The Catch-Up
A Strong Dose of Sanity for a World Desperately in Need
The Psychology of the Antisemite
After being involved in this fight for so long, I’ve learned a thing or two about the enemies of the tolerant society. It is no longer surprising to me to see antisemites lie even when the truth is presented directly in front of their faces. We’ve all heard the more egregious accusations of “genocide”, “apartheid”, and “ethnic cleansing” thrown ad nauseam against the Jewish state. No less evil are the assertions that Israelis kill Palestinians to harvest their organs or that Jews are “white colonialist”, “settler”, “occupiers” of the land they are indigenous to.
There are a couple reasons for the unabating torrent of lies that I can articulate, though my reasoning is only anecdotal. As I’ve said before, the field of psychology is pathetically lacking in solid research on Jew hatred today. Appeals to historical understandings are less useful when, as the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks explained, antisemitism is a mutating virus, and in our day and age it has adopted the forms of “anti-Zionism” and “anti-Israel” bigotry. Nevertheless, let us ask: why do antisemites lie, about everything?
The first phenomenon I’ve noticed is a severe confirmation bias, to the point of straight-up denying reality if it tends to exonerate Israel or Jews of wrongdoing. This likely stems from an innate bias, the bias of antisemitism, which is humanity’s oldest hatred. It is not surprising that millennia of hatred has not been undone with a scant few centuries of liberal democracy. Antisemitism is the ultimate ‘otherization’, and humans have a tendency to mistrust that which they do not understand.
This innate and ingrained historical-cultural bias against the Jewish people causes otherwise rational individuals to reject evidence that contradicts their assumptions. Israel has provided more aid, more food, water, electricity, and medicine to the Palestinians in Gaza during this war than any and all other countries that screech incessantly for a “ceasefire” (never mind the hostages Hamas STILL HOLDS). Egypt barely lets anything cross their highly secure border with Gaza (except through the terror tunnels of Hamas).
Likewise, the IDF has gone to greater lengths than any other nation or army in the history of warfare to protect the civilian life under the control of its enemy. Israel has invented technological miracles like the Iron Dome and Arrow so that it does not always have to strike back at the terrorists that commit double war crimes by targeting Israeli civilians from civilian locations. Israel invented an entirely new category of weaponry - the ‘knock bomb’ - purpose-built to warn civilians of incoming danger. Israel drops waves of warning pamphlets and organizes massive phone bank campaigns to try to get civilians out of harm’s way, even as Hamas tries their hardest to keep them there under threat of death. And the civilian death toll in this war reflects that - even granting the “accuracy” of Hamas death counts (which we know are blatantly false), Israel has still achieved a civilian-to-combatant death toll in urban warfare against terrorists purposefully embedded in civilian locations better than any other nation in modern history, or any history.
But none of this matters to the antisemitic brain. It can all be dismissed as “Zionist propaganda” or some other such barely-disguised euphemism for a Jewish conspiracy. The first and most prominent reason for the lies of the antisemites is that they simply cannot believe the truth. Their small minds won’t let them.
This brings us to the second motivating force for the falsities perpetrated by antisemites, and it is perhaps the more insidious of the two. Innate Jew hatred motivating cognitive biases is bad enough, but even worse is when it doesn’t even lead the antisemite to believe reality is false - yet, the antisemite will assert the opposite of the truth anyway, knowing full well that they’re lying through their teeth.
Why would someone do this? In essence, it stems from a misplaced sense of “justice”. See, if you are an educated individual with even the barest knowledge of history or law, you know that Israel isn’t committing “genocide” in Gaza. There is no mens rea by Israelis to commit one of the worst crimes against humanity in the books. All the evidence points to the contrary - some of which I have listed above.
But if incessantly asserting that Israelis are committing “genocide” and other atrocities in Gaza somehow advances your ‘cause’, then lying about them is “justified”. What is the cause, you ask? Nominally, it is “ceasefire now”. But we know that their ultimate aim is for “Palestine to be free from the river to the sea” - in other words, they seek to delegitimize the Jewish state until it collapses and becomes absorbed by, well, none of them seem to be very sure on what Israel will be replaced by, but the end goal is absolutely the destruction of the only Jewish nation on Earth.
They’ve been working for decades on this goal, both inside and outside Israel. Yasser Arafat launched the ‘Second Intifada’ under false pretenses, which resulted in thousands of both Israelis and Palestinians dead. And across global universities, there has been an incessant campaign of lies surrounding Israel’s defensive measures against terrorism, labeling border fences with the West Bank “apartheid” and giving Israel its own week of hatred. No one seriously believes Israel is an “apartheid state”. Israel is one-fifth Arab, and Arab Israelis have full rights and equal protection under the law the same as every other Israeli.
But again, truth does not matter to the antisemite. They know Israel isn’t any of the evil things they claim it to be; at least the smarter and more educated among them do. But it advances the goal of destroying the Jewish state to lie to people about it, people that won’t question and fact-check the falsehoods. And the mutating virus of antisemitism carries on through the decades.
We can only hope that through our efforts to assert the value of the Truth the lies will be driven back and driven out of places where they can influence the world in any serious capacity. Jew haters are on the wrong side of the history books. Always.
Am Yisrael Chai 🇮🇱
—May 28th, 2024
The Inexplicable and Extraordinary Existence of Eretz Israel
I have written many times about the unbelievable historical miracle that is the modern nation of Israel. You may consider this article a synthesis of various things I have learned that I believe vital to understanding the Jewish nation and its place in history and in the ever-present moment.
They say that ignorance kills. If this is true, then knowledge must save. I have found it absolutely stunning the lack of knowledge of history and of the general state of the world amongst the voices of the “pro-Palestine” movement (in quotes, because if they were truly ‘pro-Palestine’, they would be pro-Israel). They shout and they scream, but they know not what about. They don’t even know that they know nothing. All that they seem to know is “Israel bad” — but don’t ask them why. You’ll only want to bang your head into a brick wall on hearing their non-answers.
I won’t dignify their inane and insane claims by mentioning them here. I’ve written plenty enough about the veiled antisemitism behind the campaign of lies against the Jewish nation. Instead, I want to focus on the truth. It’s all that really matters, when you get right down to things. Lies get tossed in the trash-bin of history, along with those who shamelessly utter them. But Truth is eternal.
Let’s start with the obvious question: what is Israel, exactly?
Israel is the Jewish nation. Its existence began several thousand years ago with the Kingdom and the Twelve Tribes that formed some time around 1000 BCE in the land of Israel. Before that, the Jewish people came and lived in Israel under still-debated circumstances. The farther back in time you go, the harder it is to differentiate historical fact from in this case Biblical assertion, which is also debated through translation and interpretation differences. Their even older ancient neighbors in Mesopotamia — the Sumerians — have the same question mark above their origin.
