“Hands off Palestinian children”; “Stop the genocide in Gaza”; “Biden, you have innocent kids’ blood on your hands.”

These are some of the slogans found on the placards brandished by protesters who have taken to the streets in cities across the United States, Europe and the Middle East in recent weeks. The basic message of such protesters is that Muslim civilians are dying as Israeli forces battle the Hamas terrorists who slaughtered hundreds of innocent civilians on October 7, and these Muslim deaths must be abruptly ended at all costs.

Hundreds of thousands around the world have raised such placards alongside Palestinian flags as they demand Israel call off its campaign against Hamas.

Such protesters ignore the fact that Hamas maximizes the deaths of Gaza’s civilians with its well-documented “human shield” strategies. And they ignore Israeli forces’ efforts that are nothing short of Herculean to minimize all loss of civilian life.

But that aside, all of this public indignation over the plight of innocent Muslim civilians raises some questions.

• Where were these protesters in the 2010s when the Islamic State killed tens of thousands of Muslim innocents in Iraq, Libya and Syria?
• Where were they over the last 12 years as Syria’s dictator along with Russian forces killed hundreds of thousands of Muslim civilians in Syria?
• Where were they when Buddhists in Myanmar killed more than 25,000 Rohingya Muslims from 2016 to 2018?
• Where were such protests when Iran and Saudi Arabia killed hundreds of thousands of Muslim civilians in Yemen in recent years?
• Where were they as report after report has emerged in recent years showing China currently imprisoning over a million Muslim civilians in Xinjiang and torturing and murdering vast numbers of them?

In response to these brutal, often genocidal, campaigns against Muslims, there may have been some scattered protests in certain Western cities. But now we suddenly see American university students out in droves to protest the fact that some Muslims, mostly Hamas terrorists and their “shields,” are dying. Now we see tens of thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators taking over London week after week. And we see so many others waving the flag of Palestine and calling for Israel’s campaign against Hamas to be stopped at all costs.

One has to wonder why these people were essentially silent when it was the Islamic State killing Muslims—or Bashar Assad or the Russians or Saudis or Iranians or Buddhists or Chinese. Why were they all so quiet then and apparently unfazed in those cases, and yet so vehement now?

The alarming answer is that this is not really about concern for Muslims. The vitriol is driven by an unbridled hatred of Jews and the fact that it is Jews who are now defending against the barbaric attacks they suffered.

Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry writes about anti-Semitism in his book The Key of David: “Why is there so much hatred for the Jews in this world? … Most people who hate the Jews don’t even know why they do. … We know the Jews, like all humans, have helped to create some of their own problems. But we must see that there is something deeper behind anti-Semitism.”

To understand the “something deeper” that lurks behind the unhinged and growing hatred of Jews, read Chapter 8 of The Key of David.