“These are people who have taken an oath to a cult and have had to remake themselves in the image of the cult. If they follow ‘Palestine’ they must give up their soul.”
i'm not gonna lie, I wanna get through this - whatever it is and however long it takes - and then never talk to the rest of the world ever again. Ever. For anything.
So when are we going to push back against the narrative?? How about full page adds in newspapers with "Palestinian children die when Hamas uses them as human shields." Or billboards with "Israel fights for you." How about "Hamas lies." "Palestinian parents, love your children. Give up Hamas." We have brilliant I.T. guys, why aren't they flooding TikTok with pro Israel stuff. I'm tired of us loosing P.R. war. We can do better.
Nah. Spinning wheels. Those who perpetrated these lies are not just uninterested in the truth but unwilling to believe it. What needs to be done is to win the war and ensure such a thing can never happen again and who cares what the Jew haters think.
I hear both of you. In the end, they're never going to stop hating us no matter what we do or say. We have to not care about that. So, we should "get it done" sooner rather than later, and eventually something else comes along and the world will lose interest. At least temporarily.
Great essay and I think your second paragraph sums up nicely many of the reasons people are anti-semites. As you reminded us, these anti-semites give a pass to anyone and any event, as long as they're not Jews. Rape, genocide, fascism, etc. everything that most countries have been guilty of has not been given a second thought, but Israel who tries to live within its moral compass as best it can, is demonized every time. When you mentioned a country such as Nicaragua, I'm surprised they have the time to even think about Israel with the gangs that control their neighborhoods. Maybe they should clean their own house first before criticizing another country who is fighting to exist. Bill Maher did a great pushback on a queer artist named Chappell Roan, who has given sympathy and support to "Palestine." Just a bit of what he replied to her song lyrics was you thought it was difficult growing up in the Midwest, try growing up in the Middle East. He also responded to another song that her lyrics wouldn't fly in Gaza, although she would straight off a roof. The ignorance of people like this is why they're so easily manipulated by social media, the news media, and universities. Ironically, this artist believes in critical thinking. This is how confused people are. One thought is not connected to another, nor is there any logical sense to them. In addition to fighting anti-semitism, Jews are also fighting DEI, Woke Progressivism, and the oppressor vs. oppressed ideology, all rolled up into one convenient package. Quite a spoonful to swallow but one that must be fought. When Israel overcomes their current battles, all the aforementioned will be leftovers still existing. and yet I will always believe that good will overcome evil, but with strict perseverance and a strategy to fight it.
Yes, the left-woke version of anti-semitism is very "out there" these days and, as you say, all wrapped up in the weirdest sh*t. Logic? Logic is "white" and no longer needed. Hadn't you heard? I love Maher. Soon after Oct. 7 I heard him say, "History has been tough on most peoples." That concept has gotten me through many an argument. It made me realize that the successful peoples / nations do NOT sit around crying boo-hoo at what has happened to them. They do not perpetuate victimhood. (Jews are experts at this; we remember but we don't wallow). I realize with the Palestinians they are perhaps being manipulated to be perpetual victims in order to further Islamist agendas, but hell -- take your ball and leave and start creating a life.
I always enjoy your comments. I agree that the Palestinians may have been manipulated but after several generations? When Mohamed Hadid, a multimillonaire can still claim victim status, that's when he is manipulating it to serve his purpose, and I believe many are like him. But i definitely agree with you that successful people and nations didn't sit around feeling sorry for themselves. They worked hard at building a society that they could survive and thrive in. If they didn't, the world sure would have looked different now. Thanks for your perspective on it.
Thank you so much! Wow, I didn't know about Mohamed Hadid. I was going to say, I guess cult-thinking can be inherited? But someone like him is of course using his situation to promote radical Islamist thinking -- it probably benefits him somehow. Think of the leaders sitting around in Qatar -- wealthy, safe and powerful. Anyway, thanks!
I saw this march towards wokeness at the very beginning. Universities attract radicals which isn’t necessarily a bad thing until it becomes the point. Because there’s nothing radical about a group of likeminded radicals. I did see the anti scholarship in blossom- the idea that a certain angle (e.g. anti capitalism) and academic buzz words alone were enough to constitute serious scholarship. Try hearing an English teacher tell you the Heisenberg uncertainty principle applies to the impossibility of gender duality in the 90s (Heisenberg didn’t know his own reach!) A few students were visibly brainwashed though probably temporarily. Most laughed it off. People knew capitalism gave them nice things. Now they think it’s taking their nice things. Many freedoms are being questioned and are under assault. People fail to understand the potential arbitrariness or wickedness or self interest of the overseers, that we tolerate freedom of words and ideas as a guardrail against the inquisitors who would punish people for their Judaism, and for thinking the earth orbits the sun. It’s not even worth discussing how unfree Gaza is that Gaza itself is an apartheid state against women, dissenters, gay people. It’s almost comical- free Gaza to be even more unfree. It doesn’t need to make sense. It’s hate. I rewatched a scene from Au Revoir Les Enfants. The French Nazis are trying to eject a Jewish man from a restaurant. Some people defend him. One lady shouts, “Go back to Moscow.” My husband would tell you that in Moscow it was “Go back to Israel.” It’s not like “Get out” and Jews haven’t gone together since time immemorial. I’m sure the haters would consider it proof that Jews are the problem rather than that this is what has happened to visible and or successful or “different” minorities since societies laid themselves down. The Jews had the fortune of surviving over and over, to the exterminators, more proof of the menace.
