It's not that the massacre on 7/10, a term that falls short, committed by Hamas against Israel, was necessary for the antisemitism of the left to come out of the closet, as it had already happened years ago. However, the virulence, hatred, and even violence against Jews by large sectors of the so-called progressives have broken all records.
It is shameful, to say the least, to see sectors of the left allied with Hamas, classifying it as a 'resistance' organization, as a 'vanguard of the revolution', celebrating the murder of entire families; the mass rape of women and girls; the rampant slaughter of young people at a music festival, and the kidnapping of more than 200 civilians, most of them women and children, as well as a nine-month-old baby. For certain segments of the left, October 7, means nothing. Jewish blood is deemed worthless.
The pro-Palestinian demonstrations of the left are not what they seem; they are festivals of hate in which the slogans they shout are no lower than “death to the Jews”, “death to Israel”, “genocidal Jews”, “death to the USA”, and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will prevail,” which are equivalent to calls for the extermination of Israel.
The left, which hides its moral relativity by attacking Israel, is the same political party that ignored the gulags, the massacres of the cultural revolution, and the encroachment of individual freedoms. The same one that adores Maduro unless, due to electoral calculations, they give him the occasional lukewarm criticism; the same one that despises the dead and, exiled in Nicaragua, that idolizes a version of Cuba from which its citizens continue to flee no matter what. A left that defends the Palestinians only when it demonizes Israel but ignores the Palestinians in calamities such as those that have befallen them in Syria or Lebanon.
Sectors of the left are in bed with radical Islamists, for whom Hamas and Hezbollah are progressive organizations that use rhetorical juggling to justify terrorism. For them, when a Palestinian husband brutally beats his wife, it's blamed on the 'occupation,' and the corruption that has crippled Palestinian society is dismissed as a 'minor detail.'
An extremely obsessed left with Israel that overlooks massacres, gender abuses, ethnic cleansings, homophobia, misogyny, and religious killings elsewhere, such as the massacres of Christians in Nigeria, Muslims in Myanmar, the murder of women in Iran, the genocide of Syrians by the Assad regime, ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Nagorno Karabakh, repression of women in Afghanistan, death penalty for homosexuals in various countries, mass rapes in Sudan, and a long list of others.
The left, among whose founders and fighters Jews stood out disproportionately, seems to bear the heavy burden of the 'Jewish question' that plagued the European continent for centuries. One facet of the left's antisemitism, to make it 'politically correct,' is 'anti-Zionism,' which is nothing more than rejecting the right of the Jewish people to their state—a right enjoyed by all peoples worldwide. The other aspect is the disproportionate hatred towards Israel, where legitimate criticisms of Israel and its government turn not into assessments of its actions but into judgments of its very essence.
If Israel hosts one of the largest gay pride parades, it's not because the country is a melting pot of diversity, but to 'whitewash its image.' When Israel assists in natural disasters, it's seen as an attempt to 'cleanse its guilt.'
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict has become a 'Waterloo' for the left. With what ease the accusatory finger is instinctively raised against the Jewish state, ignoring context, overlooking facts, and dismissing history.
This article was originally published in Spanish by El País.