And even though I usually end up feeling both those things, I think this may be, finally, THE article I share with the non-Jews I know who may still be ahem, confused, and need it spelled out for them. 🎯
Yes, I think I can too. It's well written, not emotive. I like how Joshua directs people to sources of history -" don't just read my words". The shocking figures from Sudan - not a single protest...
Joshua may be preaching to the choir, knocking himself out day after day , deploying his gift for clear communication And supplying us ( the choir) with persuasive arguments.
We should use them.
When your priest declares that “Jesus was a Palestinian”, and there is a movement in the church to adopt BDS or when your local newspaper publishes editorials slandering Israel and week after week letters to the editor downplay antisemitism and brand Israel as a genocidal apartheid state… respond with cogent statements courtesy of J. Hoffman. I don’t think he would object to a little plagiarizing.
Speaking from experience, if you live in an uber progressive town, speaking out will not make you popular.
Joshua - so true. The default position for anyone with moral clarity should be to support Israel and the people of Israel. The sad truth is that if you do not have a Jewish perspective on life. don't have Jewish friends, family - then people buy into the distorted, biased antisemitic media without even realising that they are perpetuating Jew hatred.
Just last week ( and I heard the broadcast on BBC ) Tom Fletcher of the UN made the ridiculous statement '14,000 babies will die in the next 48 hours if Israel does not allow aid to Gaza)
Later - even the heavily biased BBC investigated this statement and deemed it a total lie.
Then - two Jews in Washington DC were murdered by a Pally terrorist.
Blood on your hands Tom Fletcher. No apology - no retraction - you should hang your head in shame
BBC was bad enough. . But David Muir repeated the 14,000 dead babies libel on national nightly news. No correction given as far as I know. The damage is done.
And regrettably , having Jewish friends and family doesn’t guarantee that somebody will have their head screwed on straight … JVP , for instance….
It’s like the whole world got amnesia. It’s seems like everybody forgot about the Holocaust and the centuries of persecution Jews have endured. This is why Israel has to exist. Why this is so hard for folks to understand I don’t know. Do people not remember history? I’m not talking about fringe scholars like Norman Finkelstein, Shlomo Sand, Ilan Pappe, Rashid Khalidi, and Jeff Halper. I’m talking about real historians and scholars like Deborah Lipstadt, Rafael Medoff, Ronald and Allis Radosh, Daniel Gordis, Einat Wilf, Michael Oren, Chaim Herzog, Benny Morris, Tom Segev, and the late, great Sir Martin Gilbert.
Antizionism is antisemitism, if you believe all people have the right to self-determination except the Jewish people you are singling out a certain group for exclusion. So your telling me the Irish, Italians, Poles, Czechs, Slovakians, Greeks, Finns, South Koreans, Algerians, Nigerians, and Mexicans can have a nation, but Jews for some vague, amorphous reason that makes no sense can’t?
Arguments against Israel’s existence that aren’t based on antisemitism are still total nonsense and historically illiterate. We should all no matter our race, color, creed, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, political views, ethnicity, or national origin, support Israel. Israel isn’t perfect just like any other country. We all recognize this, but it doesn’t change the fact that Israel is an oasis of liberal democracy, free-market capitalism, pluralism, multiculturalism, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, gender equality, LGBTQ+ equality, and disability inclusion in a very backwards and medieval region of the world.
Israel is a global leader in water, agriculture, science, medicine, technology, and environmentalism. Israel is a wealthy, industrialized nation and a regional power in the Middle East and has one of the best militaries in the world with the IDF. All people have equal rights in Israel. That includes its two million Arabs. Christians have only one safe haven in the Middle East that being the nation state of the Jewish people. I truly don’t understand those on the populist left and populist right who don’t support Israel. To answer the left: Israel is a Jewish and multicultural state NOT an ethnostate. To answer the right: we support Israel because they are the only democracy in the Middle East.
Most westerners back Israel in what their doing in Operation Gideon’s Chariot and so should western leaders instead of playing this “both sides” nonsense. Mark Carney, Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron have already shown their lack of a moral compass by saying Israel is killing too many civilians and going too far. Israel is fighting to defend itself, rescue the hostages and liberate Gaza from the demons in human form in Hamas. Who could oppose that?
As to the situation in the West Bank, it’s not an apartheid! First off, Israel and the Palestinians are two peoples from two different countries not the same country. Second, all countries treat citizens and non-citizens differently. By the way, West Bank Palestinians can become Israeli citizens if they choose. Many just don’t bother to.
