How the Media Has Abused the Memory of October 7, 2023

Almost immediately after Oct. 7, 2023, the Guardian began what can be described as the abuse of Oct. 7th memory: failing to acknowledge that, on that Shabbat day, Jews in southern Israel were victims of the worst antisemitic massacre since the Holocaust, while framing the story instead as one about Israel’s military response to that (Trigger Warning) savage pogrom. As we’ve documented, other British outlets’ coverage of the racist massacre and its aftermath have often mirrored that of the Guardian.

This partly explains the legitimization given by journalists at these outlets to the genocide libel against Israel. This toxic and intellectually unserious narrative obfuscates the antisemitic-inspired cruelty and barbarism of those willing Palestinian executioners who carried out the mass murder, rape, torture, and mutilation of men, women and children — an atrocity inspired by Hamas’s annihilationist antisemitic ideology.

Downstream from this Oct. 7th massacre erasure is the widespread failure of these same outlets to acknowledge the scale of the antisemitic surge in diaspora communities since Hamas’ attack, and that pro-Palestinian “activists” have been responsible for the vast majority of this historically unprecedented outbreak of anti-Jewish rhetoric, intimidation and violence.

Why? In part, because those who’ve long believed in the purity of the Palestinians and the righteousness of pro-Palestinian movement are — like ideological extremists in previous eras — resistant to even the most undeniable evidence contradicting their beliefs.

So, before pivoting to a Guardian op-ed by Rachel Shabi, which, though putatively about antisemitism, manages to erase both the malign anti-Jewish obsession which inspired Oct. 7th, as well as the British antisemitism which, perversely, the attacks on Israeli Jews spawned, let’s briefly highlight the depth of the problem.

CST’s Antisemitic Incidents Report January-June 2024, released last summer, revealed 1,978 instances of anti-Jewish hate recorded across the UK in the first six months of the year, “the highest January-to-June total ever reported to CST.“ These record figures, CST noted, were driven by anti-Jewish reactions to the war between Israel and Hamas:

The CST also reported that university-related antisemitic incidents in Britain rose dramatically, from 53 incidents in the 2022-23 academic year to 272 incidents in the 2023-24 academic year. CST contextualized the more than 500% increase in antisemitism on campuses to the same wave of anti-Jewish hatred following the Hamas massacre.

It’s important to note that CST is very careful to include in their data only incidents which are clearly antisemitic.

So, though CST “received an unprecedented number of reports of pro-Palestinian campaigning at universities that featured extreme, sometimes violent, rhetoric towards Israel,” and support for terrorism, they didn’t include them in their count “because they did not meet CST’s criteria for recording as antisemitic due to a lack of clear evidence of anti-Jewish language, motivation or targeting.“

So, the numbers would be dramatically higher if the charity included incidents of anti-Israel extremism which, while not falling within the organization’s criteria for labeling something antisemitic, still make most Jewish students feel hated and unsafe.

Further, there’s the antisemitic impact that’s hard to quantify, but to which there’s much anecdotal evidence – such as Jewish artists being excluded from British cultural life because they refuse to denounce Israel.

Not surprisingly, according to a poll by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research in Oct. 2024, nearly three in four respondents said they feel less safe as a Jewish person living in the UK since the Oct. 7th massacre.

Yet, on Dec. 31st, the Guardian continued in its effort to gaslight Jews about this tsunami of anti-Jewish racism largely under the guise of pro-Palestinian activism since Oct. 7th, publishing an op-ed by Rachel Shabi titled “The term ‘antisemitism’ is being weaponised and stripped of meaning – and that’s incredibly dangerous.”

Shabi, who’s been denying the proven link between hatred of Israel and hatred of Jews qua Jews for over a decade at the Guardian, and who rarely if ever has a found a “real” instance of anti-Jewish hatred from the pro-Palestinian left, has clearly not allowed events over the last 15 months, as well as the actual fears of British Jews, to intrude on her beliefs.

In her op-ed, for instance, she legitimizes the incendiary libel that Israel is committing genocide, while saying nothing about Hamas’s medieval-style barbarism – including their live-streamed torture, mutilation and beheading. She decries that “accusations of antisemitism raised to counter criticism of Israel have gone into overdrive“ — while ignoring the weekly anti-Israel marches in London routinely infested with justifications for, and outright celebrations of, the terror groups’ sadistic murder spree, as well as outright antisemitism and the intimidation of Jews.

Shabi, as Guardian columnists so often do, defends those participating in the anti-Israel demos as merely Britons “crying out for an end to the bloodshed in Gaza” — as if they were peaceniks opposed to all violence, ignoring that condemnations of Hamas, or calls for the terror group to surrender and release the hostages, are never heard at such rallies.

In fact, the cruel tearing down of hostage posters by “pro-Palestinian” activists has become common in London and other major cities.

Further, as The Times revealed, the main groups organizing the London marches include some, such as Palestinian Forum in Britain, with reported links to Hamas, and others which supported the Oct. 7th massacre.

Shabi’s egregious dishonesty is especially evident when when she admits that “real” antisemitism is indeed “increasing globally,“ and that “Britain’s Jewish community has experienced verbal and physical attacks“ — while failing to call out the far-left anti-Israel extremism that’s behind this historically unprecedented spike in anti-Jewish incidents.

While Shabi’s obfuscation of pro-Palestinian antisemitism and her claim of Israelis “weaponising” antisemitism are morally indefensible, it’s, as we noted, completely in line with the editorial direction at the outlet regarding Oct. 7th and its aftermath, content which, for instance, included a Oct. 24, 2023, op-ed accusing Israel of “weaponising the Holocaust,“ and another one more recently accusing Israelis of “weaponising” Oct. 7th commemoration.

What we’ve seen day after day at the outlet since Oct. 7th is antisemitism atrocity deflection, inversion, revisionism and erasure that’s redolent of attempts after World War II – by the Arab and Muslim world, the extreme Left and the extreme Right – to deny and distort Holocaust history and its memory.

What’s truly disturbing however is that, unlike Holocaust deniers and revisionists, who have generally been consigned to the political fringes and rarely given platforms by major media outlets, the whitewashing, obfuscation and inversion of Oct. 7th – one of the most vicious and deadly antisemitic rampages in Jewish history – is not only socially acceptable, but has become de rigueur within mainstream journalistic circles.

The moral rot within institutions that have effectively normalized the rendering of Oct. 7th as a non-event can’t be overstated.

The author is the 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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