What we do know is that the Jewish people inhabited Israel as a sovereign collective at least three thousand years ago, and likely lived in and around the area long before that. They spoke and wrote the language of ancient Hebrew, which although changed in various ways is still the same language spoken there today.
Why does this matter? It indicates that Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel. Already you should be able to predict the objections from our “pro-Palestine” friends. “But if they came from somewhere else, they’re not indigenous!”
Humanity comes from Africa. All of us. It’s a fact of evolutionary biology. We (or most likely our ancestors) all came from somewhere else to get to the place we are. As of three thousand years ago, the Jews were sovereign in the land of Israel. They have the oldest claim to the land out of any peoples still living today, by thousands of years.
But how did the land come to be known as ‘Palestine’? That’s what the British called their Mandate at the time the modern nation of Israel declared independence from them. How did that come to be?
Skipping a thousand years of history, the Romans under future Emperor Titus conquered the Jewish capital of Jerusalem in 70 CE. The Arch of Titus in Rome commemorated their ‘victory’, complete with ‘spoils’ such as a stolen menorah. They sacked the sacred temple of the Jewish people and exiled or took into slavery many of the inhabitants of the land.
Despite the devastation of their people, 65 years later the Jews led another revolt against the Romans, the Bar Kokhba rebellion. This, too, was ultimately unsuccessful in dislodging the Roman colonizers of Jewish land. The Romans butchered the Jews in retaliation, with estimates of half a million Jews massacred. And the Romans renamed the land ‘Syria Palaestina’ — Syrian Palestine — to further humiliate the rebellious Jews.
This name was in reference to the ancient Philistine peoples who were the Biblical enemies of the Jews along the coast of southern Levant. They were likely Greek in origin, and it is hypothesized that they migrated to the land during the Bronze Age Collapse. They were eventually destroyed by the Babylonians and their people assimilated by that empire. The modern conception of the Palestinians as Arabs is unrelated to the Philistines or ‘Palestinians’ of old.
So how did we get to our modern mess of an era? How are things still so confused?
Centuries passed, and Israel changed hands and empires. The Jewish people were never entirely expelled from the region. It came under the control of the Eastern Roman Empire (or the Byzantines) until it was conquered by the Rashidun caliphate, the first after the original prophet Muhammad’s. Israel and Jerusalem went back and forth between Muslim and Christian conquerors during the Crusades. The Mamluks of Egypt gained control of the entire region with the Siege of Acre in 1291 until they themselves were conquered by the Ottoman Empire in the early 1500s. The Ottomans maintained control for hundreds of years until finally being defeated and dissolved by the Allies in World War I.
That’s a lot of history, I know. Why is any of this relevant?
Through the centuries and millennia, the Jewish people in and out of Israel were subjected to oppression, violence, forced conversion, and discrimination at the hands of their Christian and Muslim overlords. They were known as the ultimate victims, practically powerless to resist and completely at the mercy of the controlling empire they happened to live in for the time being. For Christians, they were “Christ killers” and hated. For Muslims, they were “dhimmis” who refused to submit to the will of almighty Allah. Under constant threat of death or expulsion, the saying “in every generation they rise up to destroy us” became a historical truth that the Jewish people lived for millennia.
But not anymore. Zionism, or the movement for Jewish self-determination in the homeland of the Jewish people, had been reinforced by waves of pogroms sweeping Russia and Europe in the late 1800s. Theodor Herzl, the founder of the movement of Zionism, had recognized the dangers of nationalism rising across the world, and realized that the Jews needed their own nation again if they were to survive the coming centuries. They began purchasing land from the Ottomans and then the British and migrated in waves back to their ancient home. The Jews never "stole land" from the Arabs or anyone else living there. It was all gained through purchase; or, later, defensive war.
The British control over Israel was a messy and frankly catastrophic affair. While carving up the carcass of Ottoman Middle East, they promised to create a sovereign Jewish state in the Levant with the Balfour Declaration. They then reneged on this promise in 1939 with the ‘White Paper’ of Chamberlain’s government, which also virtually closed Jewish immigration into the land. This created the conditions under which the Holocaust of the Nazis could occur in the first place. If Britain had freed their colonial subjects in Israel to form a Jewish state before World War II, the Holocaust could not have happened.
World War II was fought and won, and the British once again faced choice paralysis with what to do with Mandate Palestine. Eventually, they decided to hand it over to the United Nations and were determined to leave once and for all. They had already had to fight a war against the Arab inhabitants of the Mandate between 1936 and 1939 and weren’t too keen on spending any more money or lives doing so again.
So the UN adopted Resolution 181 on November 1947, partitioning British Mandate Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jewish state accepted this plan, and the Arab state rejected it and declared open war on the Jewish state with the goal of annihilating it and taking over the entire region. This war was eventually joined by the Arab League when Israel officially declared independence on May 14th, 1948. But despite all odds against them, the Jews won.
The land of the Arab partition was absorbed by Israel, Egypt, and Jordan, and would remain in this configuration until the ‘Six Day War’ of 1967 in which Israel not only defended her right to exist yet again as a sovereign nation, but gained control of Gaza from Egypt (and also the Sinai, which Israel later gave back for the promise of peace with Egypt) and the West Bank from Jordan. And, more or less, that is what the borders are today. Israel has tried many times to give the Arabs (now known as the ‘Palestinians’) their state, but the option for sovereignty has been rejected each and every time for the choice of war and the hopes of annihilating the Eternal Nation of Israel.
What are the takeaways from this history lesson?
Historical fact is historical fact. European Christian and Arab Muslim claims to Israel are based on right of conquest over each other and over the Jews. That is not to say that they are wholly invalid — just that this fact needs to be recognized. The Jews are the original Palestinians. They were known as such even through World War II. Stating this does not detract from the modern conception of ‘Palestinian’ — after all, understandings change. But we must not have any illusions about the ancient indigeneity of the Jewish people to the land of Israel. If you truly want to support ‘decolonization’, then you support Jewish self-determination in Israel, i.e. Zionism.
The ‘Palestinians’ as we know them today are the descendants of colonizers. That’s not to say they’re wrong to live in the land their ancestors colonized, but we must have historical clarity if we are to ever have lasting peace on Earth. There never was such a state as 'Palestine' in the entire history of the Earth. The land of Israel was conquered again and again by empires, yet the only sovereign nation to have ever existed in that land was the Jewish nation of Israel.