We must never forget the horrific crimes of October 7th. Hamas blew holes in the Iron Wall and entered Israel by land, air and sea. They shot at motorists on the highway, sacked, looted and burned Kibbutzims, executed foreign workers, kidnapped hundreds of people including men, women, children, babies, old people, Israeli Arabs, Holocaust survivors, foreign nationals, and tourists, raped young women, beheaded people, burned whole families alive, sprayed playgrounds with bullets, and did bloody pogroms against Jews.
Never forget who Israel is fighting against. Hamas are savages with no soul, no heart, no inner moral consciousness. They are a terrorist group, NOT freedom fighters! They are NOT the equivalent of the American colonists during the Revolution, the Haitians fighting Napoleonic France or the French Resistance during WWII. They are more akin to the Ku Klux Klan, the IRA, or the Baader-Meinhof Gang. I’ve heard Hamas compared to slaves on plantations in the South who rebelled against their masters like Nat Turner. How dare you compare the Nazis of our time to the American Spartacus! Nat Turner was a pious, intelligent man who fought to free his people not to wipe out another people!
By the way, the Jewish people ARE in fact, the indigenous people of the land of Eretz-Israel. They are kindred spirits with other indigenous peoples all over the world. They are NO different than the Native Americans, Inuits, Native Hawaiians, Aboriginal Australians, the Māoris, the Ainu, and the Aleuts. This much I can assure you of, if any of the great Native chiefs like Sitting Bull or Cochise were alive today, they’d send their bravest warriors to fight alongside the IDF. If Hamas invaded the United States, you can be sure that folks in Indian country would fight like the devil against them!
The Jewish people have had a presence in the holy land for three millennia. The Palestinians are descendants of Arab settlers and immigrants who came after a series of Muslim empires conquered the holy land or came in the 1930s and 1940s in search of work. It was the Jews who were colonial subjects of the Arabs NOT the other way around. Oh yes, one more point. Zionism by the way, is an indigenous rights and anti-colonial movement. The Jews fought not only the Arabs but the British Empire, to get their land back and rebuild Jewish life in their Ancient Homeland.
The Palestinian people have suffered and deserve our sympathy and I’m all for the creation of a Palestinian state. I’m not insensitive to their plight at all. But until someone other than Fatah or Hamas is in charge, no peace accords or two-state solution can be negotiated. It should also be mentioned that at the end of the day the oppressor of the Palestinian people and the one responsible for their current situation isn’t Israel it’s their own leaders and the Arab countries.
Didn’t Israel slaughter Palestinian civilians during Black September in the early 1970s? Whoops! Sorry about that typo I meant to say Jordan. But didn’t they torture Palestinian refugees as revenge for the PLO supporting Ba’athist Iraq during the Gulf War? Oops! Sorry that was Kuwait. But they do have anti-Palestinian political parties don’t they? Oh wait that’s Lebanon? Sounds to me like it’s the Arabs who have the apartheid against Palestinians here.
This is beautifully written. It does the right thing by crossing the line and politely shaming the called liberal elite, and carefully assaulting the only thing they care about, which is the currency of their virtue signals.
Why? Why only Gaza and not Sudan protests? Why moral outrage against the only moral army in the world? Why support for a terrorist organization who terrorizes its own people as much as the Israelis? Why the MSM views the war as a “genocide” and is overly biased for the perpetrators?
You are on a roll of excellence. I do want to clarify one thing. Every time I read the word “self- defense” or “the right to defend itself” I’m afraid people equate that simply with getting the attacker to stop. What we actually mean is ending the attacker's power for good. Not just for now.
Yes, but unfortunately, it’s not like Islamists will ever change their ideology. Perhaps if the “peaceful” Muslims who do not want to live under Sharia were to organize ….. This fight will never be over, but the West and beyond must recognize what this fight is all about and respond dramatically and decisively to every attack. It doesn’t help that the UK and others are funding Hamas. When I look at Charlie Hebdo and Samuel Paty, I see our being in a fight for our lives and our way of life, while many others conclude that we should just be quiet, go along, enable, appease. I have hope that good will prevail over evil, but first, a whole lot of people need to get their heads out of their arses so they can recognize what evil is.
I totally agree. I saw a podcast with Haviv Retig Gur in which he talked about a more moderate Islam as something that actually exists. With the level of intimidation around it's hard to imagine how this will manifest. Meanwhile, the West has to come to terms. But they are soooooo scared of being called racist, it's ridiculous (are you familiar with the Pakistani grooming gangs in the UK? It's like the country wants to commit suicide).
