Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Most of this caring is performative. It’s cheap outrage, a way to feel righteous and stroke the ego without paying a price. Meanwhile, people in Israel and Gaza suffer.
For me, the really frightening transaction in the heads of the leadership in Europe is the way that ‘Jews‘ have become a way of sublimating real concern about Racial Demographics at home. There are now 46 Million Muslims in Europe. Loss of control of the Borders with the real and resulting fear of Islamist terrorism from this base is now being taken out on Israel and Jewish People. We are being scapegoated once again.
Utterly bizarre and completely wrong interpretation. I live in the UK and I can tell you that there is a strong overlap between people who don’t like immigration to Britain and people who support Israel. Completely the opposite of what you’re saying.
And Germany 1933 could not bring itself to be decent to half a million German culture identifying Jews. who care little for Jewishness as today in USA/Canada.
It’s time we organized protests about Sudan to take place when and where the anti-Israel protests occur:
“As the civil war enters its third year, Sudan’s two warring factions remain locked in a deadly power struggle. Death toll estimates vary widely, with the former U.S. envoy for Sudan suggesting as many as one hundred and fifty thousand people have been killed since the conflict began on April 15, 2023. More than fourteen million have been displaced, giving rise to the worst displacement crisis in the world. Nearly three million displaced Sudanese have fled to unstable areas in Chad, Ethiopia, and South Sudan, overrunning refugee camps. The UN continues to plead for more support as more than thirty million need humanitarian assistance, and deteriorating food security risks are triggering the “world’s largest hunger crisis.” “
I actually think this was true 6 months ago. But today it has morphed, and has become a way to actively be anti-Jewish. We’ve crossed over into a world where people are unafraid to say Hitler had to do it to protect the world from Jews
Perfidious pernicious performative it is Joshua in Australia . Oct 9 2023 Sydney opera house forecourt a pro Hamas protest some saying gas the Jews. Before Israel had done anything !! Protesters who need to smash things or set them alight. In a small village in NSW I’m now getting pro Hamas flyers in my mail box with author unidentified . This is a massive orchestrated campaign of hate and the vain and vacuous are falling for it. But remember Niemuller “first they came “
I agree. It’s antisemitism plain and simple. There are visible Chinese communities all over the world too, but China’s ostensible “settler colonialism” in, say, Tibet or among the Uyghurs and others in China’s northwest doesn’t reflect back on them at all. And, as a Greek, I can state unequivocally that plenty of Greek publications were justifying the 10/7attacks on 10/8, long before Israel had done anything even remotely aggressive. I am also an American academic and can attest that at least two colleagues of mine (straight unhyphenated Americans, one of them an expert on the Middle East who even lived there a number of years) not only immediately (10/8) expressed sympathy for Hamas but openly doubted the fact that Hamas committed any atrocities at all!
To debunk Nazism in a single line: Hitler was no friend of white people. He and the Nazis killed 50 million White people in World War Two for ‘Lebensraum in The East for The Ethnic Germans’. In his own words.
Joshua, when it comes to Israel and the Jews it is just not possible for most people to be fair and balanced, or engage in calm, reasoned discourse. Myself included, even though I try.
Israel and the Jews push too many hot buttons for too many people – religious, historical, cultural, psychological, and political – for Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. Friends and foes of Israel, living in alternate realities, committed with passionate intensity to uncompromising positions, engage in take-no-prisoners ideological jousts that inevitably devolve into incoherent paroxysms of righteous anger and rage. And yes, most of the anger and rage against Israel, these days largely on the Woke Intersectional “globalize the intifada” Mamdani/AOC Left, but also on the Paleoconservative Israelophobic Buchanan/Carlson Right, is driven by antisemitism. Walter Russell Mead called this new incarnation of Jew-hatred the “Israel Outrage Industry.”
