Jews must do better in the propaganda war.
We need to get tougher in the fight against antisemitism and stop bringing policy papers to a street fight. Knuckle-dusters are what we need, and a large dose of contempt.
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This is a guest essay written by Nachum Kaplan of the newsletter, “Moral Clarity.”
There are so many Jewish organizations around the world doing amazing work. I quote their data frequently and even consulted for one recently.
However, our enemies’ approach has changed, so we must change, too. We are failing because we are too decent.
Antisemites — whether they be jihadists, Far-Left lunatics, or old-fashioned Far-Right Nazis — have taken to the public sphere and social media to portray Zionism as something terrible, Israel as illegitimate, and cast Jews in their traditional roles and conniving crooks, villains, and child murders.
Diaspora Jews’ response has been to reply with cries of racism, history lessons, complaints about lies and false equivalence, explanations of international law, and other wonky things that Jews love. These still have a place, and worked in decades passed, but they are ill-suited to today’s street propaganda battles and online flame wars.
We are bringing history, law, and morality to a street fight with Jihadist sociopaths. We need to bring out the baseball bats and slings with which to launch stale rock-hard bagels at them.
My approach to jihadist Nazi sickos is to kick them into next week, invent a time machine, travel into next week and wait for them to arrive, at which point I kick them into the next week again. If I cannot get the time machine working, knuckle-dusters will not let us down.
I jest about any unnecessary violence, but Diaspora Jews need a strategy to deal with these hoodlums and my approach is not to take them seriously at all. In no other sphere of life — except maybe politics — do we treat crazy people as if they have something serious to say. We must show everyone how these antisemites, of all stripes, are raving mad.
I write long essays, but I try to use unacademic prose so that I can land some blows on these cretinous cretins. When it comes to antisemites, we must not argue, but brawl.
While Israel has achieved stunning military success against Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Syria in general, and Iran itself, Jews have not done so well in the propaganda war in the West.
Be under no delusions. This global rise in antisemitism will not end when this round of fighting stops in the Middle East ends. Every day, Jews globally wake up knowing that people are rallying all over the world against Jews living in their homeland. It has been normalized, thanks to Western leaders lacking the courage or moral clarity to act.
So, here is my approach to dealing with antisemites:
Be contemptuous.
Throughout history, whenever people have said they want to kill Jews, they meant it. They mean it this time, too. We must take the threat seriously.
At the same time, we must recognize that today’s bizarre alliance of jihadists and “Woke” halfwits are unhinged. From their dish-rag kaffiyehs to their Queers-for-Palestine madness, they are right out of a Victorian-era freakshow.
So, while we must take the threat seriously, we must show unalloyed contempt for the antisemites themselves. We must look down on them, humiliate them, and ridicule them, so nobody can take them, or their grotesque lies, seriously.
Treating them as worthy of debate and respect gives them an undeserved credibility and legitimacy. Show zero respect to Islamic-crypto Nazis. I loathe them, and do not want them in my society.
Lecture them.
Reason does not work against unreasonable people; that is what makes them unreasonable. It is better to harangue, berate, and lecture them until they want, more than anything in the world, to be somewhere else.
Harangue them with the truth they hate the most, that Israel is Jewish land. Repeat it no matter what they say. This makes clear it is not a negotiation and that you are not listening to them. It is essential to model for others what not listening to them looks like.
I was going to write that this drives them nuts, but most are already a heady mix of over-salted almonds, pistachios, and walnuts.
Call for tough punishment.
Demand mounted police and tear gas be used to clear the demonstrators, insist they be imprisoned and an example made of them, those opposed to their own countries should be treated as traitors, and non-citizens should be deported. No sane society should tolerate foreign extremists.
This shifts the focus from what is happening in the Middle East to what is happening in the West. Many ordinary people keep their heads down when it comes to Middle East politics, but they do not like Jihadist headcases running around. Our job is to point out who and what they are.
If you are feeling less charitable, you can just declare loudly that these protestors should be put on a one-way flight to Gaza.
Call things by their names.
None of these riff-raff are “pro-Palestinian” protestors, for never has there been a more meaningless phrase, except perhaps for the term “Palestinian” itself.
It is hard to find a less worthy collection of people in one place than at an anti-Israel rally. The protests look like gatherings of people two standard deviations to the left on a normal distribution of idiots and lunatics.
They are antisemites, Jew-haters, jihadists, Islamists, zealots, Nazis, pro-genocide, terror supporters, “Woke,” Far-Left, and whatever else. This is what we must call them.
Labelling them as the Islamist extremists they are makes clear that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not purely about land — as the ill-informed believe — but a battle between Islamist extremists of the ISIS-cut-your-head-off-variety, and civilization.
To frame it any other way, especially in nationalist terms, is an ahistorical endorsement of Palestinian lies.
Evil is as evil does.
Evil exists, and one does not need to be religious to believe in it. Hamas’ beliefs and actions against Israelis on October 7th last year, and their use of their own people as human shields in the 15 months of war that has followed so far, are indisputably evil.
Hamas’ actions are so vile and heinous that anyone who supports them — no matter what reason they tell themself in their delusions — is wicked and despicable.
Most annoying are the blockheads who say things such as: “I don’t support Hamas, but…” No matter what they say, tell them, “You are the personification of evil” and repeat it, like a broken toy, to whatever they say.
