Back in 1944, the Germans entered a small town in western France, Oradour-sur-Glane and massacred all but two or three of its inhabitants. They were shot in barns and burned alive in the church.
Until then, Oradour was a sleepy town near Limoges, on a river (the Glane) and the inhabitants survived the war by fishing and growing their own food. But one summer’s day, the Germans came and committed a massacre that horrified even the collaborationist Vichy regime. The very same regime whose police, the Milice, rounded up the Jews in the infamous Vél d’Hiv and who were quicker than the Nazis to impose restrictions on Jewish citizens of France.
What does this tell us? That sometimes actions are so barbaric that even those who would nominally support the perpetrators are shocked out of their support and into resistance, or at least, deterred from further collaboration.
But here’s the thing: the supporters of Hamas were not shocked into resistance by the October 7 pogrom or the pantomime parades of hostage releases or the barbaric murders of the Bibas family. Au contraire, one might say, the greater the barbarism the greater the support.
Back to Occupied France. France had its collaborationist Vichy regime which ruled over the so-called ‘free Zone’. At the time, France was a Catholic country, steeped in Antisemitism and the hangover from the Dreyfus affair. The restrictions imposed on the 250,000 Jewish population seemingly didn’t bother the French too much – the yellow star, the banning on education, the expulsion from various employments and so on. Until there came a point when even the most ardent Antisemites had had enough and stepped up to help the Jews.
This is one of the most contradictory histories of the Holocaust.
On the one hand, there was the collaborationist Petain regime which aided and abetted the Nazis, and on the other, the number of deportees was around 80,000 and the percentage was far lower than any other country. The explanation I have read by eminent historian Laurent Joly is that the French weren’t too troubled by the restrictions as I have mentioned, but once the deportations started they were jolted into resistance and Jews were hidden and provided with false documents. Hence the large survival rate (including members of my own family). Some towns were wholly involved in protecting Jews, some clergy helped and there was a large resistance made up of various political groups. Even today, on French radio and TV, there are many programs dedicated to the resistance, the Jews, and the Holocaust.
Meanwhile, the actions of Hamas have only served to increase both Antisemitism and support for the perpetrators.
How has it come to this? Is it the infiltration of the post-modern oppressed/oppressor narrative that falsely impugns Israel and thus makes the massacre of Jews deserving of support rather than condemnation? Is it the total lack of historical knowledge by the keffiyeh-wearing useful idiots of the West who support the perpetrators of October 7 without understanding that Hamas share a mindset with those who herded Jews into pits and shot them or loaded them onto trains or were guards at camps or the doctors who conducted medical experiments on them? You would think that, like the French who were shaken out of their disinterest by the deportations, that the keffiyeh Karens would be shaken out of their support by what happened to Bibas babies. But no.
Then we have the return – well, they never left – of the ‘asajews’ who begin their apologist rhetoric with ‘as a Jew’. Too often events, forums, and festivals devolve into a free-for-all for those who identify as anti-Zionist where Jewish creatives can find themselves defamed and vilified.
Last week, we saw footage of school students, apparently supported by their teachers, yelling ‘Allahu Akbar’ (or g-d is great), protesting about the arrest of one of the nurses from Bankstown Hospital. Personally, I don’t think allegedly threatening to harm Jewish patients is a great look, but maybe I’m just old-fashioned.
Australia is still waiting for its French moment for some activists to decide ‘enough is enough’.
If it does not come soon, the West is even more doomed than I thought.
And just in case anyone thought that Hamas only came after the ‘bad Jews’, let us be clear, Oded Lipshutz who was laid to rest recently, was a long time peacemaker who advocated strongly for Palestinian rights and was personally involved in transporting kids from Gaza to Israel for medical treatment.
When he was murdered, it did not matter who he was, what he did, or what he believed in … only that he was a Jew.