The existence today of the nation of Israel is a miracle on par with ancient Babylon suddenly springing back to life and speaking Akkadian. Israel is a nation of the same people on the same land and speaking the same language as three thousand years ago. This alone is so historically improbable that it still blows me away. And the fact that people not only don’t realize this wonder, but are actively working to destroy it; honestly, it breaks my heart. All I can do is fight as hard as I can for the Truth. I hope that you’ve learned something from this article. I hope you can appreciate the marvel of Eretz Israel.
🇮🇱 עם ישראל חי
—June 3rd, 2024
Tolerating the Intolerable: The Unbelievable Mercy of the Jewish Nation
Imagine if you will growing up in an active warzone. Picture the Blitz of London; or, for a more contemporary example, life for the past years in Ukraine. Now imagine a lower intensity but constant bombing and terrorism campaign against your home stretching out over decades, and one that occasionally escalates into unimaginable horror and tragedy.
This is life in Israel. Since (and even before) Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian Authority rejected again the ‘two state solution’ offered to him at the Camp David Summit and launched the ‘Second Intifada’, Israel has been subject to unrelenting Palestinian terrorism for decades. Hundreds of suicide attacks and rocket barrages over four and a half years alone. Buses, train stations, restaurants, discotheques blown up. Thousands dead on both sides. When students chant for ‘Intifada’ on our college campuses, make no mistake about what they’re calling for. And the Palestinian Authority pays the families of terrorists who die or get locked up for killing or trying to kill Israelis. ‘Pay for slay’ is official policy of the PA — to compensate the ‘martyrs’ who fight ‘Zionism’ — and your tax dollars likely go towards it.
And the terror does not just come from the Palestinian territories; who at this point hasn’t heard of Hezbollah in Lebanon and their hundred-thousand-plus rockets aimed directly at the Jewish nation? Or the Houthis of Yemen that have terrorized and paralyzed international shipping around the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden for months? Or their financial terrorist backers in the Islamic Republic of Iran that a couple months ago tried and failed to devastate Israel with a missile and drone barrage that was partly shot down by allied forces and partly intercepted over the skies of Jerusalem?
Many in the international community may not realize that Israel requires by law that new residential buildings be built with bomb shelters (called mamads) — safe rooms to protect from terrorism. I have seen many videos now of Hamas terrorists assaulting mamads, shooting guns and throwing grenades inside, burning and smoking out the inhabitants. How many apartment buildings do you know of in your first world liberal democracies that have newly-built bomb shelters? Would you think such a requirement necessary where you live? Would you think it strange?
It is a necessity in Israel. There are several ‘Red Alert’ apps like Tzofar that track incoming rocket attacks and warn residents near the predicted site of impact to take shelter in mamads. How many years of ‘Red Alerts’ would you tolerate at your home? How many of your neighbors would you tolerate being blown to bits before going on the warpath?
Here’s a question you already know the answer to: how many countries have defensive technology like Iron Dome, Arrow, and David’s Sling? I’m not just talking about SAM turrets and MANPADS. I mean how many nations have full, intelligent missile protection across their entire territory? The reason you have never heard of any other nation having an Iron Dome is because they don’t have one. Do you know the cost of a single Iron Dome defensive intercept missile? They’re in the tens of thousands. While Hamas fires crude scrap metal rockets running on sugar and fertilizer. They don’t have to care about aiming them; the goal is to terrorize civilians.
Israeli defense technology has become decades ahead of the game of every other nation on Earth precisely because they have to defend against this threat, and instead of doing what America would undoubtedly do and level every single city block where rockets were fired at us, Israel chose and chooses instead to preserve the lives of its enemies as best it can. The entire tenure of Netanyahu (and Ariel Sharon before him) can be summed up in the idea that Israelis simply have to outlive their enemies, and eventually they will stop attacking. Israel also drops countless leaflets, telephones every civilian it can, drops ‘knock-bombs’ (an entirely new category of weaponry previously unheard of on this Earth) and otherwise does everything it can possibly do to remove as many civilians as possible from the area of combat, even when such actions also warn enemy combatants of operations ahead of time.
For a pretty long while, I’ve had an obsessive fascination with military history. Whereas normal people watch cooking videos or whatever, I watch battle formations, maps, and troop developments. I’ve studied everything from Alexander the Great to Julius Caesar to George Washington and through to the present day. I would never claim to have exhaustive knowledge of warfare (as such knowledge is by definition unobtainable; war is ever-evolving), but I can say with high confidence that I know more than the ‘average Joe’ about military history. And I am telling you that no other nation or people with an army in the history of the world would tolerate what Israel has tolerated for decades. That is not to say that war is not tragic and terrible; after all, ‘war never changes’. But to consistently strive to protect life even at great strategic expense is the Israeli way.
The Israel Defense Forces, like the Republic of Korea Armed Forces, is a conscripted fighting force. There are some exceptions; Arab Israelis and Haredi Jews are not required to serve, but many still do. This means that the Israeli army is a cross-section of the entire society of Israel. Defaming the IDF is tantamount to defaming the Israeli people. I cannot tolerate lies about the good men and women of the IDF; lies like that they are committing “genocide”, lies implying that they have lost their innate humanity. The IDF is the most moral army in the world. The Jewish nation is the most merciful in existence. These are simply the facts.
We who live in the dull comfort of our modern lives cannot even imagine what growing up in an area where you are surrounded on all sides by people who want to kill you is like. And despite the overwhelming hate and hostility of their neighbors, Israel still practices compassion that no other would. My deepest respect to the heroes of the IDF and the Jewish nation. You inspire the good in us all.
Am Yisrael Chai 🇮🇱
—June 9th, 2024
Bearing Witness: Rape and Holocaust Denialism in the 21st Century
It is hard to put into words the levels of depravity that occurred on October 7th, 2023 and the utter atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists. It is harder still to reconcile the things that I have seen and witnessed from that day with the fact that I still want to maintain faith in humanity. It is just too horrible to comprehend. I cannot fit it into my paradigm of the world as an Alan Watts-esque “life as a game and dance” philosophy. But some things cannot be ignored. It is a choice between either sleepless nights as a result of acceptance of reality; or, denial of it.
Worse yet, there are those that actually do deny the atrocities - even as the genocidal terrorists filmed it themselves. I’ve gotten into spats with antisemites that claim Hamas are the “good guys” in this war, and on this very platform. My ‘parting shot’ to one despicable individual was a link to the documentary film ‘Screams Before Silence’, which compiled testimonies of witnesses to the sexual violence of Hamas on that darkest of Sabbaths. And of course, it was dismissed as “propaganda”. Rape denial is the absolute lowest of lows, but people will gladly cross that threshold if it conforms to their distorted worldview of the “evil” Jewish nation.
But Truth is Truth. Hamas committed many, many crimes against humanity that day. I have watched hours of footage filmed by the terrorists themselves as they committed atrocities that I will never be able to forget, much less deny happened in the first place. So what’s going on? How can people be so cruel as to dismiss the suffering of Israeli women and the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust?
