Image by Nizzan Cohen, CC BY 4.0.

In the aftermath of October 7, Israel was abandoned by many in the West, including in the Netherlands. However, there are people everywhere who can no longer tolerate the lies about Israel and the whitewashing of terrorists. This piece first appeared in Dutch, but now also in English, in the hope that it will be an encouragement to Israel. You are not alone.

A retrospective

It is October 7 again, the date forever burned into many hearts as the day the world changed. It was the day hatred flooded into Israel and was poured out on everyone within reach. The day countless Israelis lost loved ones in the most horrific ways, the day the nightmare of hostages began, the day Israelis’ confidence in the security of the country was shattered.

Sadly, it was also the day that masks fell off worldwide.

Peace activists

That day, many peace activists lost faith that a two-state solution would ever be possible. The kibbutzim near Gaza were home to idealists who stood up for the rights of the Palestinians. In December 2023, Irit Lahav was interviewed. She was the spokesperson for Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small kibbutz with only 427 residents. In the video below, she tells how they had tried to build peace with their limited means.

All their dedication had been for nothing. The same people they had tried to help had come to their village, horribly murdered dozens of residents and kidnapped others, including the Bibas family: the family with the two little red-haired boys. Two months later, Irit Lahav’s eyes were still filled with bewilderment. ‘They really hate us…’ She had still thought that most Palestinians were actually peace-loving.

Reactions

For others, the cheers in the streets of Gaza came as no surprise, nor did the ‘death to Israel’ in the Iranian parliament. But even the most cynical were shocked by the reactions in Western countries that call themselves allies of Israel. Everywhere – including in the Netherlands – people took to the streets. Not to support Israel in its distress, but to demonstrate against Israel. Mayors refused to display the Israeli flag, media were slow to report with palpable reluctance, experts rushed to provide ‘context’.

The disaster that had struck Israel faded into the background with unprecedented speed, making way for the desired narrative: Israel as perpetrator, the Palestinians as victims. So eager were many media outlets to provide ammunition for this narrative that they began to proclaim Hamas propaganda as truth. We saw blatant lies, many of which were never corrected. We saw old anti-Semitic blood libels resurface in new versions. Moreover, that did not happen in spotty pamphlets, it happened in our ‘trustworthy media’.

Israel has long grown accustomed to the hypocrisy of its so-called allies. Think of all the Western support for the most outrageous UN resolutions. Nevertheless, after the horrors of October 7 – the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust – the Israelis might have expected some support and understanding. What they got was another horror: the betrayal of the West.

Propaganda War

Hamas’ game is so transparent, and yet Western media chose en masse to play along. The October 7 attack was so deliberately brutal that Israel had no choice but to respond, allowing Hamas to deploy its most potent weapon: the human shield. Why is that such an effective weapon? Because Western media engage in identity politics. In that narrow-minded frame, Israel is the oppressor, and Palestinians are victims. So, Palestinians can never be the aggressor, and every casualty is the responsibility of oppressor Israel.

Even though Hamas openly stated that the movement aimed for as many civilian casualties as possible – both in Israel and Gaza – every casualty was blamed on Israel. Even though Israel did everything it could to prevent civilian casualties, the Western media ignored it. Meanwhile, half of the Netherlands – supported by unfounded accusations by South Africa at the International Court of Justice – believes that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Reversal

The aversion to Israel was already there – just think of all those demonstrations as soon as it became clear what had happened on October 7 – but it seemed to get worse by the day. Under the guise of ‘criticism of Israel’, many felt free to give that aversion free rein. Anything Israel reported was by definition suspect, anything the terrorists reported was given the benefit of the doubt or even presented as fact. Conspiracy theories about evil Jews were no longer confined to obscure corners of the Internet, but were published in barely diluted form by reputable media.

The victims in Israel no longer mattered. The UN Women’s Rights Commission took months to acknowledge that Israeli women had been raped on October 7, and the Red Cross might as well not have existed when it came to their usefulness to Israeli hostages. Hezbollah could bombard the north of Israel for a year without the Dutch media caring, even though dozens were killed, tens of thousands were displaced, and the rockets set large areas of nature on fire.