Marketing gurus reckon that a consumer needs to hear a message seven times before they decide to purchase a product. Given the anti-Israeli brigade are dim bulbs, seven is probably only the starting number.
Speak truth to nonsense.
Quasi-educated types, who give university students and faculties a bad name, sometimes declare that the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, and the International Criminal Court all say that Israel is illegally occupying Palestinian land, committing war crimes, and violations of international laws.
They say this with a certain smugness, as though they believe they have delivered some knockdown argument.
Start with a yawn, because these UN-type bodies are organs of politics, not justice, so should not be taken seriously. I have written thousands of words detailing what it is wrong with these corrupt institutions, but that is the wrong approach in person, or on social media.
It is better to say, “The UN is utter garbage. I do not care what it says.” Repeat as necessary. This destroys the fiction that these organizations’ rulings mean anything. There is no need to explain why the UN is garbage. If you are explaining, you are losing. Everyone can smell the putridness.
Cause offense.
I confess that I have done the Standard Psychology Test and come up as quite disagreeable. This does not always serve me well, but it is good for dealing with antisemites, Jihadists, and the intellectually hibernating “Woke.”
Call stupid people stupid, not ignorant. Everyone knows the difference. It is why we have different words for them. Do lot not let them police your thoughts and speech.
If they are deranged and mentally ill, say so. People need to know they are in a war with maniacs, so we must amplify this fact. Never fear speaking facts.
The idea that antisemites should not be offended is absurd.
They should be put in rocket ships and launched out of the solar system. Avoid the temptation to hurl them into sun; I have done the math and it takes less energy to hurl them out of the solar system.
Relish accusations of ‘Islamophobia.’
Islamophobia, like the nation of “Palestine,” does not exist. No one has an irrational fear of Islam. Plenty of people have a rational fear of radical Islam of the kind that wants to overthrow governments and build Caliphates and bring us the horrors of ISIS and Afghanistan.
Muslim bigotry is wrong, but being critical of Islamism, or even Islam, is not. Islamophobia accusations are a ploy to shield Islam from criticism. Have none of it.
Think of being called Islamophobic as a gift. It is an invitation to reply: “I have a rational fear of political Islam because…” — and then go and on and on about the horrific things they do.
Talk about jihadism.
Refer to Palestinians as jihadists whenever possible. Hamas and the Palestinian Authority and those who support them are exactly that. They are not nationalists.
Diabolical organizations such as the UN have helped raise a generation of Palestinians who are Islamists who aspire to achieve martyrdom by killing Jews.
Never debate whether Islamist extremists are only a fringe group or substantial in numbers. Who cares? Idiots do not do nuance; they take up space.
Judea and Samaria
The correct name for the so-called West Bank is Judea and Samaria. Use it.
The Jordan River is West only of Amman. It is odd that the world should adopt a Jordanian view of geography, when its proper name — Judea and Samaria — has served it well for three millennia.
For sport, I sometimes ask journalists why they have a Jordanian view of geography. It is amusing to watch the confusion wash over their face and their eyes roll up into their head like a possessed child in a horror film. Most have never even thought about the question even though they write about the region frequently.
Talk to politicians.
If you live in a democracy, which is fewer English speakers by the day given the speed at which the Anglophone world is going down the gurgler, visit your Congress representatives or Member of Parliament.
Tell them you are an undecided voter and will be voting solely on which party you feel will deal with antisemitism the most effectively and maintain the best relationship with Israel. Add that everyone in your synagogue is doing the same.
Obviously, Jews do not have the voting power of Muslims in most places, but this at least makes it clear that it is an electoral issue, not just a news story, or something they can ignore.
Write to news media.
A reader emailed me from Sydney to tell me he had written more than 30 letters to his city’s main newspaper complaining about its anti-Israel bias. Not one letter got published.
While frustrating, his letter writing provided a perfect example, complete with data, of the media bias we are up against.
Do not criticise Israel.
Israel is the world’s most criticized country. It does not need more, and certainly not from its own side.
Some liberal Jews argue that balanced criticism is more effective because it makes Jews look less extreme and like the reasonable party. This is wrong. It is the classic mistake of trying to reason with unreasonable people.
Diaspora Jews’ job right now is to support the State and Nation of Israel, not its government. It is a clear distinction. Many countries even have monarchs to represent the state, as opposed to the government, and make this distinction clear.
One can have issues with Israeli government policy, but Israel is a democracy and its Israelis’ responsibility to sort that out.
Our imperative aim must be to make the Palestinian “brand” toxic, as it would be if we lived in a morally sane world and had leaders with vertebrates.
The “pro-Palestinian” mob must be something at which people recoil, so we must not give them a microgram of credibility. Middle Eastern politics is complex, but our task is simple: We must show the world who and what these Islamists are, and we must show who we are, too.
We are brawlers who will never give even an inch to these vile antisemites.
What kind of upside down world are we in when there must be a debate about supporting the Jews, who gave the world monotheism and Western Civilization, and jihadists, who gave the world 9/11 and 10/7, and who have put to the sword every populace with whom they’ve ever come in contact? Divest from the corrupt US academy, tell the UN to fuck off, and don’t patronize businesses who engage in blood libel.
Hamas are the Nazis of this century and anyone who stands with Hamas sides with evil