I believe we are witnessing the next evolution of ‘Holocaust denialism’. Anyone that denies the extent of the October 7th massacre is also likely to have very questionable opinions on the Holocaust. Typical stances on both among the “pro-Palestine” crowd are that either the Holocaust/October 7th wasn’t actually as bad as history tells us it is; or, if it was, the Jews “deserved it” for some made-up and utterly unjustifiable reason. We saw this with the moral abomination that currently sits as Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr. António Guterres, who shortly after the October 7th slaughter had the chutzpah to claim it "didn't happen in a vacuum". I’ve said before that we can forget ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ - put that on the gates of Auschwitz.
The plain truth is that nothing on this Earth can justify what Hamas did that day. Claiming that Israel somehow bears responsibility is the most absurdly evil position you can possibly take. Let’s look at the “context” for a minute: after repeatedly offering the Palestinians their state and after Yasser Arafat rejected it and launched the ‘Second Intifada’, Israel unilaterally left Gaza anyway in 2005 and left the people there to their own devices, forcefully evicting thousands of Jews from Gaza in the process. Gazans quickly elected Hamas to “lead” their people, and Hamas got to work throwing Fatah leaders off roofs to establish total control. Once they had it, they turned the entire Gaza strip into the most complex spearhead for a violent attack in history. They used aid money and concrete to build the most complex tunnel system on planet Earth, solely for the purpose of terrorism. They hide weapons caches in all sorts of civilian buildings, from schools to mosques to hospitals, and constantly commit double war crimes by launching attacks from civilian locations in Gaza into civilian locations in Israel. They are the sole responsible party for every single Palestinian civilian killed as a result of Hamas’s war of aggression against the Jewish nation. Claiming otherwise is either ignorance or malevolence, and a whole lot of it. Not to mention the complicity of UNRWA in Hamas's war crimes and crimes against humanity, but we can leave that for another day.
People that ascribe to the mindset of the "evil Jews" often lack all semblance of empathy for the suffering of the Jewish people. They must resort to dehumanizing the victims or otherwise making their suffering secondary to fit it into their worldview that seeks to make the Jews responsible somehow for their own suffering. Leading up to the Holocaust of the Nazis, propaganda constantly churned making the Jewish people responsible for the economic troubles of Germany (a complete fiction, but it worked). Now, the same sort of propaganda has made the aggressors against Israel in the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iran somehow out to be the “innocent good guys”, when all evidence points to the contrary. If anything, the civilians that suffer under the rule of terrorist organizations are victims of those very terrorists - as are the Jewish victims of their continual massacres against the Jewish nation and people. As it has been said many times of the conflict in Israel, “If the Arabs laid down their arms, there would be peace. If the Jews laid down their arms, there would be no more Jews.”
Of course, nowadays the conflict has evolved beyond the Arab League trying to annihilate Israel. The UAE, Bahrain, and even the Saudis and Jordan have warming relations with the Jewish nation. The primary party funding attacks against Israel speaks Persian. But the terrorist proxies of the Islamic Republic of Iran need only lay down their arms and there will be peace over Jerusalem. Violence will never achieve a better world, and sexual violence must be universally condemned as the utter moral atrocity that it is. Hamas weaponized rape as a method of war, systematically brutalizing women in ways too horrific to type. And then they killed them. Screams before silence. And if you are on Hamas’s side in this conflict (which polling suggests about 20% of Americans are), then you must either accept rape as “legitimate resistance” or deny it happened entirely.
Either option is despicable. I will never, ever support such barbarism. I cannot. I don’t care if the entire world burns with hate and decides to walk the darkest paths of history again. I will not justify rape and slaughter of innocents who suffered for no other reason than because they were Jewish or lived in the Jewish nation. May the victims see justice done, in this life or the next. May every hostage be brought home immediately. And may the people of Israel see the lasting peace and safety they so deeply deserve.
🇮🇱 עם ישראל חי
—June 17th, 2024
Our Tolerant Future (and our antisemitic present)
It is self-evident that our present moment is rife with intolerance. I have experienced it firsthand in several forms throughout my life. There are many still among us that are not content with leaving well enough alone in the lives of their neighbors and many that actively take measures against others for no other reason than the identity of their victims.
I have fought against this intolerance for a good amount of my life. I have always been dedicated to the principles that all among us are created equal and that we all deserve the same opportunity at a truly good life, at liberty and freedom, and at the fundamental pursuit of happiness on which a fulfilling life is based. This has at times resulted in tension in my life and even open hostility. Never before in my life though have I experienced the levels of inexplicable and unjustified hatred I have been through for taking a stand with the Jewish people and nation against hatred towards their very existence.
I still cannot fully comprehend it. It’s like life went from zero to a hundred before I could blink. I didn’t have the choice of getting off the ride; immediately I was hit with the ugliest accusations I have ever been subjected to, and for the mere act of standing against the defamation of the Jewish nation and its people.
It was surreal. It literally changed my life. It opened my gentile eyes to the fact that this ancient hatred of the Jewish people still exists, and is even still festering and gaining traction in our modern “enlightened” era. I mistakenly believed our present to be too “rational” to fall for the same categories of lies Jews have been subjected to for millennia. But the thing about hatred of Jews is that it isn’t rational. It can’t be reasoned with. My knowledge of history and truth is powerless to change the antisemitic mind.
And the ironic thing is that if I hadn’t been subjected to it, I would never have ended up being such a force to be reckoned with in the fight against it. I had no obvious reason to stumble upon Jew hate as a non-Jew. The platform I have today (like this newsletter) only exists because I was dragged into this fight against my will. I never wanted to be here or even be known in this world. I have only ever wanted to leave a small imprint of my philosophy for future generations to discover on their own terms and in their own time. But I am here now, and while I have a voice to use I will use it to the fullest extent of my power.
How do we get to a better world from the ugliness of our present reality?
Karl Popper’s ‘Paradox of Tolerance’ has never been more relevant than as it is today. In The Open Society and Its Enemies, he formulates it like this:
“Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.”
The lessons to draw from this are numerous. One is that we must always attempt to meet intolerance first in the ‘marketplace of ideas’. Intolerance is by its very nature a flawed and self-destructive ideology. So long as it is opposed by a sufficient number of people espousing the greater forces of love and kindness, it will eventually fall apart on its own.
