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I also feared—correctly, as it turned out—that a great wave of denial would sweep across the world, that what turned out to be the biggest massacre of Jews anywhere in the world since the Holocaust would swiftly be denied just as surely as neo-Nazis and others chose to try to deny the Nazi Holocaust after it had happened.

Even some activists like Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) condemned this behavior, saying that “the callousness, dehumanization, and targeting of Jews on display at last night’s protest outside the Nova Festival exhibit was atrocious antisemitism—plain and simple.”

Multiple witnesses as well as first responders confirmed that some of the dead and those who survived had been raped and gang-raped by the terrorists that morning. But equally—and predictably—there were already denials any such thing had occurred. Many people in the West who had spent recent years saying “Believe all women” did not believe the women who said they had been violated in the Negev that morning.

On a train trip from Cairo to Alexandria, I searched the bookshops to see what the locals were reading.There were copies of Mein Kampf, copies of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, and a range of other conspiracy tracts focusing on Israel and the Jews. If you wanted a mystery novel to read, there were slim pickings. But if you wanted a pile of anti-Semitic books, your needs could always be met.

I would be shown - along with other journalists - the 46 minute edited footage of the October 7 massacres. It had been put together from the terrorists' own recordings, from footage taken by first responders and from footage from victims which had been found on their phones.

I left with an old friend from the British media, a journalist who has seen his share of war. “Bastards," he said. "Bastards.” I agreed.