This week, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez formally recognised a Palestinian state. His Deputy Yolanda Díaz went further effectively de-recognising Israel, saying that ‘Palestine will be free from the river to the sea’ and calling on the EU to break all agreements it has with Israel, investigate war crimes, and end the sale and purchase of arms. This, Diaz claimed, was ‘at once heroic and insufficient’.

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz was quick to respond saying, ‘If this ignorant, hate-filled individual wants to understand what radical Islam truly seeks, she should study the 700 years of Islamic rule in Al Andaluz’ – today’s Spain.

Meanwhile the Spanish government is strongly resisting calls for Catalonia to be free from the Pyrenees to the Sea. Perhaps the Catalans need to launch a few thousand rockets at Spain, send 3,000 terrorists to rape and murder 1200 Spaniards, and take 250 hostages. Might that persuade Sánchez and Diaz that it is time to recognise Catalan independence?

Israel is the only part of the land between the river (Jordan) and the (Mediterranean) sea where people (including two million Israeli Arabs) are free to practice their religion, express their sexuality, vote in elections, and voice their opinions without fear of persecution.

But that’s not what those who chant about freeing the land from the river to the sea are talking about. Hamas says Islam will ‘obliterate’ Israel and Muslims must ‘fight Jews and kill them’. Ethnically cleansing Palestine of Jews? Diaz would only be following in the footsteps of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, who, in 1492, forced all Jews in Spain to either leave or convert and if they converted, they were subject to the Inquisition and accusations of being crypto-Jews or Marranos (Spanish for pigs). During the second world war, Spain was neutral but Franco maintained close relations with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Jewish services were forbidden, a list of Jews was compiled, and Jewish status was marked on identity papers.

Ireland, which also recognised Palestine this week, was also a conspicuous no-show in the last world war. It broadcast Nazi as well as British news, studiously avoiding the expression of any preference for a winner. Some Irish Republicans openly sided with the Nazis but the Irish prime minister, Éamon de Valera, maintained neutrality to the bitter end, personally visiting the German ambassador to express official condolences on Hitler’s death. Throughout the war, the Irish government was sceptical about and indifferent to Nazi persecution of Jews and hostile to Jewish refugees. Even when the war was lost, De Valera denounced reports of the horrors of the Bergen Belsen concentration camp as ‘propaganda’, determined to pretend the Irish were the most persecuted people in Europe and that there was a moral equivalence between the Allies and the Axis powers.

Norway was the third European country to recognise Palestine this week. During the second world war, it was neutral and then overrun by the Nazis who were enthusiastically welcomed by Vidkun Quisling who gave Norway the ignominy of bequeathing to the world the term Quisling government. Although it was a puppet with German Reichskommissar Josef Terboven and Hitler calling the shots, Quisling’s first action was to reintroduce the prohibition of Jews entering Norway which was in the Constitution from 1814 to 1851 and Norwegian Jews were deported to concentration camps with only a handful surviving. Antisemitism had a deeper hold in Norway with its Nobel laureate for literature, Knut Hamsun, an open supporter of Hitler.

The truth is that all three countries have a history of antisemitism that at times lies dormant only to spring to life. Yet no people are more in denial about their antisemitic past than the Palestinians whose Grand Mufti eagerly collaborated enthusiastically with Hitler, poisoning the Middle East with his Nazi race-based antisemitic broadcasts. He should have been tried for war crimes but he was let off the hook allowing him to remain a hero to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood to this day.

In contrast, this week, Germany banned a pro-Hamas group with the  interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, Herbert Reul, pointing out that, ‘In many cases, nothing other than hatred for Jews is hidden behind solidarity with Palestine.’ Why? Perhaps because Germany, unlike Spain, Norway, Ireland or the Palestinians, has confronted the horrors of its history. Even just walking on the cobblestones of Berlin small gold plaques record the fate of people who lived in the buildings. For example, Leser, Judes, David, and Leib Eimer lived at Alte Schonhauser 4, and in 1933 fled to Palestine escaping the Holocaust. Ignatz, Deborah, Susanne, and Amalie Lebzelter lived at the same address but didn’t flee. Deborah, 43, was deported with Amalie and Susanne, aged four and six, and all were murdered in Auschwitz on 12 January 1943. Ignaz was expelled to Poland in 1938, deported to the forced labor camp Buchenwald in 1944, and died there on 29 March 1945.

Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the International Criminal Court and its chief prosecutor Karim Khan, who announced he was seeking arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as top Hamas officials Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh. Khan alleged that the Israelis were guilty of ‘starvation of civilians as a method of warfare’, ‘intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population’ and ‘willful killing’, accusations for which there is no evidence. Netanyahu pointed out that Israel sent 20,000 trucks to Gaza with 500,000 tons of food and medicine and no country has gone to greater lengths to warn civilians of attacks.

As former Canadian justice minister Irwin Cotler, a strong supporter of the ICC, said, Israel has been treated very unfairly not just because Khan has drawn a false moral equivalence with Hamas, a terrorist dictatorship but because the court is meant to work cooperatively with Israel which has an independent judiciary that is willing and able to hold ministers to account.

Khan sought these arrest warrants after only six months; quicker than after the investigation of allegations of genocide against Sudanese leaders in Darfur which took three years, and faster than the issue of an arrest warrant for Putin for war crimes in Ukraine which took one year. And after four years of investigation, there is still no arrest warrant for Nicholas Maduro of Venezuela who is accused of crimes against humanity including arbitrary detention, torture, and rape.

These days, antisemitism wears the mask of anti-Zionism but as Paul Berman said, its true origin is the antisemitic ‘assumption that the Jews are the centre of the world and therefore the centre of the world’s evil’.

Undaunted, Netanyahu is determined to keep fighting until the 128 hostages in Gaza, or their bodies, are released and Hamas is eliminated. As he says, Israel will abide by the laws of war but it will also finish ‘the job because the days when Jews are slaughtered and are defenseless are gone. Never again is now.’ And all the antisemitic posturing of Spain, Norway, and Ireland will only strengthen Israel’s resolve.