Damn, I tried reading this from a neutral state of mind, trying to understand Israel’s side. But all I could find is pure victimization and an embarrassing attempt of gaslight. Shameful.
I’ve used the Russia/Ukraine example with them as well, Hamas being Russia because they invaded a sovereign nation. But they think ISRAEL is the Russia in this situation. If you say “but Hamas started the war by literally invading,” it becomes “well this war did not start on Oct 7th cause they’ve been torturing Palestinians for decades.”
They’ve internalized the Arab mindset here, which is that Israel’s mere existence is occupation because they shouldn’t be on “their” land. They shouldn’t “be” at all. It’s ahistorical and their logic never does follow from one minute to the next.
They don’t get that Hamas would still have done this if no one had ever touched a hair on any Palestinian head. The Western ignorance (as well as faux ignorance aka Trump rn) about jihadism is such a dangerous game.
When 9 children from one family die in an Israeli bombing....When The life supporting WC kitchen workers are bombed....what more proof does one need of the depravity and inhumanity of the "Zionist regime." 1200 people "died" on Oct. 7th...that was legitimate resistance of an oppressed and blockaded people living in dire circumstances...remember ...it didn't happen "in a vacuum." This isn't some universities...this is MOST. Maybe not the military academies. I hope. And most of the erstwhile "JEWISH CONTROLLED media. And this is "progressive" asajews. "Jews" who have never participated in Jewish celebration just "shame." The ashamed Jews as Howard Jacobson writes. As Douglas Murray queries why did people not support a democracy but a death cult? Yes, I have to wonder if I wear "I STAND with Israel" t shirt since Oct. 7th (or before) will I be attacked? I've worn it outside in my nabe which is not Jewish....but I have not dared to wear it to downtown Manhattan NYU territory....I'm not Bruce Springsteen fit physically capable of defending myself if attacked.
Of course a wonderful article! Now who will read it besides the people who already agree with its contents.
That is true but a clear-sighted article like this gives a sort of consolation in these dark times.
And even though I usually end up feeling both those things, I think this may be, finally, THE article I share with the non-Jews I know who may still be ahem, confused, and need it spelled out for them. 🎯
Yes, I think I can too. It's well written, not emotive. I like how Joshua directs people to sources of history -" don't just read my words". The shocking figures from Sudan - not a single protest...
“Who will read it”
Joshua may be preaching to the choir, knocking himself out day after day , deploying his gift for clear communication And supplying us ( the choir) with persuasive arguments.
We should use them.
When your priest declares that “Jesus was a Palestinian”, and there is a movement in the church to adopt BDS or when your local newspaper publishes editorials slandering Israel and week after week letters to the editor downplay antisemitism and brand Israel as a genocidal apartheid state… respond with cogent statements courtesy of J. Hoffman. I don’t think he would object to a little plagiarizing.
Speaking from experience, if you live in an uber progressive town, speaking out will not make you popular.
Oh Well.
Joshua has written many brilliant articles. It just makes me feel down that the people who need to read them never will.
Should your priest or pastor declare that "Jesus was a Palestinian" .....he is a heretic.
Joshua - so true. The default position for anyone with moral clarity should be to support Israel and the people of Israel. The sad truth is that if you do not have a Jewish perspective on life. don't have Jewish friends, family - then people buy into the distorted, biased antisemitic media without even realising that they are perpetuating Jew hatred.
Just last week ( and I heard the broadcast on BBC ) Tom Fletcher of the UN made the ridiculous statement '14,000 babies will die in the next 48 hours if Israel does not allow aid to Gaza)
Later - even the heavily biased BBC investigated this statement and deemed it a total lie.
Then - two Jews in Washington DC were murdered by a Pally terrorist.
Blood on your hands Tom Fletcher. No apology - no retraction - you should hang your head in shame
BBC was bad enough. . But David Muir repeated the 14,000 dead babies libel on national nightly news. No correction given as far as I know. The damage is done.
And regrettably , having Jewish friends and family doesn’t guarantee that somebody will have their head screwed on straight … JVP , for instance….