Someone should study how HR at the universities was taken over by radicals (and to some extent foreign donations funding radical departments) to create enough of a critical mass to silence the opposition (in this case center leftists bc there are so few conservatives). I think this is happening to a lesser extent at most companies (with some exceptions) but people are nonetheless cowed into submission or silence.
Your efforts on this Substack along with other writers is not just to counter the ignorant masses, inform the curious masses, but to comfort other Jews. It’s nourishment in these dark crazy times. Thank you!
Antisemitism is unique in that it’s a type of hatred that could be applied to groups in somewhat similar predicaments but Jews are really the only mostly stateless (till recently) and visibly present minority throughout history across much of the world, inspiring way too much attention and venomous mythology. I would love to believe what we’re seeing now is just long cultivated Nazi and Soviet inspired antisemitism from the Mideast coupled with western ignorance and conformity but western ignorance and conformity don’t suffice as an explanation for me. The willful lack of compassion, the mind infection of true intellectuals among the uninformed, the inability to discern or filter in alternative or more complex explanations- something is internalized in humans and their need to other even to violent ends. This impulse is a constant and for all you can explain about rabid anti semitism in its forms, there is that which you will only explain in terms of periodic explosions of some of the worst facets of human nature, in other words, something “atavistic.”
Well said! Palestinians don't seem to want a state, they just want something to complain about to seek International sympathy for a self-inflicted plight! Therefore, Palestine needs to be de-funded!
What would they do with a state? They can’t even survive without charity. Of course partly that’s Hamas stealing stuff to build tunnels and buy weapons.
Thank you for this essay especially calling out a certain Jewish organization for its failure to confront antisemitism on the left with the same vigor as it does the right. Deborah Lipstadt also fails in this regard. I am also frightened by the ignorance or nonchalance of so many of my Jewish friends, especially those on the left, who remain unconcerned about the staggering rise in antisemitism or believe things will return to “normal” when Israel leaves Gaza or the Palestinians have a state. They blames Israel as opposed to the antisemites and Islamists. The genie of antisemitism was freed from the lamp, and it’s not going back.
THIS (see below) is why those that hate us have won... ALREADY WON an' yeah, the battle is on viddeyo an' takes place halfway 'cross the world. It's a PR battle--like ya said. NOTHING beats this kinda PR fer the "Hamassian" cause. Nothin' we joos can EVER say (or do) can trump this painful imagery UNLESS we kin prove it's Pallywood. Unless we can show it's faked /deep faked. (Can we?)
Frankly it's it's all over substack like white on rice: on the right, on the left, in the middle--so there's no hidin' it or ignorin' it. If these doctors are not actors, we're screwed.... Even I found it painful ta watch...
So in terms of what'cha write about these demented irrational SJWs... sure yer 100% keerect. But no terrorism against us (deemed worthless & reprehensible) joos holds a CANDLE to this kinda stuff--i.e. in the viddeyo--. It's like Keene artwork! The big doe eyes....a the innocence dashed... the kind hearted doctors without borders showin' up the evil harms done by the heartless IDF.
Now I dunno if some unhinged soldiers really DID show such heartlessness--I pray ta god that's NOT the case! But if so--if angry soldiers ARE behavin' like this--that's gotta be nipped in the bud ASAP--these folks brought to trial. It might already be too late ta walk it back.... Of course that is IF it's true, IF no extenuatin' circumstances.
Otherwise there's no way out--it cannot be unseen. I look at the haters--all writin' about the evil psycopathic BABY KILLERS. An' "da joos" are all guilty-- NOT makin' this up... So yup, we have LOST the PR battle an' this puts the cap on the bottle... No talk of "human shields" trumps the stories of orphaned horrifically injured children..
An' each & every joo the world over WILL be held responsible... I cannot see a way out of this... it's all heartbreakin' (unless it's fake in which case it's just manipulative...) SIGH.
worse than I thought--it's all over the innertubes like white on rice but I liked this coverage---Howard Jacobson does it obliquely...but presciently... he ties it in w/ the blood libel..
The above "little drops in the bucket" ain't easy ta find (it took me half an hour on an alt browser many hits down)-- ain't gettin' out... an' OFFICIAL response is needed as we're all "genocidal baby killers" now... (oy. + s.o.s.)