This does not mean “playing nice”. There is a misconception among many today that the antisemites in the “pro-Palestine” movement should be given just as much respect, time, and attention as those who oppose them. This is analogous to giving just as much respect, time, and attention to David Duke and the KKK versus civil rights activists like the great Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. These two camps are not the same. Equating “pro-Palestinians” (read: violent pro-Hamas radicals) with those that oppose them is as disingenuous and disgraceful as saying the Klan deserves a fair shake and actually we’re the bad guys for ‘deplatforming’ the racists. No one “deserves respect” by virtue of the fact that they hold an opinion. Respect is earned. I consider racists to be among the most deplorable of all humanity. I will not give them the time of day, much less grant them equal footing with those they hate.
To put it simply, wheresoever the antisemites voice their opinions, call them out. Make them uncomfortable. Make them stand by and defend their hateful words and rhetoric. Make it clear that racism and intolerance has no place in your presence and in our modern world. Jewish voices have been marginalized and silenced for far too long. Make your space a safe space for them, where they know that you will not tolerate hate speech against them. And enforce your right to freedom of association. Racists have the right to freedom of speech, and we have the right not to associate with racists.
I believe that we have already progressed to the point wherein the intolerant cannot meet us with reason. The positions of the pro-Hamas protestors are utterly indefensible, and everyone knows it. Deep down, the intolerant antisemites know it too. It's why so many mask up like the Klan when they march and hold their hate rallies waving flags of Hamas and Hezbollah.
The only conceivable way to hold such monstrous opinions is by giving up on reality; and once reality is gone, they substitute their own. Which isn’t really their own—it’s a mixture of old and new antisemitic tropes combined with false information spoon-fed to them by Hamas themselves. I have spent a good amount of my life studying philosophy and rhetoric, and I have not found a way to reach the rational part of their brains to ‘break the spell’. I know they must be in there somewhere, and I have tried for so very long to turn intolerance into tolerance again. But so far I have not found a way.
If mere words from the intolerant progress to action, then we are in dire straits indeed. The state has an absolute monopoly on violence. This is how liberal democracies function. We solve our disputes through adjudication by law; not by riots and vandalism, not by mobs and pogroms. As I’ve said before: when disagreements become physical, freedom of speech becomes irrelevant. Masked fascists and their violent intimidation tactics exist outside of the ‘marketplace of ideas’. They have chosen the path of violence, and the state must respond by claiming its monopoly on violence. Do not allow the intolerant to enforce their twisted worldview via jackbooted, Nazi-era brownshirt brutality. Our democratic existence is by no means perfect, but it is infinitely preferable to a fascist takeover.
We have survived this before. Oswald Mosley and his American Nazi equivalents died in disgrace, along with all who attempted the “Nazi revolution” of our grandparents’ era. Liberal democracy is the greatest political system ever devised in the history of humanity. We must defend it at all costs, against all who seek to destroy it.
For a long time, I had hoped that the spectres of the past were buried there. I have always been future-oriented and ‘futurist’ inclined. I started on science fiction at a very early age and never left the genre. The future is tolerant. I know it is. Maybe intolerance will never be wiped out entirely, but I have every confidence that we will survive this wave and come out even stronger than before. Love always wins in the end.
But until such a day arrives, we must keep fighting for our tolerant future.
Am Yisrael Chai 🇮🇱
—June 24th, 2024
Averting Historical Disaster
It is a strange period of time to live in. All periods of time are strange in their own ways; but we in the present moment have the unique position of knowing our history and of seeing it repeat in front of our eyes. It is as if the entire Jewish nation has become its own Alfred Dreyfus in the eyes of the world. Countless “democratic” resolutions in the United Nations condemn Israel more than the Islamic Republic of Iran, the People’s Republic of China, and the Russian Federation combined. Supposedly “impartial” NGOs like Doctors Without Borders and the International Committee of the Red Cross seemingly care about everyone except the Jewish and Israeli victims of October 7th; not one humanitarian visit by any to the hostages of Hamas terrorists. It is a sick joke that the world is playing, blaming Jews for all the problems of the world yet again in history and dismissing their suffering as secondary or somehow “deserved”.
And it’s not just the dictatorial and authoritarian regimes and their minions that are the culprits of this modern-age Jew hate that has made Israel out to be the “Jew among the nations”. Many in our own liberal democratic societies are participating as well. Women’s rights groups are silent on the horrific rape and unspeakable brutalization of women on that darkest of days—because the victims were Jewish or Israeli. Gay rights organizations refuse to stand up for the only democracy and the only country with nationwide Pride celebrations in the Middle East—because they refuse to see Israelis as human beings worthy of pride in their identities. Masked fascists chant in our streets for the elimination of the only Jewish nation in the world and the extermination of millions of Jews and Arab Israelis. They slander the Jewish nation with utterly unfounded accusations of “genocide”, “apartheid”, “ethnic cleansing” and more. They refuse to see reality for what it is; they refuse to see Jews as anything less than monstrous “genocide supporters” and Israelis as “genociders”. And they want nothing more than to see genocide on the scale of the Holocaust against them, as evidenced by their words and actions.
I believe that most people engaging in antisemitic behavior today don’t realize the extent of what they’re doing. Sure, they may hate Jews and know that they do (although the number of them that have even that level of self-awareness is questionable). But they almost certainly don’t understand how closely they are flirting with atrocity. And if we who are giving everything to combat antisemitism are successful, they will essentially “get away with it”. We will hold them accountable for their hate—but we won’t have to hold them accountable for concentration camps and gas chambers. We WILL NOT let the movement of hatred progress that far.
And make no mistake, that is where this movement inevitably leads. Hate leads to pogroms; in the industrial age, it led to industrial mass murder. Our “tolerant” modern society has several advantages over Weimar Republic Germany—but we must never become complacent. These useful idiots chanting for ‘Intifada’ are calling for the full-scale slaughter, rape, and mutilation of millions of Jews and Arab Israelis and the ethnic cleansing of the entirety of Israel. There are more than a few that are actually aware of this fact; we see this presented with the placards that read ‘Resistance by any means necessary’. They would gladly engage in the worst atrocities of history if it meant the end of the Jewish nation. And they have twisted the minds of so many and swept them up in their movement of hate.
History. This is it. We have seen this all before. Goebbels was an evil genius of propaganda. He got an entire nation to slowly acquiesce to his demented view of reality and his darkest fantasies of a ‘Judenfrei’ Deutschland.
Now, the enemies of the tolerant society engage in the same tactics to make the world hate Israelis and their supporters—which just so happen to be somewhere between 80 to 90 percent or higher of the total Jewish population of the world. Hatred of Israel is hatred of the Jewish people. It is really that simple. And we must not let this hate drag us back down the same roads we promised we would NEVER TRAVEL AGAIN.
I have fought this hate for months on end. And I will not stop; I must not stop. Because I understand the stakes. I understand that we truly do have everything to lose in this fight for the very soul of humanity. And we will not lose. We are stronger than hate.
