HebrideanUltraTerfHecate

Scotland’s streets bear ideology that led to Bondi beach atrocity

As Paltire flags fly across Glasgow, Jews in Scotland feel the only differences between the horrific events in Australia and us are timing and geog...

I have written on these pages before about the increase in antisemitism in Scotland. But why should an event that occurred more than 10,000 miles away have such an impact? Like the attack in Manchester on Yom Kippur, it was a shock. But was it a surprise? Absolutely not. On the day I arrived in Sydney in September, a crowd estimated by some reports to number 300,000 had descended on the iconic Harbour Bridge. According to news reports, they carried jihadist flags and portraits of the Iranian dictator Ayatollah Ali Khamenei holding a rifle. They chanted: “Death, death to the IDF.” What happened in Bondi stems directly from the normalisation of antisemitic rhetoric and actions. Let me be clear: criticising Israel or any other country is entirely legitimate. But there’s a fundamental difference between criticising a government’s policies and inciting hatred against an entire people. When criticism of Israel crosses into demonising Jews as a group, denying Jewish self-determination while affirming it for others or holding Jews collectively responsible for Israeli government actions, that’s no longer political discourse. That’s antisemitism. And when such hatred becomes legitimised in public conversation, when it goes unchallenged or categorised as mere “criticism”, the conditions for violence are created. https://archive.ph/1FqkU