Anti-Semitism Watch: ‘Gas All Jews’ Call Is ‘Understandable,’ Says U.K. Journalist In Saudi Paper

The rise of global Anti-Semitism coinciding with the Israel-Gaza conflict, including crowds chanting such slogans as “all Jews should be gassed,” are simply “an understandable reaction,” the “barbarity” of Israel in Gaza, a Pakistani journalist based in the United Kingdom wrote recently in a piece for The Saudi Gazette newspaper.

The Saudi Gazette, founded in 1978, is an English-language daily newspaper based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. In the paper’s August 12 edition, as well as on the Saudi Gazette online site, the paper published an op-ed piece in the section “Readers Post,” under the headline “Global Jews Feel The Heat.”

In the piece, U.K. based journalist Ali Ashraf Khan notes that, “Jews in Europe and around the world are complaining that what is called anti-Semitic feelings are growing in the different countries and are expressed in an openly violent manner.”

Khan notes that “in France and other European countries… there are anti-Israel demonstrations often voicing anti-Jewish sentiments such as ‘all Jews should be gassed.'”

Khan notes that Jewish citizens of those and other European countries have grown alarmed and may even be “thinking about leaving the countries where they have resided for a long time.”

The writer’s observation about the openly anti-Semitic slogans and chants voiced with abandon at demonstrations against the Israeli action in Gaza is correct. Demonstrations have included an often repeated chant, “Hamas, Hamas, all Jews to the Gas,” as well as “Death to Jews” “slaughter the Jews,” “slit their throats,” and so on.

But rather than condemn the calls for a repeat of the Holocaust by anti-Israel protesters, Khan dismisses them as “an understandable reaction of people who feel helpless in the face of the barbarity that Israel is committing against helpless civilians in Gaza.”

Khan goes on to describe the Israeli action in Gaza as “genocide.”

“In the same way as anti-American feelings have been on the rise in the Arab and Muslim world after the mess the US has created in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria,” Khan wrote, “there is a backlash on Israel and on Jews by association.”

Though Khan’s piece was published on August 12, he wrote, “[T]he ceasefire in in Gaza has ended and Israel is attacking Gaza once again. No lessons were learnt and the anti-Semitic propaganda war is on and so is the war started by US and Israel.”

In fact, that ceasefire was breached the following day when Hamas militants launched a barrage of rockets toward residential areas in the south of Israel.

A recent survey found a 383 percent rise in incidents of anti-Semitism around the world in July, compared to July of 2013.