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This is a guest essay written by Pat Johnson of Pat’s Substack.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
Share this essay using the link: https://www.futureofjewish.com/p/sadism-jew-baiting-the-pro-palestinian-strategy
Roger Waters, the Pink Floyd guy who has become the mouthpiece for the most loathsome antisemitic disinformation, went on Piers Morgan’s TV show recently and was given a platform to verbally terrorize Jews and spread hatred.
The late psychiatrist Theodore Isaac Rubin posited that antisemitism is a mental disorder, in which Jews are a “symbol” onto which disordered minds project their troubles. If he was right, Waters’ mind is a psychiatry researcher’s wet dream.
Waters defended the mass murder, rape, beheadings, immolations and kidnappings of Israeli (and other) civilians as the “legal and moral right” of Palestinians. He claimed there is “no evidence” that Israeli women were raped on October 7th.
He promoted a conspiracy theory that Israel permitted the attacks that day to justify the war that followed. He refused to apologize for sharing a video in which Israelis are told to “go back to Eastern Europe or the United States or wherever you came from.”
He accused Israel of genocide (a common enough lie these days) and asserted that Jews would be welcome in a future Palestinian state — an assertion repeatedly and emphatically negated by the “moderate” Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, who has promised that an independent Palestine would be proudly Jew-free.
There is a lot of maniacal nonsense Waters has purveyed in his life, but why the particular and especially gruesome falsehoods that Palestinians did not rape women on October 7th? The evidence is sadly incontrovertible. Why choose that hill of lies to die on?
The determination of Israel-haters to deny rape is archetypal of a core strategy of the Palestinian movement in the Middle East and worldwide. It is not driven by convincing people of falsehoods. It is something else.
Waters knows Israel women were raped on October 7th. Everyone knows this. Why lie?
Sadism.
Above all else, the Palestinian movement is exemplified by sadism — the rubbing of salt in Jewish contemporary and historical wounds and taking pleasure in watching Jews suffer.
This is probably a parallel phenomenon to the concept of “punching up.” Most forms of racism “punch down” — an “in” group reinforces its dominance by oppressing the “out” group.
In ways that are obviously wrong and ridiculous, antisemitism positions Jews as an “in” group that their enemies aim to make an “out” group. Relying on contemptible and ignorant misinterpretations of the concept of Jewish “chosen-ness,” antisemites invert the forms that other racisms take.
Antisemites, rather than believing they are better than their enemy, believe Jews think they are better than the antisemites. This doesn’t make the bigots feel better about themselves the way most forms of racism uplift the perpetrator. It makes them feel worse. It provokes envy. It makes them want to do anything in their power to hurt the Jews.
“By any means necessary,” as they say.
Those “means” include denying the most grisly evidence. It means purveying what they know are lies if it has any hope of triggering agony for Jews. Even when it betrays everything else the perpetrator claims to stand for — e.g. “Believe all women!” — the need to stick it to the Jews trumps every other demand.
In the bigger scheme, this explains why “pro-Palestinian” progressives have aligned with the most regressive, misogynistic, homophobic, antidemocratic, violent forces on earth. It may undermine everything we claim to believe, but at least it causes the Jews distress.
Do I think this is the conscious basis of the anti-Israel movement? No. Psychological factors are at play here that even the perps do not understand. This is a mostly unconscious motivation — and it is probably the explanation that helps explain the unanswerable question of how progressives could possibly ally with the most unprogressive forces on the planet.
As I have written about before, the purveyors of the made-up concept of “anti-Palestinian racism” know there is no such thing. It’s a prank on the Jews.
The antisemite’s game is to poke and provoke, to ridicule and to spit on the good faith evidence of the Jews by throwing bad faith ridiculousness in their faces. Knowing the devotion Jewish tradition places on seeking truth and building evidence on facts, they revel in abusing and ridiculing evidence and truth.
In the contemporary race dialogue, power and privilege are determining factors in the presence or absence of discrimination. Antisemitism depicts Jews as the quintessence of power and privilege.
Jews, under this definition, cannot experience discrimination because (by antisemitic reasoning) they do not fit the criteria. Antisemitism, by (antisemitic) definition, cannot exist because Jews are powerful and privileged.