Love conquers all. Am Yisrael Chai 🇮🇱
—July 1st, 2024
The Miracle of Zionism
“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”
—ostensibly Mark Twain
There is a surprising amount of fiction out there about ‘the eternal cycle of history’ or something similar. The Mass Effect games, the Wheel of Time series, Mr. Nobody (starring Jared Leto), Cloud Atlas, and on ad infinitum. What has happened before will happen again, barring some completely unforeseen deus ex machina sweeping in to smash the cycle (like Commander Shepard, for example).
It’s not hard to see why this is the case. As human beings, we seek out patterns. It’s in our nature. Fiction of this type plays to the idea that humanity (or people of a different species, anyway) will fall into the same traps of history as they always have. And this has been true for a remarkable amount of events throughout the great and tragic existence of life on this planet.
Which is why it does not particularly shock me to see such a blatant misunderstanding of Zionism in the 21st century as we see right now. The misrepresentation of Zionism as some sort of “imperialist”, “colonialist”, “apartheid”, “ethnic cleansing” campaign is pulled straight from mid-20th century Soviet antisemitic propaganda and informed from a much earlier Russian fabrication of a “Jewish conspiracy” called the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’, published first in the early 1900s after decades of pogroms had already swept across Eastern Europe and forced many Jews to seek refuge elsewhere. The reason why the Soviets turned on their once-allies in the Jewish nation likely stems from the fact that Israel did not ‘toe the party line’ and become a full-fledged second world country like the Soviets hoped would happen with the communal communities of the kibbutzim. Thus, they invented the idea that “Zionism is racism” and relentlessly pushed it among communist bloc countries and in the wider world wherever they could spread their influence.
Their “anti-Zionist” propaganda is, of course, a total fiction. Anyone that has thought about it for a single second understands the ridiculousness of the idea that “Jewish supremacy” is a threat to the world today. History informs us that antisemites always try to convince us that Jews pose a threat to “our way of life” and we must “oppose them” or risk losing everything. It’s a nonsensical farce from the get-go, and made even more foolish when compared to what Zionism actually means and represents.
At its core, Zionism is a movement for Jewish survival. Theodor Herzl lived in the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the mid-to-late 1800s and witnessed the rise of nationalistic sentiments across Europe. He knew that this would eventually lead to catastrophe yet again for the Jews. He knew this because the Jewish people like the Roma could exist in a multi-ethnic empire without too much trouble from any single ethnicity or identity pushing against them; only when the rulers themselves decided against them would there be life-threatening danger. But when a nation state is formed with the explicit focus of national identity, the Jewish people are in trouble indeed. For what kind of room would there be for non-Germans in Germany, non-Poles in Poland and so on?
Herzl never explicitly predicted the rise of the Nazis, but he came pretty close. Thus, during the late 1800s he and others formed the movement of Zionism. Zionism was established to create again a national home for the Jews, after being stateless for almost two millennia. Their ancient homeland of Eretz Israel eventually became the focus (then Ottoman-controlled provinces of the Levant) and they began purchasing land even as they were driven out of their homes in Russia, Ukraine, Yemen, and elsewhere. The Ottomans were mistrustful of the Jews fleeing from Eastern Europe specifically because they were citizens of the Russian Empire, their longtime rivals across the Black Sea. They eventually placed restrictions on their migration, which stemmed the flow from the ‘First Aliyah’.
World War One saw the collapse of the Ottomans after centuries of existence and their empire taken over by the ‘Triple Entente’. Britain gained the territory of ‘British Mandate Palestine’ along with the rest of Ottoman Middle East, and in deciding what to do with the massive amount of land and how to divy up all the territory promised to allow the creation of a sovereign Jewish nation in the Jews’ ancient homeland of Israel (a relatively tiny portion of the now-dead Ottoman Empire).
But the British never followed through with their promise to the Jews. Two decades later in 1939 Chamberlain would issue the ‘White Paper’ and renege on the promise of a Jewish state and also virtually close Jewish immigration into the Mandate. This action indirectly funneled the Jews of Europe into Hitler’s ghettos, concentration camps, and gas chambers. If Britain had allowed the indigenous peoples of Israel their nation when they promised it to them, the Holocaust as we know it could not have happened.
World War Two came and went (along with more pogroms against the Jews like the Farhud in Iraq), and the British decided they would not be sticking around anymore. They handed the Mandate off to the United Nations to divy up between the Jews and Arabs, which they did. The Jews accepted the partition plan, and the Arabs rejected it and launched a civil war in 1947, eventually joined by the full Arab League in 1948 when Israel officially declared independence and its re-emergence into the world after two millennia of slumber. However, despite all odds against them, the Jews won (partially aided by arms shipments from Soviet-aligned Czechoslovakia; interestingly, the United States had an arms embargo against Israel at that time). The fact that the Jews actually won caused a massive uproar and pogroms erupted across the Middle East, forcing almost every Jew in the region to abandon their homes and move to Israel. The Mizrahi Jewish population was not as decimated as the Ashkenazi of Europe were—precisely because they had somewhere to go this time to escape the violence of hatred towards their very existence.
And this is the core of Zionism. This is what so many do not understand. Zionism at its heart is about ensuring the safety of all Jews across the planet. Hatred of the Jewish people is the oldest hatred known to humanity. Jews need a ‘safety valve’—they need somewhere to go in case the cycle of history repeats yet again. And it has repeated. We see it repeating in front of our very eyes today. The difference this time though is that Israel exists. The Jewish nation exists again. And it is not going anywhere.
Zionism does not exist as some sort of “colonialist enterprise”; it is the exact opposite of such. It is an indigenous reclamation of a nation thought lost to history. The same people on the same land and speaking the same language as three thousand years ago. Where else in the world do we see this today? It is a historic miracle on par with Babylon springing back to life and speaking ancient Akkadian.
Put simply, Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people have the right to self-determination in their ancient homeland of Eretz Israel. If you support this very basic notion, then you are a Zionist. And we see that the fruits of the Jewish nation are plentiful. The only democracy in the Middle East. Equal rights granted to all citizens. Freedom of speech, expression, religion unparalleled in the region. The ‘Startup Nation’ has contributed much to the world, and will continue to do so. The world will simply have to accept them for who they are.
🇮🇱 עם ישראל חי
—July 8th, 2024
The "Best of All Possible Worlds"
…is an interesting thought experiment. Formulated by Leibniz, the original line of reasoning follows an appeal to the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-benevolent God and the reconciliation of such an idea with the ‘Problem of Evil’ (Hume puts the problem as such: Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?). If this reality is in actuality the “best” possible somehow, then God can actually be all three positive traits at the same time without breaking the rules of reasoning.
