SARAH VINE: The women of Israel are all our mothers and daughters. If we don’t stand up to extremists, the horrors happening there can happen here

Poets have a way of expressing emotions in a way that we mere mortals cannot. Seeing the indescribable horrors of the last few days, I have not been able to remove from my mind the famous words, written in 1946 by the German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemoller.

Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me.

Different times, different policies – but the basic principle remains. Never think it can’t happen to you. Never think you’re safe from the forces of evil, whether they’re men in black shirts with swastikas on their armbands – or assassins in combat pants who descend from the sky to shoot, kidnap and rape young women.

Don’t look at what’s happening in Iran, in Ukraine and now in Israel and think: ‘It doesn’t concern me, it’s not my problem.’ It does – and it is.

Especially since the twisted dogma and blind fanaticism that drives these atrocities exists not only in the tower blocks of Gaza, the mosques of Tehran or the corridors of the Kremlin, but in our own backyard.

Sitting on the back of a terrorist’s motorbike, her arms outstretched towards her helpless boyfriend, student Noa Argamani pleads for her life

For all the moderate, intelligent people of different cultures who live in this country, there seem to be many who openly despise and despise everything we stand for, who take our kindness for weakness, who find our tolerant, liberal democracy not as a refuge, but as a Trojan horse for their extremist beliefs.

You don’t have to look far to find sincere apologists for these horrors. And the fact that many of those who celebrate and support Hamas have been welcomed into Britain with open arms is only testament to our naivety in thinking that our way of life is unassailable. Its not. It is precious and fragile.

This is the terrible truth. That those who marched on the Israeli embassy in Kensington, who celebrated in the streets of West London on the night of the attacks, who gleefully shared videos of atrocities as glorious victories against the Jewish people, are living among us.

They are not some abstract enemy, they are our neighbors: teachers, doctors, journalists.

Rivkah Brown, commissioning editor at the hard-left website Novara Media, declared on Twitter/X that Hamas’s actions were “a celebration for supporters of democracy and human rights around the world.” Dr Mennah Elwan, an NHS neurology registrar, posted a series of vile messages online, mocking the Israeli victims and accusing them of being cowards for fleeing the gunmen.

In some ways, however, the failure to condemn Hamas’s violence is just as bad.

Apsana Begum, Labor MP for Poplar and Limehouse, was seen at the party conference in Liverpool openly supporting the infamous Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), which was responsible for the protest outside the Israeli embassy.

Scottish Greens MSP Maggie Chapman said Hamas’ actions were a “consequence of apartheid, illegal occupation, imperial aggression by the Israeli state”.

John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor under Jeremy Corbyn, told a pro-Palestinian event that Israel’s retaliation against the attacks would cause a ‘nightmare situation’ in Gaza. He has said nothing to condemn the rapes and murders committed by the sadists of Hamas.

Not forgetting, of course, the BBC, which informs so much of public opinion and yet – incredibly, shamefully – refuses to use the term “terrorists” in relation to Hamas. I’m sorry, but if ‘beheading’ babies and raping, butchering and mutilating civilians isn’t terrorism, then what is?

But why exactly do the world’s hardline Islamists despise Israel so much? It’s not just anti-Semitism. They especially hate the Jewish homeland because it is one of the only countries in the Middle East that does not treat women as second-class citizens, that does not suppress free speech, that does not condemn homosexuality, that does not impose religious autocracy on it. people.

Survivors of Saturday’s attack, who posted videos of the ordeal on social media, described how they were forced to hide under bushes to avoid Hamas attackers.

How does it happen that Hamas has defenders? How does barbarism have a place in our modern age? A post-holocaust world that vowed ‘never again’ this weekend has seen Jews removed from the safety of their homes and places of business. (Photo: A hostage is held by Hamas).

The video shows a smiling Shani, who loved traveling with her family, dancing at the music festival moments before she was captured by the terrorists.

In Israel, women proudly serve in the army alongside men. They are emancipated, brave and bold – everything the Taliban like, or ISIS, or Boko Haram, or the regime in Iran hates. Such extremists cannot afford this. They don’t want women to have power or autonomy because it scares them: it blows their little, misogynistic minds. They see us as fortresses and slaves whose value is only to serve them. They have proven this time and time again.

Take Iran. If you were to travel back in time to that country in the 1960s and 70s, before the Islamic Revolution, you would have found a nation that resembled modern Israel, where women were free to study, work, wear what they wanted and lived their lives. as equals.

Now many of them lie in hospital beds and morgues, their bodies dismembered and broken by the so-called religious police who roam the streets enforcing the regime’s oppressive dogma. This is the fate that awaits all women when nations succumb to extremism.

As a mother and daughter, this is what shocks and saddens me so much about the number of women you see supporting Hamas, not only in the protesting crowds but also in the professions.

How would they feel if their grandmothers were abandoned by warriors, their beautiful daughters were raped, maimed and killed simply because they didn’t do as they were told by a group of medieval-minded old men and an army of brutal, gun-toting rapists. imposing their will?

Those girls at the Supernova music festival. That young woman with her blood-stained petticoats, drawn by her hair to face a God, knows what horror at the hands of predatory men; that young student caught on camera drooling over her boyfriend as she hitched a ride on the back of a motorcycle; female tattoo artist paraded half-naked and broken in the back of a truck; the grandmother whose death was uploaded to her Facebook account by her killer – they are all our mothers and daughters.

Police had to separate protesters carrying Palestinian and Israeli flags at High Street Kensington tube station on Monday.

Suella Braverman has urged officers to use the ‘full force of the law’ against displays of support for Hamas

If it can happen there, it can happen here. Indeed, it has already begun here, at the entrance to a destroyed Jewish restaurant in Golders Green, in the screaming crowds outside the Israeli embassy, ​​in the graffiti scrawled on walls, in the raucous death celebrations on our streets and on social media . .

There can be no possible justification for any of it, no earthly reason why we should accept it. And if we turn a blind eye in the name of ‘tolerance’ and a ‘diverse society’, we are betraying not only ourselves and future generations, but also those who see Britain as one of the few countries in the world where equality, freedom of speech and basic human rights still exist.

Israel has a right to protect itself from extremism, and so do we. Otherwise, in the end, the terrorists will come for us – because that’s what they do. And who will speak for us then?