Mead once wrote, with more than a touch of irony: “A suspicious person might be led to believe that this is yet another sign that Jew-hatred, rather than compassion for Palestinian suffering, motivates a lot of the Israel Outrage Industry. Thankfully, not that many people are suspicious. We live in a thoughtful, beautiful world, where the motives of those who hate Israel are always clean and pure.”
Jew-hatred seems to be encoded in the cultural DNA of the Christian and Post-Christian West, and in Islam: the Jews rejected Christ and the Jews rejected Muhammad. With the decline of Christianity in the post-Enlightenment West, religious Judeophobia was transformed into race-based antisemitism which culminated in Nazism and the Holocaust.
That is why so many people in the world are obsessed with a conflict over a tiny sliver of land that has no direct impact on their lives. Yuval Noah Harari writes that Judaism played a minor role in history, one that certainly does not justify antisemitic obsessions about Jews secretly controlling the world. But proclaiming yourself the enemy of those who rejected Christ and Muhammad, and are “settler-colonialist” oppressors to boot, is a great way to virtue signal.
The late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish once told an Israeli journalist that the only reason the world pays any attention to the Palestinians is because the Jews are their enemy. There is simply too much historical and emotional baggage for all involved.
Agree wholeheartedly with this article. The history of this region is ignored by the critics and the "virtue signalers" live in a fantasy world despite any reality whatever. I've always noticed that none of the other Middle Eastern countries are under daily threat as is Israel since 1948. Finally, I've noticed that the Holocaust is considered a lie by too many. There is a photo taken at Bergen Belsen showing a British NCO after WWII driving a small bulldozer pushing piles of dead bodies into an open mass grave and the doubters say it was a setup. Wish we could get that NCO to tell these freaks what he was doing in that picture.
While I agree with much of the article, the increase in visible anti-semitism in much of the West is a “moral biomarker” heralding dark times ahead and signifying decline. These performative activities have a tendency to morph into more dangerous actions and the implications are not restricted to our small tribe.
Israel’s battle against Hamas is a rejection of a post-modern view of the world, which has many problems, but the worst part of Post Modern Social Justice, is that it ultimately cannot discern good from evil. The Islamist project is not only horrific for Jews, but also for Muslims and many others, whether we’re talking about Isis, or the Taliban, or the Muslim Brotherhood (of which Hamas is a part). If you’re cheering for Hamas, you’re cheering for an organization which, back in WWII, were not just Nazi sympathizers, but their allies — and had plans to work together to eliminate the “Jewish Problem” in the Middle East. Hamas is about extermination of Jews, as if we were vermin. It certainly actually concerns Jews.
If you be want to see what genocide looks like go on a tour of Auschwitz or Nova Hamas is clearly not starting in any way shape or manner snd Israel would be totally justified in enduring that food deliveries go to anyone not supporting Hamas or even refusing to deliver food under the rules of warfare
Great essay! I sense mental illness in the young college women parading around in keffiyehs and checkered scarves (tied to look fashionably chic, of course). Do they not understand what Hamas truly is? That their outfits would get them immediately beaten or killed? It’s like a total rejection of reality.
“When confronting the problem of antisemitism, it is best to always remember that antisemitism isn’t about Jews; it is about antisemites. Antisemitism is a product of antisemites and Jews are little more than an empty vessel onto which the perpetrator projects whatever issues they are confronting or are attempting to blame on someone else.
Of course, that is small comfort to the Jew with the knife in his neck.”
Excellent essay, with appreciation for: “This war is not a moral awakening for the masses; it’s a fashion statement.”
For me, the really frightening transaction in the heads of the leadership in Europe is the way that ‘Jews‘ have become a way of sublimating real concern about Racial Demographics at home. There are now 46 Million Muslims in Europe. Loss of control of the Borders with the real and resulting fear of Islamist terrorism from this base is now being taken out on Israel and Jewish People. We are being scapegoated once again.
Utterly bizarre and completely wrong interpretation. I live in the UK and I can tell you that there is a strong overlap between people who don’t like immigration to Britain and people who support Israel. Completely the opposite of what you’re saying.