However, it is very hard for those of us of basic morality to accept the premise that children dying of cancer is “necessary” in the “best possible world”. Why does there seem to be so much unnecessary suffering around us? Why October 7th? Why the Holocaust? Or the Holodomor? Or the Cambodian Killing Fields? Or the Black Plague? Or Tuberculosis?
I would never for a second claim any of the above to be “necessary” in order to shuffle us into some sort of “divine plan”. Leibniz had a stronger stomach than I for atrocity, suffering, and human barbarity. And actually this point of view was lampooned quite on the nose by Voltaire in Candide, a novel well worth the read. Any and all sorts of tragedy can be “justified” by Master Pangloss because “all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds”.
But I bring up Leibniz’s argument for a different reason than ridicule. Because though I do not in any way subscribe to the idea that “the ends justify the means” (and I think consequentialism and especially utilitarianism to be among the weakest of all moral philosophies), there remains the undeniable truth that unjust and undeserved suffering can yet sometimes be turned into a blossom of something more, something better, something beautiful even.
I think of the unity of the Israeli people in the face of their continual and utterly undeserved suffering. The courage and the ‘chutzpah’ of their youth as they fight a war they did not want and did not start; but you better believe that they will finish it. The art, the music that represents the pain of October 7th in a form that is tragically beautiful. And the people brought together across the world in support of the Jewish nation and people in their time of need.
Often, though, pain can sometimes be too much to find solace. And that is no fault of the sufferers. Often suffering and death seem to happen for no reason and bring only more of their own into being. It is a rare occasion that someone is able to see light from within the darkness and transform it into something resembling a ray of hope. But when it does happen, the good shines out the brighter for having gone through such pain and tragedy to do so.
Far be it from me to lecture those who bear the pain of October 7th to this very day. I could never and would never dare. Like many around the world who witnessed the horrific events of that day, I was not personally harmed nor were any of my friends, family, or loved ones. But it left scars on me all the same. The brutality was life-changing to bear witness to. And it may very well be that many survivors never fully recover what they lost.
This cannot be the best possible world. Because the best possible world would not have had an October 7th. But this is the world we live in. And we can make it the best possible world that did endure what we’ve endured and come out stronger in the end.
I beg of you, if you can, do not lose hope in a better tomorrow. The future is bright and full of love. We must endure the darkest to get there, but when we arrive: we shall know a world unmatched in compassion and care for our neighbors. Hatred will never win. Love—love conquers all.
🇮🇱 עם ישראל חי
—July 15th, 2024
The 'Two State Delusion': Why Can't the World Get a Grip?
I have written several times before about the absurdity of UN resolutions demanding unilateral statehood recognition for the territory of ‘Palestine’. Not once in history has the former Arab partition or ‘Palestine’ as it is now known as wanted “independence” on the terms the rest of the world wants for it. Many times it has been offered, and many times it has been rejected. Because to accept statehood within the boundaries of the territory of ‘Palestine’ is to reject the claim they lay to the entirety of the Jewish nation.
Let us review. The state of Jordan, given to the Hashemite family to rule over and which achieved full independence from Britain in 1946, currently occupies the vast majority of the former British Mandate Palestine. Why are there no chants to “free Palestine” from the Hashemites? They’re not even a democracy.
The simple and the obvious answer is because the Hashemites aren’t Jewish. It has always, always been about Jew hatred. The only democracy in the Middle East is somehow always the bad guy, and also happens to be the only Jewish nation in the world. Funny how that works. The unspoken second half to the "free Palestine" chant is "free Palestine—from the Jews". And always has been.
The mythical “two state solution” was thus already achieved for most of the territory of the former Mandate on May 14th, 1948, when Israel declared formal independence and joined the new nation of Jordan in official statehood. The Jewish section of the partition had already been under attack from the Arab section bordering it in a civil war which began following the UN’s approval of a partition plan for the remainder of the Mandate after Jordan’s independence. Following the independence of the Jewish nation, the full Arab League (including Jordan) declared official war with the goal of total annihilation of the Jews.
They could not bear the idea that the Jews—the subjugated dhimmis of the Arab world—could actually become a nation again after thousands of years of conquest and colonization. It is their failure to accept that the Jews have the right to self-determination in their ancient homeland of Eretz Israel that has led to every war against Israel since then—and every humiliating loss they have had to endure. The Jews won against all odds in 1949 and the remainder of British Mandate Palestine was taken over by Egypt in Gaza and Jordan in the West Bank, with Israel gaining only part of the Arab partition which had waged bloody civil war against them for years. But no one talks about how Egypt and Jordan were also occupiers of the Arab partition, for nearly two decades. How many UN resolutions were issued against them for “illegal occupation”?
This is the origin by the way of the ‘Nakba’, or the ‘catastrophe’ in Arabic. The word refers to the fact that the Arabs lost even with all their combined might and were unable to destroy the Jewish nation. One of the consequences of the loss of this war of aggression they started was the displacement of the belligerents—but that was a secondary effect of the Nakba. The word in its original formulation refers to the failure to genocide the Jews in Israel and remove the only Jewish nation on Earth. Don't let ignoramuses try to whitewash history by saying it's about "ethnic cleansing" committed by the Jews and who conveniently forget that it was the Arabs who started the war and told their civilian populations to evacuate only temporarily, because surely the Jews wouldn't last very long in an all-out war. Right?
Following the loss of the Arab League in 1949, this should’ve been the end of the discussion. The Jewish nation was established and the world should have got on with it. But they couldn’t. The idea that the “rebellious Jews” had a nation again drove despicable despots like Yasser Arafat from Egypt to foment the winds of war with “pan-Arab” dreams of unity against the Jewish state. He formed the PLO, or the ‘Palestinian Liberation Organization’ (culturally appropriating the term ‘Palestinian’ from the original Palestinians, i.e. the Jews) with the explicit goal to perpetuate the violence and conflict in the Middle East until the destruction of Israel, i.e. never. Organizations like UNRWA were set up with similar goals in mind. And the Palestinian leadership with the support of the people have waged terrorism and war ever since. Intifada after intifada, suicide bombing after suicide bombing. October 7th. As Einat Wilf so succinctly put it, the Palestinians are not an incapable people—they are a people with terrible priorities.
See, people don’t realize that the PLO was established in 1964. The West Bank was still under Jordanian control until the ‘Six Day War’ of 1967. If the PLO truly wanted “liberation” for “Palestine”, then they would’ve attacked the Jordanians in the West Bank and the rest of Jordan and also the Egyptians in Gaza. But they only ever demanded the destruction of Israel. Why?
