On Friday we woke up to the horrifying news of shootings at two mosques in Christchurch.
But by lunchtime, people in our community were using Islamophobic tropes as they argued in Jewish Facebook groups. It’s hard to imagine a more undignified or shameful spectacle.
The level of media coverage was seized by some to point out the relatively muted responses to attacks on Christians in Nigeria, or Hindus in India. Things went further downhill in the following days, with much of it in a group called Jewish Britain.
For the uninitiated, Jewish Britain — with its 7,600 members — is one of the biggest and best-known Facebook groups of the community. It is also known to attract anti-Muslim commentary.
A user by the name of Mike Jones Moses plumbed the discursive depths by calling the massacre “vigilante payback” after “Islamists took their war to the West”.
“This is the risk Muslims now take when living in the West,” he added.
Another wrote: “Some loon was bound to do it sooner or later if you consider the amount of Islamist attacks daily around the world.”
Others took exception to a post suggesting that Jews should express their solidarity for their “cousins” in the Muslim community.
“Jews do not commit terror attacks, Muslims do,” Neal B Cohen proudly announced to the group.
“Jews have empathy with humanity whatever the race or religion they are, hate is not instilled into them like some other peoples,” Philip Sheaf said, without a trace of irony.
More still decried the “cowardly shtetl mentality” behind the decision to close synagogues in New Zealand in memoriam.
And it was not just Jewish Britain. The Glasgow Friends of Israel (GFI) group, which has more than 4,000 followers, was forced to remove a post about the Christchurch attack after it attracted a raft of nasty comments.
Here too, at least one person insisted it was revenge for “attacks that Muslims have perpetrated across the globe”, adding: “Perhaps this will curb their appetite for bloodshed”.
Administrators later issued an apology: “It’s absolutely shocking that people have come on to this post with racist and truly disgusting anti Muslim comments.
“...GFI distance ourselves from these abhorrent views.”
That the Islamophobic current in parts of the Jewish community chose to express itself so unashamedly and so quickly after the mosque attack is deeply troubling — and confusing.
This community — which is acutely aware of antisemitism and thus is mindful of what constitutes hate speech — has allowed Islamophobic thought to drift into the mainstream.
We see it in rhetoric around Israel-Palestine. We see it in the reluctance of communal bodies to comment on Benjamin Netanyahu’s disturbing alliance with ultra-nationalists.
And we see it when respected media figures repeat the notion that Islamophobia is a lie designed to suppress criticism of Islamist terror.
Hardcore Islamophobes in our community are in the minority. But if we don’t call it out, it will only become more acceptable.