Yes, I do see what you are saying. There is broad opinion on both sides of the argument. Best wishes.
And Germany 1933 could not bring itself to be decent to half a million German culture identifying Jews. who care little for Jewishness as today in USA/Canada.
It’s time we organized protests about Sudan to take place when and where the anti-Israel protests occur:
“As the civil war enters its third year, Sudan’s two warring factions remain locked in a deadly power struggle. Death toll estimates vary widely, with the former U.S. envoy for Sudan suggesting as many as one hundred and fifty thousand people have been killed since the conflict began on April 15, 2023. More than fourteen million have been displaced, giving rise to the worst displacement crisis in the world. Nearly three million displaced Sudanese have fled to unstable areas in Chad, Ethiopia, and South Sudan, overrunning refugee camps. The UN continues to plead for more support as more than thirty million need humanitarian assistance, and deteriorating food security risks are triggering the “world’s largest hunger crisis.” “
https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/power-struggle-sudan
It is virtue signalling and a luxury belief
When one has a shallow intellect, shallow morals, and a shallow life, what can one expect except a shallow commitment to the truth.
ouch
I actually think this was true 6 months ago. But today it has morphed, and has become a way to actively be anti-Jewish. We’ve crossed over into a world where people are unafraid to say Hitler had to do it to protect the world from Jews
This is true for some people (antisemites). Not all people who "care" about this war are antisemitic. There's a lot more nuance than that.
Perfidious pernicious performative it is Joshua in Australia . Oct 9 2023 Sydney opera house forecourt a pro Hamas protest some saying gas the Jews. Before Israel had done anything !! Protesters who need to smash things or set them alight. In a small village in NSW I’m now getting pro Hamas flyers in my mail box with author unidentified . This is a massive orchestrated campaign of hate and the vain and vacuous are falling for it. But remember Niemuller “first they came “
These flyers might have come from the local Neo-Nazis who sense an opportunity to attack Jewish people even in small towns in Australia.
No doubt you’re right . We have many people who like nothing other than a great hate fest
Agreed. My point is that it is not *just* performative either. For many, being antisemitic is the goal.
I agree. It’s antisemitism plain and simple. There are visible Chinese communities all over the world too, but China’s ostensible “settler colonialism” in, say, Tibet or among the Uyghurs and others in China’s northwest doesn’t reflect back on them at all. And, as a Greek, I can state unequivocally that plenty of Greek publications were justifying the 10/7attacks on 10/8, long before Israel had done anything even remotely aggressive. I am also an American academic and can attest that at least two colleagues of mine (straight unhyphenated Americans, one of them an expert on the Middle East who even lived there a number of years) not only immediately (10/8) expressed sympathy for Hamas but openly doubted the fact that Hamas committed any atrocities at all!
To debunk Nazism in a single line: Hitler was no friend of white people. He and the Nazis killed 50 million White people in World War Two for ‘Lebensraum in The East for The Ethnic Germans’. In his own words.
Nailed it. And since October 7, 2023, I've yet to see a member of the "Palestine" club who is a well-adjusted member of society.
Joshua, when it comes to Israel and the Jews it is just not possible for most people to be fair and balanced, or engage in calm, reasoned discourse. Myself included, even though I try.
Israel and the Jews push too many hot buttons for too many people – religious, historical, cultural, psychological, and political – for Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. Friends and foes of Israel, living in alternate realities, committed with passionate intensity to uncompromising positions, engage in take-no-prisoners ideological jousts that inevitably devolve into incoherent paroxysms of righteous anger and rage. And yes, most of the anger and rage against Israel, these days largely on the Woke Intersectional “globalize the intifada” Mamdani/AOC Left, but also on the Paleoconservative Israelophobic Buchanan/Carlson Right, is driven by antisemitism. Walter Russell Mead called this new incarnation of Jew-hatred the “Israel Outrage Industry.”
