‘The ongoing war against the West is first and foremost a spiritual one,’ Oriana Fallaci (1929–2006) once said after 9/11, a shock which, in the final years of her life, led the famous author and journalist to mount a passionate defence of our part of the world against Islam.
Another author and journalist from Florence is making the same point following the events of 17 October in Paris.
Fiamma Nirenstein, who was a politician during the Berlusconi era but, horrified by anti-Semitism in Europe, made aliyah to Israel as early as 2013, still writes regularly for the Italian newspaper *Il Giornale*.
On Tuesday, she offers a striking description of what is happening on the spiritual battlefield: ‘Palestinisation’ is a key part of the ‘replacement’ of Europeans’ minds.
The word ‘replacement’ testifies to the fact that there used to be something else in Europeans’ spiritual and intellectual lives. With the demise of that which was worthy of the name, something else moved in and filled the vacuum.
It is a mystery how millions of Europeans have become so committed to one side, and so hateful towards the other side, in a conflict in the Middle East that has been going on for some eighty years – and which is far too complex for the combination of Palestinian solidarity and anti-Semitism we live with today to be regarded as a reasonable stance.
Yet both a lack of historical awareness on our part and the targeted propaganda of others have thus transformed hordes of Europeans into Palestine activists. It is no longer considered scandalous for Greta Thunberg to march in a procession calling for the ‘globalisation of the intifada’. When did people start sympathising with suicide bombers? Do they not know what the intifada is?
The fact is that the Palestinian cause is a fig leaf for Islamism in Europe, but many of the activists marching whilst waving Palestinian flags fail to see this. But by siding with Europe’s Islamist fifth column on this issue, they have made themselves tools of jihad. For it is Hamas they are effectively supporting, and Hamas is an Islamist movement whose method is jihad.
The battlefield that is their minds has already been conquered by jihad, not with bombs, but with propaganda. In a sense, they have become Gazans themselves. They are good for nothing, but are adept at causing a nuisance – and have thus become people against whom civilised countries must protect themselves.
