The Jewish state’s most vital voices are not Jewish.
The Jewish state’s most vital voices are not Jewish.
A variety of unlikely candidates across the world have been standing up and speaking out for Israel, even though they presumably have no dog in the fight.
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We all know that Israel’s international “PR” has not exactly been spectacular.
But if you look back at the variety of conflicts that Israel has been pulled into, particularly since the 1967 Six-Day War, you realize that this has predominantly been the case.
In other words: Israel’s international “PR” has less to do with what the Jewish state speaks and acts, and more to do with antisemitically inclined media types, public figures, politicians, and bureaucrats.
Every time Israel makes a mistake — and yes, every country makes mistakes, especially during the heat of war — the Jewish state is ridiculed as if it is threatening to set the entire world ablaze.
“Netanyahu’s disregard for civilian casualties in Gaza is killing his image even among Israel’s closest allies,” said political commentator Ian Bremmer, following yesterday’s accidental deaths of humanitarian workers in Gaza.1
Mind you, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized via a video his team published on social media, well before Bremmer’s terribly misleading remarks, and immediately after Israel took responsibility for the accident. That is not me taking Netanyahu’s side; that is just me stating the facts.
Hence why all of us familiar with these decades-long anti-Israel (really, antisemitic) games are completely unsurprised by the exponentially growing voices against Israel during its response to the Hamas-led terror attacks on October 7th, including the calls for an “immediate ceasefire” without tying it to a return of all the remaining Israeli abductees.
However, there are a variety of unlikely candidates who have been standing up and speaking out for Israel, people who presumably have no dog in the fight, no “good” reason to put themselves and their careers on the line for a tiny country that has nothing to do with and little to offer them.
And perhaps most interestingly, these people are not Jewish.
While we cannot name all of these extraordinary, courageous, morally calibrated folks — for there are indeed many of them — here are 10 who have most caught my attention:
1) Douglas Murray
Country of Origin: United Kingdom
Douglas Murray is an author and political commentator. He founded the Centre for Social Cohesion in 2007, which became part of the Henry Jackson Society, where he was associate director from 2011 to 2018.
Murray is also the author of several books, including “Hate on the State: How British Libraries Encourage Islamic Extremism,” “The Strange Death of Europe,” and “The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason.”
He is also due to receive an award from Israeli President Isaac Herzog for his efforts in combating antisemitism and supporting Israel after the October 7th Hamas-led terror attacks.
My favorite Douglas Murray quote from this war:
“In other countries, there is a rot almost all the way through. To its shame, Britain seems to have become one such nation. But it is a reminder that when it comes to the question of security in the Western alliance, it is not Israel that is the weak link in the chain. It is almost everybody else.”2
2) Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Country of Origin: Somalia
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Somali-Dutch research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. She was was raised to be a Jew-hater, saying:
“It was through clan life, the Muslim Brotherhood, and my Islamic schooling that I became an antisemite. The worst insult in the Somali community was to be called a Jew, not that anyone of us actually knew one. To be called a Jew was so abhorrent, some felt justified in killing anyone who so dishonored them with this slur. I vividly remember sitting with my female fellows in mosques, cursing Israel and praying Allah to destroy them.”3
Ali has since become an activist against Islamic extremism and its dire effects on the West.
My favorite Ayaan Hirsi Ali quote from this war:
“Since 1947, the Arabs have remained fixed in their determination to eliminate the state of Israel, in part by preventing peace from ever coming about. Were the failed peace attempts in 1973, 1993, 1995, 1998, 2000 and 2008 all the fault of Netanyahu? Was no Arab agency involved?”4
3) John Spencer
Country of Origin: USA
John Spencer enlisted in the United States Army as a private, immediately after graduating from high school at age 17. During his more than 25-year military career, Spencer was infantry platoon leader and company commander, including two combat tours during the Iraq War.
Now retired from active service with the rank of major, Spencer currently serves as the chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, the U.S. Military Academy.
My favorite John Spencer quote from this war:
“Israel’s opponents are erasing a remarkable, historic new standard Israel has set. In my long career studying and advising on urban warfare for the U.S. military, I've never known an army to take such measures to attend to the enemy’s civilian population, especially while simultaneously combating the enemy in the very same buildings.”
