Hadley Freeman believes in plain speech. “The progressive left hates the Jews,” the British journalist and author writes in a new essay on the left’s response to the Hamas atrocities in Israel on October 7.

Freeman admits that she had previously “shied away” from using such strong language. But that changed last autumn — not on October 7, the bloodiest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust, but 24 hours afterward.

On October 8, as protests against the Jewish state swept cities around the world, “Jews understood how hated they really are,” Freeman writes in “Blindness: October 7 and the Left” published this month by The Jewish Quarterly.