Why, since October 7, 2023, have many in the West celebrated Hamas’ invasion of southern Israeli communities and the unspeakable barbarities unleashed that day against Israeli civilians? Would not the expected natural response in civilised societies be sympathy for the victims rather than elation for the terrorists?

Antisemitic responses to terrorist atrocities might well be expected of those with long-held intolerant religious or ideological beliefs. But joining in the odious celebrations are many who genuinely perceive themselves to be decent, moral, compassionate and open-minded and whose social and political outlook is generally progressive.

There are always exceptions, but there is an explicable correlation between where one sits on the political spectrum and the likelihood that antisemitic views are held.

Since the 1960s, the prevailing ideology espoused by many schools, universities and the mainstream media in the West has been secular humanism and, much more recently, intersectionality. Youth are easily influenced at a time in their lives when they are working out where they stand on many political, social and religious issues. How can they possibly have the intellectual tools needed to expose the flaws in these progressive ideologies, when no contrary or competing traditional ideology is offered?

Secular humanism

Modern secular humanism espouses the laudable objectives of universal fraternity and benevolence contending that these can be achieved by man’s inherent power of reason coupled with his supposed innate ability to act ethically and justly, but specifically rejecting religious doctrines as a basis of morality and behaviour.

Our youth are encouraged to form opinions on social, political and religious issues by logical reasoning. This erroneously suggests they are innately able to distinguish between the great social polarities of right and wrong (good and evil) and can therefore be their own moral arbiters. But secular humanism is deeply flawed in the following respects, which our youth are never taught.

Humanism and moral inversion

Because one of the core principles of humanism is the mistaken belief that man has an innate ability to act ethically and justly, a humanist is faced with a dilemma. How can this core principle be reconciled with the fact that the world is awash with unethical and unjust behavior, Hamas’ despicable depravities being a prime example?

Rather than confront a painful reappraisal of the ideology they have imbibed, a humanist can more readily understand such despicable behaviour by attributing to the perpetrator a valid reason which justifies or apologises for it. In short, the victim is blamed for being victimised. This moral inversion is a means by which the secular humanist can explain away real evil while preserving his core beliefs.

Humanism and moral equivalence

Because humanism espouses universal fraternity and benevolence, all peoples must be regarded as equal. No religion or culture may be regarded as superior to any other. The humanist is therefore faced with a second dilemma. How can this core principle be reconciled with unprovoked violence and brutality by any one particular religious group? In order to preserve this unsound core belief, violence, and brutality are excused as part of a ‘cycle of violence’, a pernicious term which attributes equal blame and similar behaviour to the victim without any honest attempt to analyse and attribute blame where it is due. It ignores the distinction between (and hence morally equates) an immoral or evil act and a moral or justified one. Again, the best contemporary example is the clear distinction between the intentional unprovoked rocketing by Hamas of Israeli civilians and the tragic but unintentional deaths of Palestinian civilians caused by legitimate defensive measures taken by the IDF.

But religions and cultures are not equal. Until the early 1900s, suttee was a widespread religious funeral practice among many Hindu communities in which a perfectly healthy widow, either voluntarily or by coercion, was immolated on her husband’s funeral pyre. Colonial powers recognised the practice as barbaric and primitive compared with their own religion and culture and had the moral courage to ban it.

We live in a supposedly more enlightened age, yet where is the humanist outcry against other barbaric and primitive practices, such as female circumcision, honour killings, or the subjugation of women in many countries in the Middle East? The core humanist belief that no religion or culture is superior to any other helps explain the deafening silence.

Humanism and moral relativism

Secular humanists are subjectively moral, but so too, arguably, were Nazi death camp guards as are their modern incarnations, Hamas terrorists. Both Nazis and Hamas terrorists were taught that innocent Jews are vermin and that exterminating them was and remains, a moral imperative. In the absence of a universal objective moral code, there is no right and wrong and what is considered ethical or moral behaviour will vary with the times and from one society to another.

Ironically, today’s older secular humanists, including politicians and journalists on the left, were raised by a generation steeped in Judeo-Christian values hence their own subjective notions of right and wrong are more likely to be consonant with traditional values. The same cannot be said of tomorrow’s secular humanists who will inhabit a different world in which traditional values are progressively disappearing, thanks to the radical secular obsession of purging society of every vestige of its Judeo-Christian heritage in the name of separating Church and State. Tomorrow’s humanists will therefore be less likely to be able to discern actual right from actual wrong as those polarities are traditionally and objectively understood.

Intersectionality

This ideology holds that a person’s identity (such as race, gender, class and ability) determines whether the person is to be considered privileged and strong (to be opposed) or discriminated against and weak (to be championed). Intersectionality ignores historical context and the importance of the individual, instead, lazily stereotyping any given person or group.

Our youth are taught that Israelis are powerful, white, colonial oppressors and Gazan civilians are dark skinned, weak and dispossessed. It is not to the point that this is all errant nonsense. Intersectionality has, tragically, become the most seductive ideology in modern Western tertiary institutions.

Conclusion

What is true of our youth is no less true of our government. The Labor government has joined with other capricious political leaders of the Left in Britain, France, and Canada, professing compassion for Gazan civilians while ignoring that their plight is caused by Hamas, not by Israel.

Here, then, is the correlation: Whether due to their humanist or intersectional leftist credentials, the result has been the sanctioning of Israelis and Israeli politicians; the imposition of unjust, immoral foreign policy which rewards Hamas’ barbarity; and a deep hostility, malevolence and betrayal of Israel.