“In fact, by my analysis, Israel has implemented more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history—above and beyond what international law requires and more than the U.S. did in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”5
4) Emily Schrader and Yoseph Haddad
Countries of Origin: USA, Israel
Emily Schrader and Yoseph Haddad are a wife-husband duo and Zionist activists. Emily, an immigrant from Los Angeles, and Yoseph, who grew up in Nazareth and served as one of the few Israeli Arabs in the IDF, met through their involvement in pro-Israel activism.
They became engaged during the Gaza-Israel conflict in May 2021, live on camera at the Gaza border, as Yoseph was on assignment for i24NEWS in Arabic.
My favorite Yoseph Haddad quote from this war:
“Anybody who is trying to make this war about Arabs against Jews — it is not. Right now, in Gaza, you have Christian, Muslim, Druze, and Jewish soldiers fighting for our freedom.”6
5) John Aziz
Country of Origin: United Kingdom
John Aziz is a British-Palestinian musician, peace activist, and analyst of Middle East politics and history. Recently, he wrote an article in Foreign Policy, titled “Violence Has Failed Palestinians,” in which he calls for a pragmatic, peaceful approach as the only way to a real Palestinian state and two-state solution.
My favorite John Aziz quote from this war:
“New generations of antisemites always think that this time they have found a valid, new reason to hate the Jews. They are always wrong, just like the antisemites of the past.”
6) Ritchie Torres
Country of Origin: USA
Ritchie Torres is a U.S. Congressman and member of the Democratic Party, representing New York’s 15th congressional district which covers most of the South Bronx.
His first trip abroad, ever, was to Israel — as a newly elected 26-year-old member of the New York City Council, nine years ago. It was, he says, “one of the most formative and transformative experiences of my life.”7 And it helped make him “more visibly and vocally pro-Israel than most people,” and especially those of his Afro-Latino background.
My favorite Ritchie Torres quote from this war:
“I came to realize early on, 10 years ago, that Israel faces a level of insecurity and volatility that has no analog in the American experience. I tell people, it’s not my place to tell you what to think about Israel, but I will tell you how to think; that before you rush to judge Israel, you should actually come here. There is no substitute for experiencing the complexity of Israel, and the majesty of Israel, with your own eyes.”
7) John Ondrasik
Country of Origin: USA
Also known by his stage name Five for Fighting, John Ondrasik is a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter and pianist best known for his piano-based soft rock, such as the top-40 hits “Superman” (2001), “100 Years” (2003), and “The Riddle” (2006).
In the weeks following October 7th, Ondrasik felt the need to speak out, so he released his latest song, “OK,” with lyrics denouncing those who refused to stand with Israel in the wake of the terror group’s devastating onslaught. The title may be “OK,” but the lyrics make it very clear: “We are not OK.”
The opening lyrics of “OK” declare: “This is a time for choosing. This is a time to mourn. The moral man is losing, forbidden, lost, forlorn.”
My favorite John Ondrasik quote from this war:
“The question should not be, why I have written a song about the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, with more than 100 men, women, and children still being held hostage. The question is why have so many, particularly in the arts, remained deathly silent.”8
8) Mosab Hassan Yousef
Country of Origin: Palestinian Territories (West Bank)
Mosab Hassan Yousef, also known as “The Green Prince, is a Palestinian ex-militant who defected to Israel in 1997, thereafter working as an undercover agent for the Shin Bet (the Israeli version of the FBI) until he moved to the United States in 2007. His father is Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a co-founder of Hamas.
My favorite Mosab Hassan Yousef quote from this war:
“I don’t even want to think about a Palestinian state. I don’t care for a Palestinian state. We have 22 Arab states and all of them are garbage. I don’t want another Arab state in that region. It’s enough. They have everything — human resources, natural resources — and they are behind.”9
9) Gareth Cliff
Country of Origin: South Africa
Gareth Cliff is a radio and television host, and one of South Africa’s most prominent media personalities. He has also written two books, “Gareth Cliff on Everything” and “Cliffhanger.”
My favorite Gareth Cliff quote from this war:
“The women, men, children, elderly people and soldiers who were kidnapped, tortured, raped, humiliated, and murdered on October 7th by Hamas in sovereign Israel were human beings too. Those who did it to them are not.”
“Imagine what kind of rational and ethical gymnastics you have to do to justify the cold-blooded murder of teenagers at a music festival; or watching a child, perhaps 5 years old, being prodded with a stick and made to cry for his mother in Hebrew while children of a similar age laugh and mock him? We don’t know that child’s fate and for all we know what followed may have been much worse. It’s depraved. To even enter a conversation about these disgraceful facts with a rehearsed retort about territory or Gaza being an ‘open-air prison’ reeks of moral bankruptcy.”
