Jonathan Sacerdoti

A series of striking videos have emerged from the Gaza Strip over the last week. Crowds of Palestinians, chanting slogans against Hamas, have taken to the streets in a rare public display of dissent. Some have criticised the mainstream Western media for treating these images with restraint, claiming a missed opportunity to spotlight what could be interpreted as a grassroots uprising against a regime they have long failed to critically interrogate. Others have dared to raise the point: where are the Palestinian ‘solidarity’ activists now?

A peculiar incident occurred this month at an Israeli army base in the Negev: a wild caracal – a desert feline native to the region – bit two Israeli soldiers. Though minor and medically insignificant, the episode subsequently found its way across BBC Arabic’s platforms: X, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Within a couple of days, the BBC had published this story across its Arabic-language social media properties, giving it a visibility usually reserved for serious geopolitical events. Far from treating it as harmless filler, the framing and timing of the coverage encouraged a deluge of celebratory comments from Arabic-speaking users, who gleefully described the cat as a hero or a symbol of resistance.

It is difficult to fathom how an incident as horrifying as the kidnapping of Israeli musician Itay Kashti by three men in Wales barely registered as a blip on the national news agenda. In any just world, this crime – motivated by anti-Semitic hatred, religious fanaticism, and a chilling sense of political grievance – should have dominated headlines. It should have sparked national debate, serious introspection, and urgent discussions about the growing wave of anti-Semitism sweeping the UK and beyond. And yet, aside from a handful of reports, silence reigned. Kashti was lured to a remote cottage in Llanybydder, Wales, on 26 August 2024, under the false pretence of a music collaboration.

Perhaps it is a rite of passage these days for a journalist to be cancelled. But I never expected that an elite school – one designed to create tomorrow’s international leaders, founded by a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany – would be the ones to cancel a talk about anti-Semitism from me, the son of a Holocaust survivor. My invitation was not controversial – at least, not at first As a journalist and columnist with extensive experience reporting from Israel, covering terrorist attacks across Europe, and documenting the rise of anti-Semitism internationally, I have encountered hostility before. But I had not expected it to come from an institution dedicated to fostering global understanding.

The London School of Economics’ decision to host the launch this week of Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters – a book that attempts to sanitise and fails to properly condemn a terrorist organisation responsible for the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust – has rightly sparked outrage. It is a shameless attempt to rehabilitate a group that revels in the slaughter of civilians, delights in hostage-taking, and has openly vowed to repeat its crimes. If there were any doubts about Hamas’ true nature, they should have been put to rest on 7 October But while the LSE controversy is unsettling, it is merely a symptom of a much larger problem: the enduring failure of many in the West to grasp the true nature of Hamas.

The BBC’s documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone at first glance seemed to offer a raw and intimate portrayal of life in Gaza amid the ongoing conflict. However, the programme, which aired on BBC Two on Monday, was deeply flawed. The documentary, narrated by a Palestinian child, Abdullah Ayman Eliyazouri, presented a personal account of the suffering endured by Gaza’s residents. But the investigative journalist David Collier has reported that the BBC seems to have omitted something astonishing. Eliyazouri is not just a random child caught in the crossfire, but the son of Ayman Eliyazouri, the Hamas-run Gazan government’s deputy agricultural minister. Collier’s investigation cross-referenced social media profiles and other publicly available information.

When the Middle East gets me down, I sometimes rewatch the video of Donald Trump announcing the death of ISIS leader ‘Abooo… Bakarrrr… al-Baghdadi’ in 2019. It never fails to make me laugh when Donald declares the terrorist leader ‘died like a dog… a beautiful dog’. It’s funny to many in the West, because Trump’s words seem like crass bluster from a primitive communicator. In fact, he was deadly serious, and was not speaking for our ears alone. In essence, Trump was ‘speaking Arabic’ – not linguistically, but culturally – delivering a calculated message to the Muslim and Arab world. To call a man a dog is a profound insult in Islamic culture, evoking contempt and dishonour.