hide their disdain for IHL while apologists and useful idiots urge us to focus on context because the atrocities are not committed in a vacuum.

Third, Israel uses its fighters and missiles to protect its people. Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians to hide and protect its fighters and arms, thereby worsening the humanitarian toll for which Israel gets all the blame.

Fourth, mass importation of illiberal immigrant communities, and the lack of political courage to debate this publicly, is fomenting bitter domestic divisions in Western societies and shifting the centre of political gravity away from the values that define Western civilisation. It’s one thing for foreign wars to create domestic divisions when Australian soldiers are deployed to overseas theatres, as in the Great War and the Vietnam and Iraq wars. It’s something else entirely for immigrants to import regional quarrels and wage their home battles on our streets. Absent Australian military involvement, overseas quarrels should not be allowed to cause domestic social and political convulsions. The year-long pockets of disturbances and hostility directed at Jewish Australians are bad enough already, with politicians desperate to court the votes of a community that numbers just over three per cent of the population.

The streets of towns and cities in the UK give us a foretaste of how far down the road of overtly religious politics we risk going by refusing to confront the ugliness and its policy implications. The share of Muslim population in England and Wales increased between 2011 and 2021 from 4.9 to 6.5 per cent. At that rate, before long Muslims will make up over ten per cent of the population and more than double that in London. The general election in July gave birth to explicitly Islamic politics vibrating to the foreign conflict in Gaza. Four pro-Gaza independent Muslim candidates were elected to parliament.

The financial benefits of migration can be exaggerated. Yes, migrants make an immediate financial contribution. But that is often offset by the additional demands and strain on public services and infrastructure. In September, the UK Office for Budgetary Responsibility published figures to show that low-paid migrants cost an average of ￡150,000 by the time they reach state pension age. There’s also an erosion of cultural cohesion and social stability with mass migration from countries with low levels of civic virtue and trust. A recent analysis in the UK Telegraph showed that the rate of incarceration of foreign nationals in UK prisons is 27 per cent higher than British citizens. Albanian, Kosovans, Vietnamese, Algerians, Iraqis and Somalis are among the worst offenders in more than 130 countries examined. Indians, I was pleased but not surprised to see, are among the least represented along with Americans, Chinese, French, Germans, Greeks and Italians. While the British average is 14 per 10,000 people, Albanians’ is 232 and Indians’ just 6.

Conventional wisdom holds that trying to export democracy to inhospitable cultures is futile. The corollary surely is that expecting large numbers of migrants from those same cultures to convert to the democratic values and civic virtues of Australian society, including interfaith tolerance and inclusion, the instant they set foot on our soil is equally foolish. The ugly reality instead is that multiculturalism has been perverted into celebrations of foreign terrorists on our streets. Which prime ministerial aspirant has the courage to say: Love the country you live in? If not, feel free to leave and live in the country whose culture and values you do love.

Author: Ramesh Thakur