It’s like the whole world got amnesia. It’s seems like everybody forgot about the Holocaust and the centuries of persecution Jews have endured. This is why Israel has to exist. Why this is so hard for folks to understand I don’t know. Do people not remember history? I’m not talking about fringe scholars like Norman Finkelstein, Shlomo Sand, Ilan Pappe, Rashid Khalidi, and Jeff Halper. I’m talking about real historians and scholars like Deborah Lipstadt, Rafael Medoff, Ronald and Allis Radosh, Daniel Gordis, Einat Wilf, Michael Oren, Chaim Herzog, Benny Morris, Tom Segev, and the late, great Sir Martin Gilbert.
Antizionism is antisemitism, if you believe all people have the right to self-determination except the Jewish people you are singling out a certain group for exclusion. So your telling me the Irish, Italians, Poles, Czechs, Slovakians, Greeks, Finns, South Koreans, Algerians, Nigerians, and Mexicans can have a nation, but Jews for some vague, amorphous reason that makes no sense can’t?
Arguments against Israel’s existence that aren’t based on antisemitism are still total nonsense and historically illiterate. We should all no matter our race, color, creed, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, political views, ethnicity, or national origin, support Israel. Israel isn’t perfect just like any other country. We all recognize this, but it doesn’t change the fact that Israel is an oasis of liberal democracy, free-market capitalism, pluralism, multiculturalism, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, gender equality, LGBTQ+ equality, and disability inclusion in a very backwards and medieval region of the world.
Israel is a global leader in water, agriculture, science, medicine, technology, and environmentalism. Israel is a wealthy, industrialized nation and a regional power in the Middle East and has one of the best militaries in the world with the IDF. All people have equal rights in Israel. That includes its two million Arabs. Christians have only one safe haven in the Middle East that being the nation state of the Jewish people. I truly don’t understand those on the populist left and populist right who don’t support Israel. To answer the left: Israel is a Jewish and multicultural state NOT an ethnostate. To answer the right: we support Israel because they are the only democracy in the Middle East.
Most westerners back Israel in what their doing in Operation Gideon’s Chariot and so should western leaders instead of playing this “both sides” nonsense. Mark Carney, Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron have already shown their lack of a moral compass by saying Israel is killing too many civilians and going too far. Israel is fighting to defend itself, rescue the hostages and liberate Gaza from the demons in human form in Hamas. Who could oppose that?
As to the situation in the West Bank, it’s not an apartheid! First off, Israel and the Palestinians are two peoples from two different countries not the same country. Second, all countries treat citizens and non-citizens differently. By the way, West Bank Palestinians can become Israeli citizens if they choose. Many just don’t bother to.
We must never forget the horrific crimes of October 7th. Hamas blew holes in the Iron Wall and entered Israel by land, air and sea. They shot at motorists on the highway, sacked, looted and burned Kibbutzims, executed foreign workers, kidnapped hundreds of people including men, women, children, babies, old people, Israeli Arabs, Holocaust survivors, foreign nationals, and tourists, raped young women, beheaded people, burned whole families alive, sprayed playgrounds with bullets, and did bloody pogroms against Jews.
Never forget who Israel is fighting against. Hamas are savages with no soul, no heart, no inner moral consciousness. They are a terrorist group, NOT freedom fighters! They are NOT the equivalent of the American colonists during the Revolution, the Haitians fighting Napoleonic France or the French Resistance during WWII. They are more akin to the Ku Klux Klan, the IRA, or the Baader-Meinhof Gang. I’ve heard Hamas compared to slaves on plantations in the South who rebelled against their masters like Nat Turner. How dare you compare the Nazis of our time to the American Spartacus! Nat Turner was a pious, intelligent man who fought to free his people not to wipe out another people!
By the way, the Jewish people ARE in fact, the indigenous people of the land of Eretz-Israel. They are kindred spirits with other indigenous peoples all over the world. They are NO different than the Native Americans, Inuits, Native Hawaiians, Aboriginal Australians, the Māoris, the Ainu, and the Aleuts. This much I can assure you of, if any of the great Native chiefs like Sitting Bull or Cochise were alive today, they’d send their bravest warriors to fight alongside the IDF. If Hamas invaded the United States, you can be sure that folks in Indian country would fight like the devil against them!
The Jewish people have had a presence in the holy land for three millennia. The Palestinians are descendants of Arab settlers and immigrants who came after a series of Muslim empires conquered the holy land or came in the 1930s and 1940s in search of work. It was the Jews who were colonial subjects of the Arabs NOT the other way around. Oh yes, one more point. Zionism by the way, is an indigenous rights and anti-colonial movement. The Jews fought not only the Arabs but the British Empire, to get their land back and rebuild Jewish life in their Ancient Homeland.