“If you wail and scream about your land, dignity, rights, oppression, and poverty but are willing to murder, rape, kidnap, torture, or humiliate children; then I don’t have to listen to your reasons. When the video footage, photographs and stories of Saturday’s carnage come not from ‘Israeli propaganda’ but from the Hamas terrorists themselves, then how am I to read anything else into it but that you want credit for these atrocities? You want me to know you did it. You want me to know you are proud of it. You want me to see you for who you are. Well, I do.”
“So, if you swarmed the Israeli Embassy in London, waving Palestinian flags and calling for genocide; if you went down to Times Square to celebrate a victory for decolonization against ‘apartheid Israel’; if you sang along to ‘gas the Jews’ chants at the Sydney Opera House or hung a ‘one settler, one bullet’ Palestinian flag over Grayston bridge in Johannesburg, then you’re telling me who you are. Well, I see you — and you’re my enemy.”
“Perhaps when the dust has settled we can examine the insidious links between Anglo-American leftism and antisemitism, between Europe never reckoning with what happened in the holocaust and their growing Muslim populations, and between ignorant regimes like mine in South Africa and their determination to stand alongside the worst human rights abusers in the Middle East.”
“For now, it’s no big mystery that this has nothing to do with the existence of the State of Israel and everything to do with Jew-hatred – that great, festering wound in the side of humanity from which all prejudice flows. It has been there for thousands of years and every time we think it has healed, some monstrous collective claws it open again.”
“I’m afraid there are only two sides in a war — your allies and your enemies. On September 11th 2001, I knew whose side I was on. I feel the same today.”
10) Loay Alshareef
Country of Origin: Saudi Arabia
Loay Alshareef is an Arab peace activist who owns a PR company in Abu Dhabi and works with both governmental and non-governmental entities. He also teaches English and Arabic, and learned Hebrew, largely from watching TV and listening to songs and podcasts.10
Alshareef also grew up with animosity toward Jews and Israel, saying: “There are good Jews, bad Jews, good Christians, bad Christians, good Muslims, bad Muslims — but this is not what we were taught. We were told that the Jews are conspiring against Muslims and the Jews are evil, the Jews hate Muslims from the bottom of their hearts. And to me, it was very baffling.”
My favorite Loay Alshareef quote from this war:
“The Bible is all about the story of the relationship between Israel, the people of Israel and their neighbors, and the people of Israel and God. So when you dig deep into it, you start to realize how connected the Jews are to this land and why this land specifically, and from the times of Joshua bin Nun entering the land to the times of the Maccabees taking control over Judea, you get to know the real history of Israel. And then you start to believe in the legitimacy of the Jewish belonging to the land of Israel.”
Ian Bremmer on X
“The Easy Politics of Criticizing Israel.” Sapir.
Debra Messing on Instagram
“The West has a deviancy problem.” UnHerd.
“Israel Has Created a New Standard for Urban Warfare. Why Will No One Admit It? | Opinion.” Newsweek.
“Yoseph Haddad joins hostage vigil and discussion on misinformation.” The Jewish Chronicle.
“The ‘improbable friend’: For true progressives, Israel is an exemplar, says Ritchie Torres.” The Times of Israel.
“Five for Fighting pens October 7 ballad: ‘We are not OK’.” The Times of Israel.
Keren Tzadok on Instagram
“The Arab influencer pushing the Abraham Accords from Abu Dhabi.” The Circuit.
Thank you for posting this. So powerful.
Israel is a flashpoint in a war on Western values. The absurdly successful pro-Hamas propaganda storm is underwritten by Qatar, Iran, and Russia. It's designed to open fissures in the fabric of Western societies by unleashing that old demon known as antisemitism. It preys on our sensitivities for self-styled victims. Islamic extremism finds a convenient bosom-buddy in the bankrupt ideology of Marxism now ingrained in our institutions of higher learning.
A individual with curiosity, tenacious criticism, and a desire to know, can undermine a tendency to favor terrorism as an answer to the world's ills. It's so much easier, and feels so much better, to go along with the tide of majority opinion, basking in self-righteous "moral clarity," pointing a finger at the evil-doer— who can only be a "white colonialist." There is no room in that consciousness for the complexities of history or social realities. Virtue-signalling is a substitute for the unsettling inquiry into the foundations of virtue in one's own life.
You omitted Colonel Richard Kemp from the UK and US Senator Fetterman (Pennsylvania).