Another outcome of this unreasoning is that the enemies of the Jews are underdogs who can and must employ “any means necessary” — There’s that term again! — to bring the uppity Jews down a notch.
Sadism works great.
We saw it at work elsewhere last week.
Not far from my house, the Canada Cup Women’s International Softball Championship recently took place. On one day during the tournament, Canada hosted Israel. To cement the reputation of Canadians as nice, inclusive, and multicultural, a cluster of people stood behind a chain-link fence holding signs accusing Israel of being a “genocidal state” — with a swastika next to an Israeli flag and the words: “Same mindset / Different era.”
Never mind that this is not going to “free Palestine.” This is not even political commentary. This is nothing but Jew-baiting.
The clot of haters eventually sauntered over to where a group of little Jewish kids were running around adjacent to the kosher barbecue set up by Chabad (a Jewish organization), urging the kids through their amplifier not to believe the lies their parents are teaching them. Nice, right?
Acknowledging the livid rage that I and others feel when seeing the swastika aligned with the Star of David will only invite wider use of this despicable equation. Because the strategy here is not changing minds or achieving political change. It is about rubbing salt in Jewish historical wounds.
It is pure sadism.
And it is a fundamental tenet of the “anti-Israel” movement. So, knowing the rage and hurt it provokes, the haters will be sure to double down on it.
How do people like this happen?
More to the point, how do anti-racists, progressives, and other decent people not only not call them out but actively ally with them?
Waving nooses at a sports game in which one team is Black, or wearing white hoods, or employing similarly fraught historical imagery against any other group would be recognized for what it is: outright racism.
Somehow, though, plenty of people see this and conclude it is merely political commentary.
Yet another incident — and these are only the ones that make the news in my limited scope of observation) — Anthony Housefather, the Liberal Member of Parliament who has become the most visible Jew and Zionist in Canada’s Parliament, was accused of being a “neo-Nazi” on a series of posters plastered around Montreal recently.
Have you ever noticed that when haters want to attack Jews or Israelis, they never accuse them of being like Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Bashar al-Assad, or any of the other historical or contemporary examples they could dig up to evoke evil. It’s always the Nazis. Because this is about sticking it to the Jews. It’s about rubbing the worst history not only of their people but in many cases of their family in the faces of the Jews.
I’m not saying those people don’t have the right to their disgraceful ideas. Likewise, I don’t fault Piers Morgan for platforming Roger Waters. I’m pretty close to a free speech absolutist. What bugs me is the vast number of good people who don’t speak up against these hateful monstrosities.
Friends who were at the baseball game the other night said non-Jews in attendance seemed to be put off, rather than persuaded by the presence of these depraved protestors, unsurprisingly.
The haters may be making more enemies than friends. Again, though, they probably don’t care — as long they are figuratively shoving bamboo up Jewish fingernails. Convincing others isn’t their goal. Causing hurt to Jews is.
What they might do well to learn is that, for those of us who do have appropriate human responses to behaviors like this, their presence merely reminds us that one of the core reasons Israel exists and must continue to exist is because the world is full of a**holes like these.
If I wasn’t a Zionist before, the maniacal mobs and myopic antisemitic haters we have seen on campuses recently, at baseball games, at Pride parades, and on Piers Morgan’s TV show would have made me one.
Some people ponder: “Yes, but is it antisemitism?”
It is sadistic. It is ugly. It is intended to harm Jews and make them feel unwelcome in society.
Does it really matter what we call it?
Sadistic yes, but another dynamic force is at work — scapegoat-ism. It is a well-established social escape mechanism whereby an individual or group places all pent up anger, frustration, anxiety, or hatred onto the alien Other, allowing them to attack the demonized out group without fear of censure, political liability, media accountability, or legal consequences.
Yes you are absolutely right. I seemed to me momths ago that the particular language used by "pro-Palestinians" was simply meant to hurt. Two comments: 1) I notice that officials of the Canada Cup Women’s International Softball Championship allowed the behavior to continue -- shouting at children!!! There really is no low to which they will not stoop. 2) It's all about how everyone reacts to these tropes. First , do not show a shred of offense or fear or angst or sadness or even anger. Instead, we must show resolve and strength. Every time Israel is called genocidal for bombing something, simply say "Yes, this is how you see us; we are happy to oblige. F**k you."