Mead once wrote, with more than a touch of irony: “A suspicious person might be led to believe that this is yet another sign that Jew-hatred, rather than compassion for Palestinian suffering, motivates a lot of the Israel Outrage Industry. Thankfully, not that many people are suspicious. We live in a thoughtful, beautiful world, where the motives of those who hate Israel are always clean and pure.”
https://archive.ph/1bblV
Jew-hatred seems to be encoded in the cultural DNA of the Christian and Post-Christian West, and in Islam: the Jews rejected Christ and the Jews rejected Muhammad. With the decline of Christianity in the post-Enlightenment West, religious Judeophobia was transformed into race-based antisemitism which culminated in Nazism and the Holocaust.
That is why so many people in the world are obsessed with a conflict over a tiny sliver of land that has no direct impact on their lives. Yuval Noah Harari writes that Judaism played a minor role in history, one that certainly does not justify antisemitic obsessions about Jews secretly controlling the world. But proclaiming yourself the enemy of those who rejected Christ and Muhammad, and are “settler-colonialist” oppressors to boot, is a great way to virtue signal.
https://archive.ph/TeINS
The late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish once told an Israeli journalist that the only reason the world pays any attention to the Palestinians is because the Jews are their enemy. There is simply too much historical and emotional baggage for all involved.
https://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/11/mahmoud_darwish_poet_laureate_of_the
Agree wholeheartedly with this article. The history of this region is ignored by the critics and the "virtue signalers" live in a fantasy world despite any reality whatever. I've always noticed that none of the other Middle Eastern countries are under daily threat as is Israel since 1948. Finally, I've noticed that the Holocaust is considered a lie by too many. There is a photo taken at Bergen Belsen showing a British NCO after WWII driving a small bulldozer pushing piles of dead bodies into an open mass grave and the doubters say it was a setup. Wish we could get that NCO to tell these freaks what he was doing in that picture.
While I agree with much of the article, the increase in visible anti-semitism in much of the West is a “moral biomarker” heralding dark times ahead and signifying decline. These performative activities have a tendency to morph into more dangerous actions and the implications are not restricted to our small tribe.
Israel’s battle against Hamas is a rejection of a post-modern view of the world, which has many problems, but the worst part of Post Modern Social Justice, is that it ultimately cannot discern good from evil. The Islamist project is not only horrific for Jews, but also for Muslims and many others, whether we’re talking about Isis, or the Taliban, or the Muslim Brotherhood (of which Hamas is a part). If you’re cheering for Hamas, you’re cheering for an organization which, back in WWII, were not just Nazi sympathizers, but their allies — and had plans to work together to eliminate the “Jewish Problem” in the Middle East. Hamas is about extermination of Jews, as if we were vermin. It certainly actually concerns Jews.
If you be want to see what genocide looks like go on a tour of Auschwitz or Nova Hamas is clearly not starting in any way shape or manner snd Israel would be totally justified in enduring that food deliveries go to anyone not supporting Hamas or even refusing to deliver food under the rules of warfare
Great essay! I sense mental illness in the young college women parading around in keffiyehs and checkered scarves (tied to look fashionably chic, of course). Do they not understand what Hamas truly is? That their outfits would get them immediately beaten or killed? It’s like a total rejection of reality.
https://www.auschwitz.org/en/museum/news/to-reach-people-in-the-most-remote-corners-of-the-world-the-launch-of-the-online-tours-of-the-auschwitz-memorial-,1661.html This is what genocide looks like
Not everything is ''black & white''. I care b/c I love Israel & want to see her crush her enemies. [IE Hamas]
Pat Johnson, substack:
“When confronting the problem of antisemitism, it is best to always remember that antisemitism isn’t about Jews; it is about antisemites. Antisemitism is a product of antisemites and Jews are little more than an empty vessel onto which the perpetrator projects whatever issues they are confronting or are attempting to blame on someone else.
Of course, that is small comfort to the Jew with the knife in his neck.”