Why Does This UK Paper Keep Printing Blood Libels Against Jews and Israel?

For the third time since the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre, The Guardian has published an op-ed evoking the antisemitic comparison of Israel to Nazi Germany.

The first piece employing the comparison was written by Swedish Jewish academic Raz Segal. It appeared in The Guardian only two weeks after the barbaric attack by the bloodthirsty pogromists, and was titled “Israel must stop weaponising the Holocaust” (emphasis added, and see our post here). The second such comparison, written by US writer John Oakes, was published last month (see our post here).

The latest such antisemitic libel approved by Guardian editors was written by an Israeli-born Jewish professor at Brown University named Omer Bartov (“As a former IDF soldier and historian of genocide, I was deeply disturbed by my recent visit to Israel,” Aug. 13).

Though editors no doubt thought they were checkmating the Jewish community by publishing two pieces by Jews hurling the Nazi analogy, the cynical exploitation of such “Jews Against Themselves” by non-Jews trying to popularize anti-Jewish lies dates at least as far back as medieval Europe.

During that time period, such Jewish defamers were often converts who Christianity, those who renounced their faith and became “Jewish informers.”

Today, they are more likely to be activists and academics who, rather than denouncing their identity, actually fancy themselves better Jews. Whereas, in the 13th century, such Jews were likely motivated by the desire to escape persecution, today’s variant are often merely trying to ensure social and professional acceptance within their coveted political or intellectual circles.

To get a sense of the flimsiness of the case Bartov makes in the Guardian, he cites, as his first “example” of Israel’s putatively genocidal Nazi tendencies, the anti-terror policies of then Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin during the First Intifada.

It was under Rabin’s leadership, he opines, that the IDF began “heading down a … slippery path” akin to “the indoctrination of the armed forces of Nazi Germany.” Tellingly, he sees no evidence of racist indoctrination of Palestinians in, for instance, the five year campaign of violence largely targeting civilians in the early 2000s known as the Second Intifada — a traumatic period in Israel’s history that he omits entirely from his nearly 7,500 word piece.

Bartov also cites grossly misleading quotes by Israeli leaders to allege genocidal intentions.

For instance, he omitted that on October 9, 2023, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant was referring to the Hamas terrorists who had, two days prior, committed the antisemitic massacres as “human animals” — not, as Bartov would have readers believe, all Gazans. Similarly, the Guardian columnist recycled the disproven framing of comments by the country’s prime minister citing the Biblical reference to Amalek.

Conversely, Bartov sees no such genocidal or Nazi pattern of behavior by Hamas — not in the annihilationist antisemitism codified in their founding charter, not in the savage ethnic cleansing of Jews they carried out on Oct. 7th, and not even in statements made by Hamas leaders promising to repeat the October massacre again and again.

More evidence that the writer was engaged in a pre-determined conclusion in search of evidence is found in the fact that nowhere in his op-ed does he mention — or try to challenge — experts who have argued that the IDF has taken more measures to avoid Palestinian civilian deaths than any army in history, and that the civilian to combatant casualty ratio is among the best of any army engaged in similar urban combat. That ratio is also far, far better than the international average of civilian to combats deaths during conflicts.

The Israeli army’s accomplishment is even more impressive when you consider the challenge posed by Hamas’ human shield policy (their exploitation of civilians and civilian infrastructure for terror activities).

Those, like Bartov, who frame the total number of (Hamas-claimed) deaths in Gaza as evidence of genocide are engaged in an intellectually and historically unserious assertion, as a recent op-ed by six former US Federal prosecutors of perpetrators of Nazi genocide argued:

Genocide is a crime based on intent, not one that is based specifically on numbers. If it were based on numbers, then the World War II Allies would have perpetrated genocide in Germany, where their forces killed 300,000 to 400,000 civilians in air operations alone, even apart from loss of life that occurred during ground offensives. No serious observer would contend that the Allies committed genocide against Germans during World War II.

German fatalities instead occurred as a result of the Allied waging of a manifestly defensive war to bring an end to aggression, war crimes, and genocide perpetrated by Germany. And those German civilian fatalities continued to mount until Nazi Germany at last surrendered — just as Hamas can and should do, at once, to end the war and the associated suffering in Gaza and Israel.

Israel too is waging a defensive war against ongoing aggression, war crimes and genocide, but it is taking far greater steps to protect civilian lives than Allied forces did.

Bartov’s myopic focus on Israel contrasts with his lack of intellectual or moral curiosity about the decisions and motivations of those who carried out the worst and most brutal massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, what one journalist who watched the unedited 40 minute film of Hamas’ atrocities described as “pure, predatory sadism”:

“The videos show pure, predatory sadism; no effort to spare those who pose no threat; and an eagerness to kill nearly matched by eagerness to disfigure the bodies of the [Jewish] victims. In several clips, the Hamas killers fire shots into the heads of people who are already dead. They count corpses, taking their time, and then shoot them again. Some of the clips I had not previously seen simply show the victims in a state of terror as they wait to be murdered…”.

It also illustrates what Balas Berkovitz described as the anti-Israel left’s campaign to turn October 7th into a “non-event,” citing the impact of an anti-Zionists’ “ideological edifice” that forces adherents to “dismiss real-world evidence that … challenge their established interpretations.”  Instead of engaging in soul-searching, or reactions along the lines of “this is not how we imagined Palestinian resistance,” activists, and outlets like The Guardian, have only doubled down on their hatred of the Jewish State.

Further, the Guardian’s Nazi libel is more than just a morally reprehensible inversion of reality and a “dismissal of real-world evidence.” It also constitutes another example of their editors publishing content that, particularly in light of an unprecedented surge in antisemitism in the UK, serves to incite more hatred against British Jews, granting a permission structure for antisemites by effectively casting British Zionists as not just grossly misguided, but as accomplices to evil.  

We’ve argued that The Guardian’s coverage since the Oct. 7 massacre has been effectively pro-Hamas. To that we’ll add that it’s also been antisemitic, in effect if not intent.

Adam Levick serves as co-editor of CAMERA UK — an affiliate of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), where a version of this article first appeared.

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