Because it’s about destruction, not statehood. In 1964, the PLO and its supporters would have gladly accepted dictatorial rule by Jordan or Egypt over the entire territory of the Mandate if it had meant the destruction of Israel. Priorities. The world wants an end to the suffering, violence, and conflict. But that will only come when the Palestinians accept the existence of the Jewish nation and decide to build something for themselves, rather than vengefully attacking the Jews with every ounce of their resources.
Because, as should be unquestioningly apparent, the Jewish nation is here to stay. Its destruction has not come even after 80 years of war and terrorism against it. The constant targeting and defamation of the Jewish nation is one of the great tragedies of our modern world. History will not look on us kindly for it. The Jews are not at fault for simply existing. Get used to their presence—they are here to stay. And there will finally be peace over Jerusalem.
🇮🇱 עם ישראל חי
—July 22nd, 2024
Bibi's Visit: Solidarity in a Time of Betrayal
“A friend in need…”
When Israel called for support in the wake of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, I and all decent humans across the globe showed up for the people of the Jewish nation. We didn’t check to see if our favoured political opinions had majority support among the electorate of the only democracy in the Middle East. Some things transcend politics. Atrocity transcends politics.
October 7th transcended the political when Hamas terrorists massacred a music festival in cold blood. When they chucked grenades and shot into safe rooms, into families and young adults and parents and children. When bodies were found naked or pantsless in indescribably horrific conditions of brutality. When “screams, before silence”.
When Bibi Netanyahu came to America, he wasn’t coming as some “religious right-winger” in our terminally America-centric vocabulary. He came as the democratically-elected representative of the Israeli people, who have suffered and bled and are yet bleeding more. You may hate his politics. You may hate him. But you cannot—you must not—allow your biases to cloud your moral compass. Bibi as the leader of their democracy must be respected as such. To channel hatred through Bibi at Israel and/or the Jewish people is simply wrong.
What do you think, O Great Sages of the “New Progressives”, happened to your political equivalents in Israel? I’ll just cut to the point: the people that ascribed most to your brand of politics and the people that were most sympathetic to the Palestinians were the very ones who were massacred on October 7th. Not only is your “solidarity” a joke to begin with, you’re actively cheering on the people who massacred people like you and would gladly murder you under the right (wrong?) circumstances. But you can’t see around your own biases enough to even understand what the situation is in reality.
You can’t grasp that you’re acting as useful idiots for the quasi-fascistic and religiously fundamentalistic government of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Oh, and (gender) apartheid too. Standing with “Palestine” as some ignorant first world adult child, you may as well slap a Khamenei sticker on your Macbook. And as you may have worked out at least this far, all of the things that the government of Iran stands for and enforces are things you are diametrically opposed to. So why are you supporting them? Is it really just for the chic? Are keffiyehs so totally in right now?
Bibi’s visit to the United States (which is nominally what this essay is about) brought out hate the likes of which America hasn’t seen in a long time. The usual suspects amassed in DC and were so morally reprehensible that Vice President Kamala Harris (who did not attend Bibi’s speech to Congress despite being President of the Senate) issued what was admittedly a very forceful and direct renunciation of such despicable individuals that invoked centuries-old stereotypes and antisemitic tropes while paying lip service to the Palestinians. It’s really all the same with them, for months and months (and years and years)—Jew haters are gonna hate Jews. Rhetoric from white supremacists and the far-right has leaked in to so-called “progressive” circles and is now running roughshod. Protip for anyone that ever uses the term ‘Zionist’ as a slur: I’d start saving for your future unemployment now. “Anti-Zionism” = antisemitism. That is the undeniable truth. And if you can’t see that now, then it’s already too late for you.
Bibi hit all the right notes speaking to Congress and the American people. Thank you especially to freed hostage Noa Argamani for coming to see us and share your story, and to the heroes of the IDF and Israel. He touched on a good number of things I have been writing about: protestors, Iran, academia (he lit academia up and it was absolutely deserved). And antisemitism and its pernicious nature and manifestations in our time. Overall, he knocked it out of Nationals Park.
I’m not writing this as an endorsement of Bibi—I know that public sentiment is complicated, to say the least. There are many accountings to be had for a great number of things. I trust that the Israeli people can handle such at the appropriate time to do so. We appreciate his visiting us as the chosen representative of the Israeli people, and we apologize for our hateful collection of sad, angry clowns that can’t for a single second stop and ask themselves what they’re doing.
Many can’t see past the political to understand what’s really happening. They can’t grasp that people in Israel can and do disagree vehemently about how best to run their democracy, and that Israelis have no other land—they want what’s best for Israel and will fight for it, because they must. Because Israelis understand. No matter their political opinions, Israelis know that Israel must continue to exist for themselves and their family and for the safety and survival of the Jewish people.
The tragic news this past weekend was that Hezbollah attacked a Druze town in the Golan Heights and killed twelve kids playing soccer in Majdal Shams. Israel is attacked again and again and again. What other country in the entire world is expected to have its children be slaughtered repeatedly and then do nothing in response or mitigation of the chances that it happens again?
Far too many in America and elsewhere get swept up in “protests” for “Palestine”, without realizing that many at those protests are directly calling for the total destruction of the Jewish nation and by extension the Jewish people living in it (at a bare minimum 7.2 million Jews). And once they do realize what they’re cheering for, they far too often double down (justifying it to themselves however they have to) and become absorbed in “anti-Israeli” rhetoric and propaganda pulled directly out of history. It is not a healthy thing; not by any stretch of the imagination. The last time we had a Nazi problem this bad, tens of millions of people died. And this time around we have nukes. “I know not with what weapons world war three will be fought…”—probably nukes though, right?
And it’s in troubling times that it’s good to know who your real allies are. It’s as if October 7th shot up a flare, and for the first time everyone could actually see where everyone else was. Friends, enemies, everything was clear—even the people stabbing you in the back. A shocking number of people (some I used to respect) are willing to act like goose-stepping fascists if given the tiniest bit of self-righteousness and a “cause”. Pride goeth.
I could fill a book trying to diagnose the pathology of today’s antisemites. It actually amazes me how quick a certain kind of conspiracy theory activates in someone susceptible to that particular type. Once it takes hold, it quickly strangles any potential for critical thinking around the most critical subject for it. If only there were a way to shake them awake and force them to confront the possibility that they’re wrong about things; not just wrong, but catastrophically wrong.
Such a tool would be useful for monitoring my own sanity. Doubt is rational. I hope I never become someone who does not on occasion have doubts. Be extraordinarily cautious when encountering a “true believer”, as they are forces unto their beliefs—for better or for worse.
What I do know is that we are stronger together. From a proud American to my Israeli brethren:
God Bless America, and Am Yisrael Chai 🇮🇱 🇺🇸
—July 29th, 2024