Caught in the Malevolent Mirror
This essay examines the “malevolent mirror” as a form of narrative inversion in which perpetrator and victim become reversed. Applying the concept to the Israel–Hamas conflict, Richard Landes explores how Hamas’s ideology, the October 7 attack, and competing narratives about the war have shaped Western perceptions. He argues that this inversion can obscure the ideological dimensions of the conflict and raises broader questions about propaganda, religious supremacy, and the ability of liberal democracies to confront movements that challenge their underlying principles.
Protocols of the Elders of Islam: Mirror Accusations
One of the great and paralyzing ironies of the current conflict in the land twixt river and sea centers around the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (1903), a forged document which systematically projected the mentality of “gentile” imperialists who composed it onto the Jews, who were conducting a secret plot to enslave mankind. This mirror accusation became particularly acute when the Nazis used it to bring Germany under a totalitarian system that worshipped death and caused megadeath on the order of tens of millions. Today it is enshrined in Hamas charter and permeates the Muslim public sphere.
Unlike the case with Jews in the late 19th early 20th century, where there were no traces of real imperial ambitions and certainly not for global dominion in any Jewish writings, religious or secular, Muslim preachers and authors today regularly and openly preach both genocidal war and global conquest.
And yet, for reasons we explore on September 23 and 24, Western information professions manage to discourage their audience from awareness of these issues. Very few people are aware of the genocidal nature of Hamas and their global ambitions, partly because their beliefs are rarely discussed in the Western public sphere, partly because liberals – progressives and conservatives – have difficulty imagining the religious supremacism involved. Even the Israeli delegation to the ICC, when accused of genocide, did not respond that the accusation comes from people with a far more gruesome record of genocide in both intent and deed. When one searches CNN transcripts for “genocide” every one of the frequent mentions (mostly by guests) is a reference to Israeli genocide, not Hamas.
This silence on Hamas intentions and deeds – October 7 2023 was a textbook case of the most savage genocidal behavior – has created a terrible vulnerability of the West in understanding the conflict. The technique of mirror-accusations in hardly limited to Western genocidal movements, The Hutus used the same techniques in their slaughter of 700,000 Tutsis in weeks of sustained massacre. This technique of reversing accusations is common, not only in genocidal cases, but often in cases of sexual assault: DARVO: deny, attack, reverse victim and offender, And yet, despite the role such mirror accusations play in mobilizing genocidal urges, the current legacy media carries the mirror accusations of the jihadis as news.
Despite familiarity with this technique, including its genocidal stakes, the Western public sphere has fallen hook, line and sinker for what is unquestionably the most dangerous form this great lethal projection has taken in the 21st century: The supremacist Muslim accusation that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The dominance of absurd accusations that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza may constitute the most astonishing failure of the information professions in the 21st century (so far). In three years of war the death of fewer than 100,000 Gazans, possibly half of them combatants (i.e. one of the most exceptionally low rates of civilian casualties in the history of urban warfare) does not by any stretch of the imagination constitute genocide.
Much of the problem comes from Western information professionals (journalists, academics, encyclopedias) who repeat Hamas propaganda as news. Thus, virtually the morrow of Hamas horrific and self-proclaimed genocidal deeds, both Hamas and its mouthpieces in the West began to accuse Israel of genocide. As Irwin Cotler observed already in the aughts (‘00s), when this pattern first appeared: Israel is the only country to be the object of genocidal threats and accused of genocide. Perfect inversion: the genocidal massacre that did happen denied; the genocide that did not happen, trumpeted.
If this genocide were only targeting Israel and the Jews, it might not have much relevance to people, infidels, who believe it. But the Islamic supremacists shaping the propaganda about Israel, the apocalyptic enemy that must be annihilated, sees that as a prelude to victory of the global Dar al Islam. Without grasping that this belief in Israeli genocide is specifically designed to paralyze the infidel’s defense mechanisms, infidels who are not Jews cannot imagine the damage this stupid, transparent, and morally sadistic accusation will do. Right now, it’s being used to hijack the Democratic party in the USA.
The result, many prominent Westerners, their compassion manipulated by the cruelest people on the planet, look at the conflict in the land twixt river and sea and see not a reasonably accurate depiction of reality, but literally a malevolent projection designed to blind them to their danger.
The Muslim Question and the Protocols of the Elders of Islam
To deal with this problem, we find ourself face to face with what someone has called, “The Muslim Question.” This is a play on “The Jewish Question” asked for a century in Europe – what can the nation do with their Jewish population? Since almost every answer demanded their disappearance which the Jews resisted, William Marr coined the term antisemitism, to refer to the problem as the Jewish race and the solution to radically separate from the Jews, a solution that in two generations produced the first “modern” genocide.
Driving the increasingly hostile Jewish Question lay the great paranoid fear that Jews were secretly conspiring to take over the world and enslave mankind, embodied in the 1903 forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the text that proved to be a Warrant for Genocide both in Nazi Germany, and afterwards among Palestinians, a text cited as proof of Israeli malevolence in the Hamas Charter (1988).
Fearing that asking “The Muslim Question” might lead to an Islamophobia similar to the madness of early 20th century antisemitism, to calls for mass deportations and worse, Westerners, especially progressives, have been reluctant to broach the question. Liberal Jews, having been the object of this libel – accused of a conspiracy against mankind and humanity – refuse to accuse the Muslims of plotting to take over the world and enslave anyone who refuses to convert to Islam.
And yet, unlike the case with Jews in the late 19th early 20th century, where there were no traces of imperial ambitions, certainly not for global dominion, in any Jewish writings, religious or secular, Muslim preachers and authors regularly and openly preach both genocidal war and global conquest. What if supremacist Muslims are incompatible with democracy? What should democracy do?
The answers to this questions are most decidedly not clear, and will emerge over the course of years. This space in Infidel Awareness Month is dedicated to discussing the confluence of two most difficult but essential issues: The Great Lethal Projection and the Muslim Question and finding a legal and fair solution to the problem.
Sources: https://rlandes.substack.com/, https://theaugeanstables.com/