Jew-hatred

Israel is fighting for survival, and that fight is not just military. It has become increasingly clear this year that this is the fight against the old monster of Jew-hatred that always takes on new forms. The bizarre thing is that the haters often react as if stung by a wasp when one points out their hatred, while it is abundantly clear that they make no such demands of any other country as they do of Israel. The same people who want to hold sit-ins at Dutch train stations again on October 7 (!) were nowhere to be seen when Palestinians died by the thousands in Yarmouk.

Something else also makes clear this is indeed Jew-hatred. It is hard to imagine that anyone would blame Turkish migrants for Erdoğan’s policies, but even Jews who have never been to Israel are held responsible for things Israel is accused of without evidence.

Jews worldwide were confronted with the consequences of this smear campaign against Israel. There were numerous ‘incidents’ in which Jews and Israel were targeted. Posters with portraits of the hostages – including the children – were torn from walls everywhere. Jewish students were hounded, concerts disrupted, commemorations cancelled. With dogged hatred, activists uttered the term Zionist, because – according to them – Israel should not exist. The Dutch House of Representatives felt compelled to issue a statement against Jew-hatred, but the hate-mongering continued.

Reporting

And the Western media kept stoking.

Anyone who still had illusions about the integrity of reporting on Israel will have been cured of that in the past year, at least… if that person had the chance to actually inform himself. The herd behavior of our establishment media has been a problem for a long time, and the past year has shown more than ever how dangerous this is. The propaganda against Israel is so omnipresent that even well-meaning people are misled.

This has now turned into a battle between good and evil, as journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer so sharply puts it in the video below. She responds here to the release of yet another report showing how the BBC demonizes Israel and whitewashes terrorists.

Netherlands

In the Netherlands we see the same thing that Hartley-Brewer signals in Great Britain. The very media that are regarded highly – who often pride themselves on their moral superiority and nuanced reporting – these very media are choosing evil en masse. After a year of incessant disinformation about this conflict, these media can no longer claim good intentions. This is no longer a matter of occasional mistakes that are ‘just inevitable’, this is a malicious smear campaign against Israel.

How did all these respectable journalists end up there? What choices did they make that landed them on the opposite side from what they are used to preaching? For most of them, it was probably going along with the prevailing ideology: if we have to view the whole world through the lens of oppressor and victim, then Israel fits the role of oppressor. This becomes all the easier because it fits the narrative of cultural relativism regarding Islam, and perhaps a dash of old-fashioned Jew-hatred is involved too.

Turn around!

It is a bitter irony that the very moralists of our time – who endlessly preach against intolerance and discrimination – descend further each day into the abyss of Jew-hatred. They have become what they warn others against. The only thing we can hope for is that deep down some of them do know how crooked their reporting is, and are secretly ashamed of it. Then there is still a small chance that chief editors will dust off their journalistic standards.

Just as the Asserson Report demonstrated the BBC’s bias against Israel by measuring their reporting against their own journalistic standards, so too should the journalists of the Dutch media – NOS, Nieuwsuur, RTL, NRC, Volkskrant and Trouw – analyze their own reporting. They should reread their own lofty journalistic codes and take an honest look at their reporting on Israel. After the past year, there can only be one conclusion: better to turn around than to continue on this doomed path.

Take heart

How I wish the Netherlands were still truly a friend of Israel. I wish I could speak for all Dutch people, including all those journalists who claim to be trying to report independently, impartially and unbiasedly. I wish I could say to Israelis on behalf of all those Dutch people that the Netherlands support them in their fight against terrorism. Alas, that would be a lie.

And yet, I know that so many Dutch people do feel Israel’s pain. So many Dutch people are horrified by the lies that are spread daily through our media. On behalf of those Dutch people, I would like to say to the Israelis: keep courage and keep hoping. You are not alone. There are people everywhere who see through the lies and mourn with you. We will think of you, not only on this sad day of remembrance, but every day that you are under attack.

In the end, truth will triumph over lies.