Sir Simon described the large scale pro-Palestinian rallies that took place in central London and elsewhere around the country in the weeks and months following the Hamas assault on Israel.
“I think it is undoubtedly true that there are people in the Palestinian demonstrations in the utmost good faith and peace, as well as those of whom that cannot be said,” he said. “But if you’re talking about how other British Jews feel, large parts of London for many months were a no-go area for Jews.
“Not to be able to wear a Star of David or a skull cap on your head – actually, it’s not a small thing, you know. It means that you actually have been deprived of basic civil rights – to dress any way you want and to go anywhere you want without suffering violent verbal abuse. And so as I said, the sort of sense of civility is extremely fragile. That’s been a profound shock.”
The celebrated British academic, who was awarded a knighthood for services to history, is now a professor of history and art history at Columbia University in the US. He said he was particularly shocked to see how quickly his fellow academics turned on the Jewish state in the wake of Oct 7.
‘We are a first nation’
“In academia, the first thing that happened was a violent denunciation of Israel,” Sir Simon said, adding that he finds the “caricature of Israel as a colonial society” particularly “obtuse”. He went on to accuse academics of “breathtaking ignorance” for subscribing to the view that Jews are “some some alien implant” in the land of Israel.
Sir Simon explained: “All you have to do, for a minute, is to ask, Hebrew, which is the foundation of Jewish existence, over many millennia, where did that come from? We are a first nation in Palestine, not the only first nation, but a first nation.
“Our religion, our language, our identity, our theology – everything was there. We are not an artificial implant. We are not Frenchmen in Algeria.
“Jews had nowhere else to go to. There was only persecution to go back to. Of course, we’re not a standard cookie cutter imperialist project. That’s ridiculous.”
He said that throughout history, the Jews have become the “whipping boy of what each generation seeks to extirpate”.
“The great cause which heats the blood of academic communities is guilt for colonialism,” he explained.
“Instead of saying, the British were responsible, the French were responsible, America was responsible – though that is being said – it’s kind of easier to invent a totally inappropriate bogeyman, something that is historically, so grotesquely off the mark and ill-informed.
“So it’s actually to make the Jews the most guilty ones of all. When it goes even further, the Jews then become Nazis, of course.”