The Palestinian people have suffered and deserve our sympathy and I’m all for the creation of a Palestinian state. I’m not insensitive to their plight at all. But until someone other than Fatah or Hamas is in charge, no peace accords or two-state solution can be negotiated. It should also be mentioned that at the end of the day the oppressor of the Palestinian people and the one responsible for their current situation isn’t Israel it’s their own leaders and the Arab countries.
Didn’t Israel slaughter Palestinian civilians during Black September in the early 1970s? Whoops! Sorry about that typo I meant to say Jordan. But didn’t they torture Palestinian refugees as revenge for the PLO supporting Ba’athist Iraq during the Gulf War? Oops! Sorry that was Kuwait. But they do have anti-Palestinian political parties don’t they? Oh wait that’s Lebanon? Sounds to me like it’s the Arabs who have the apartheid against Palestinians here.
This is beautifully written. It does the right thing by crossing the line and politely shaming the called liberal elite, and carefully assaulting the only thing they care about, which is the currency of their virtue signals.
Excellent article, this explains a lot about the abounding misconceptions regarding Israel.
Why? Why only Gaza and not Sudan protests? Why moral outrage against the only moral army in the world? Why support for a terrorist organization who terrorizes its own people as much as the Israelis? Why the MSM views the war as a “genocide” and is overly biased for the perpetrators?
4 word answer: No Jews, no news.
You are on a roll of excellence. I do want to clarify one thing. Every time I read the word “self- defense” or “the right to defend itself” I’m afraid people equate that simply with getting the attacker to stop. What we actually mean is ending the attacker's power for good. Not just for now.
Yes, but unfortunately, it’s not like Islamists will ever change their ideology. Perhaps if the “peaceful” Muslims who do not want to live under Sharia were to organize ….. This fight will never be over, but the West and beyond must recognize what this fight is all about and respond dramatically and decisively to every attack. It doesn’t help that the UK and others are funding Hamas. When I look at Charlie Hebdo and Samuel Paty, I see our being in a fight for our lives and our way of life, while many others conclude that we should just be quiet, go along, enable, appease. I have hope that good will prevail over evil, but first, a whole lot of people need to get their heads out of their arses so they can recognize what evil is.
I totally agree. I saw a podcast with Haviv Retig Gur in which he talked about a more moderate Islam as something that actually exists. With the level of intimidation around it's hard to imagine how this will manifest. Meanwhile, the West has to come to terms. But they are soooooo scared of being called racist, it's ridiculous (are you familiar with the Pakistani grooming gangs in the UK? It's like the country wants to commit suicide).
Damn, I tried reading this from a neutral state of mind, trying to understand Israel’s side. But all I could find is pure victimization and an embarrassing attempt of gaslight. Shameful.
Agreed.
I’ve used the Russia/Ukraine example with them as well, Hamas being Russia because they invaded a sovereign nation. But they think ISRAEL is the Russia in this situation. If you say “but Hamas started the war by literally invading,” it becomes “well this war did not start on Oct 7th cause they’ve been torturing Palestinians for decades.”
They’ve internalized the Arab mindset here, which is that Israel’s mere existence is occupation because they shouldn’t be on “their” land. They shouldn’t “be” at all. It’s ahistorical and their logic never does follow from one minute to the next.
They don’t get that Hamas would still have done this if no one had ever touched a hair on any Palestinian head. The Western ignorance (as well as faux ignorance aka Trump rn) about jihadism is such a dangerous game.
Really excellent and important, Joshua. Thank you.
When 9 children from one family die in an Israeli bombing....When The life supporting WC kitchen workers are bombed....what more proof does one need of the depravity and inhumanity of the "Zionist regime." 1200 people "died" on Oct. 7th...that was legitimate resistance of an oppressed and blockaded people living in dire circumstances...remember ...it didn't happen "in a vacuum." This isn't some universities...this is MOST. Maybe not the military academies. I hope. And most of the erstwhile "JEWISH CONTROLLED media. And this is "progressive" asajews. "Jews" who have never participated in Jewish celebration just "shame." The ashamed Jews as Howard Jacobson writes. As Douglas Murray queries why did people not support a democracy but a death cult? Yes, I have to wonder if I wear "I STAND with Israel" t shirt since Oct. 7th (or before) will I be attacked? I've worn it outside in my nabe which is not Jewish....but I have not dared to wear it to downtown Manhattan NYU territory....I'm not Bruce Springsteen fit physically capable of defending myself if attacked.