“When Hamas terrorists crossed the border into Israel and murdered 1,400 innocent people, they destroyed families and entire communities. They also dispelled long-held delusions in the West. A friend of mine joked that she woke up on October 7th as a liberal and went to bed that night as a 65-year-old conservative. But it wasn't really funny and she wasn't the only one. What changed;"
So begins one article by Konstantin Kisin in The free press.
Kisin continues his analysis by referring to the woke movement which claims that the awakening is about protecting victims and defending persecuted minorities, which he holds responsible for the illusion that has been created in the progressive bosom of the Western intelligentsia as it has been leveraged in recent years. in academic and university circles under the responsibility of the left and under media tolerance and social media overload; for the modern Western progressive worldview that confuses human rights with the justification of the killing of innocent people by terrorists.
For Kisin, many people woke up on October 7 sympathetic to the ideology of awakening and went to bed troubled. "We woke up on October 8 to the roar of street protests in cities across the West condemning Israel even before any significant Israeli response to the attacks," he says. But is it so?
Before we try to map the reactions of the Western world after the attack by Hamas and the counter-attack by Israel, let us dwell for a moment on the Western intellectuals, who are in the majority of the space of the left, and among other things have adopted Islam, seeing the Muslim world as a single entity who is wronged and suffers either in the Arab lands or in the West where a considerable percentage of him lives as a consequence of the great migration flow that began in the 20The century. The left-wing intellectuals were fascinated by the anti-colonial and anti-Western character of the Muslim world, finding common ground with its own anti-capitalist and therefore essentially anti-Western ideology and its tendency to deposit in its bosoms the downtrodden, the wronged, the disadvantaged.
The social imprint of the above attitude of the left intellectuals and the left in general registers today a large part of the western population that moves in the now relaxed limits of the progressive arc to feel on the one hand guilt and obligation of inclusive behavior and tolerance of cultural diversity towards minorities everywhere, including of course also the Muslim community, on the one hand fearing that in the event of expressing concerns, he might be accused of xenophobia, racism and Islamophobia; lest he be accused of being close to conservative and even more extreme right-wing circles. The average Western progressive person could be said to feel a compulsive obligation to justify any transgression, hate attacks and even acts of terrorism emanating from wronged communities or even individuals that Western societies have failed to embrace.
But what happened in Europe and America after the shock of 7her October?
An alarm sounded.
Fear, rage and thirst for revenge from all for all.
Deadly violence in the Middle East has sparked threats, hate attacks, and even terrorist attacks in central parts of Europe and America, while intensifying fear in everyone; Muslim, Jewish, Arab (especially Palestinian) communities in the West, but also to Western citizens themselves.
The threat against the Jewish community has reached a "historic level" in the United States but also in many European countries, particularly in Germany and England. Almost all synagogues and Jewish institutions in Europe were affected; Jewish schools were closed for security reasons; Jewish families began to fear for their lives; and stars of David were painted outside residences in Berlin and a restaurant in Nuremberg, as then; the message was clear.
At the same time, there is a rise in anti-Muslimism and Islamophobia, even as hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered in cities across Europe, the Middle East and Asia to show support for the Palestinians. In recent weeks, according to the advocacy group Palestine Legal, reports of firings have been at an exponential rate in the US; lawyers at the Council on American-Islamic Relations are doing so because of a spate of incidents of discrimination, hate speech and professional implications of political speech. Students are punished for their pro-Palestinian views or feel unsafe to express them, notably Harvard and Columbia law students who lost job offers after signing statements blaming Israel for Hamas attacks. The latest crackdown on dissent in the Israel-Hamas war is so intense that some journalists and civil rights groups are calling it downright "McCarthian."
And somewhere here the surrealism begins.
Because at the same time, there is a strong outcry from American commentators to silence criticism of Israel and challenges to the Israeli government's narrative, which leads to a culture of cancellation and is perceived as political repression, even when it comes from Jews or citizens of Israel. To name a few prime examples: Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen's speech in Manhattan was interrupted because he signed an open letter which condemns Israel's war on Gaza. The editor-in-chief of the scientific journal eLife, Michael Eisen, was fired after reposting one article for Gaza. Web Summit CEO Paddy Cosgrave has been forced to resign from Europe's biggest tech conference after a comment on Twitter. Boston Workers Circle, a Jewish cultural center, expelled from the umbrella group of the Boston Jewish community. Israeli teachers, journalists and legislators were suspended, fired or even arrested for criticizing the war in Gaza.
And in this environment of silencing freedom of speech, threats and violations of individual liberties as denounced here and there, the whole West and especially Europe is trembling when the cry of "Allahu Akbar" will be heard and how many victims it will leave behind.
Already, counting about a month since the attack of Hamas on Israel, there have been serious terrorist incidents and violent attacks.
In France, a 20-year-old Chechen man attacked a school in the city of Arras, killing a teacher and injuring two others; Macron described the attack as an act of "Islamist terrorism". The alert level for terrorist attacks was raised to red, a military deployment of 7,000 troops followed, museums were evacuated (Louvre, Versailles), 6 airports were closed. Four days ago, French police opened fire in Paris and seriously injured a woman who was threatening and shouting "Allah Akbar" on a commuter train.
In Brussels, an Arabic-speaking man, a member of the Islamic State, "in the name of God" opened fire and killed two Swedish citizens before the European Championship qualifier between Belgium and Sweden. According to the FBI's announcement two days ago, Sweden is considered to be in particular danger after the Koran burning events last year.
In Chicago, a 6-year-old Muslim boy was brutally murdered in a hate crime by his homeowner, who shouted "you Muslims must die" in a state of paranoia believing that Muslims were planning acts of mass terrorism after listening to conservative radio broadcasts, according to court documents disclosed by New York Post.
Last Sunday, protesters violently stormed the airport, and particularly the runway, of Makhachkala, the capital of the Russian republic of Dagestan, when it became known that an aircraft from Israel was about to land there. They searched for Israeli passengers holding placards reading "Child killers have no place in Dagestan", chanting "Allahu Akbar" and holding Palestinian flags. Dagestan has a Muslim population of 83% and pays a heavy burden in requisitioning reserves for the Ukrainian front; 300-400 Jewish families live there.
What else can one conclude from all of the above except that the West is in danger of becoming part of the Middle East problem, especially the Palestinian problem. Societies react differently than leaders. And they react differently.
Is Kisin right?
On the 7ththe October we woke up progressive and slept conservative? Is he right in his conclusion? “And the truth is, we've indulged in magical thinking for far too long, choosing comforting myths over harsh realities. About terrorism. About immigration. And for a bunch of other topics. In our hunger for progress, we have forgotten that not all change is for the better. Now the world is paying the price for this complacency. Let's hope that recent events are the wake-up call that we so desperately need."
In my view, the current situation goes beyond the scope of an ideological critique of the Western left, the extreme left, the Islamic left.
It goes beyond the scope of the responsibilities and effects of wokism and other activist social movements.
It goes beyond the framework of criticism of Western intellectuals; of the sensitive immigration policy followed by the West.
Globalization and multiculturalism combined with geopolitics, international relations and foreign policy have created such complex and multifactorial balances and imbalances, which after 7the October we experience them through a magnifying glass.
I don't know if it matters so much if we woke up more progressive or conservative, because we just woke up not to a new page, but to a new chapter of world history, in which it is not at all, not at all, clear who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. Not even who we are.
When and whenever it closes we will do our assessment.
*Cover photo: Jean Gaumy, Two Untitled Photographs from the Series “Iran”, (1986)