I don't think there is antisemitism within the western Left, you don't have a good understanding of the leftist psyche (but maybe I don't either, I am trying to study this). You say it's covert antisemitism, but then how would we see it--maybe through dreams or hypnosis or Freudian slips?
The Left sticks up for the underdog and believes the underdog is always right and always oppressed. They care about justice and compassion, unable to make tradeoffs and prioritize between two bad situations. So they can't understand that if 40K Palestinians (or whatever the real number is) were not killed and Israel just did nothing, then more than 40K Jews will be massacred over many years, and all Israelis would live in terror in perpetuity. They also can't understand Israel prioritizing the life of Jews over non-combatant Palestinians, or that it is a logical impossibility for the socialist Jews who first came to Israel to be colonialists (just like it is a logical impossibility for leftists to be anti-semitic, or other forms of non-inclusivity, unless we go with your covert hypothesis).
If there were an obvious power imbalance in the fighting in Sudan, maybe one side being European and the other side native, I think lefties would have the same reaction they do towards Israel/Palestine. They also don't understand the nature of Jihadists, thinking they are just like oppressed black people in the US during Jim Crow or apartheid South Africa.
All of the “pro-Palestinian” protests (many of which feature overt and covert antisemitic elements) are from the left, and leftist politicians are regularly being coerced into combining “Islamophobia” with antisemitism even though one has nothing to do with the other.
Let's forget about covert, because unless we can do psychotherapy, we can't prove anything. And I agree that "Islamaphobia" is a snarl word, meant to stop discourse and critical thinking, but I claim "antisemitism" can be used similarly. Can you provide links to overt antisemitic actions and rhetoric from leftists? I saw something in Sidney, Australia, but how do we know the demonstrators were leftists? And how many demonstrators are we speaking of, who chanted antisemitic tropes? If only a handful among hundreds, then it's an exception to the rule. Extraordinary claims require strong evidence.
There are definitely political leftists who have authoritarian personality traits, so it's possible there are a few who are antisemitic. But I have not seen evidence for that yet.
i'm not gonna lie, I wanna get through this - whatever it is and however long it takes - and then never talk to the rest of the world ever again. Ever. For anything.
All I have to say is, “Ditto.”
I’m done.
I love this.
So when are we going to push back against the narrative?? How about full page adds in newspapers with "Palestinian children die when Hamas uses them as human shields." Or billboards with "Israel fights for you." How about "Hamas lies." "Palestinian parents, love your children. Give up Hamas." We have brilliant I.T. guys, why aren't they flooding TikTok with pro Israel stuff. I'm tired of us loosing P.R. war. We can do better.
Nah. Spinning wheels. Those who perpetrated these lies are not just uninterested in the truth but unwilling to believe it. What needs to be done is to win the war and ensure such a thing can never happen again and who cares what the Jew haters think.
I hear both of you. In the end, they're never going to stop hating us no matter what we do or say. We have to not care about that. So, we should "get it done" sooner rather than later, and eventually something else comes along and the world will lose interest. At least temporarily.
I think it would be worth a try. The lies of Hamas are so grotesque yet believed by so many. Hamas has won the public relations war.
Amazing, amazing piece. Brilliantly written.
Thank you
Great essay and I think your second paragraph sums up nicely many of the reasons people are anti-semites. As you reminded us, these anti-semites give a pass to anyone and any event, as long as they're not Jews. Rape, genocide, fascism, etc. everything that most countries have been guilty of has not been given a second thought, but Israel who tries to live within its moral compass as best it can, is demonized every time. When you mentioned a country such as Nicaragua, I'm surprised they have the time to even think about Israel with the gangs that control their neighborhoods. Maybe they should clean their own house first before criticizing another country who is fighting to exist. Bill Maher did a great pushback on a queer artist named Chappell Roan, who has given sympathy and support to "Palestine." Just a bit of what he replied to her song lyrics was you thought it was difficult growing up in the Midwest, try growing up in the Middle East. He also responded to another song that her lyrics wouldn't fly in Gaza, although she would straight off a roof. The ignorance of people like this is why they're so easily manipulated by social media, the news media, and universities. Ironically, this artist believes in critical thinking. This is how confused people are. One thought is not connected to another, nor is there any logical sense to them. In addition to fighting anti-semitism, Jews are also fighting DEI, Woke Progressivism, and the oppressor vs. oppressed ideology, all rolled up into one convenient package. Quite a spoonful to swallow but one that must be fought. When Israel overcomes their current battles, all the aforementioned will be leftovers still existing. and yet I will always believe that good will overcome evil, but with strict perseverance and a strategy to fight it.
Yes, the left-woke version of anti-semitism is very "out there" these days and, as you say, all wrapped up in the weirdest sh*t. Logic? Logic is "white" and no longer needed. Hadn't you heard? I love Maher. Soon after Oct. 7 I heard him say, "History has been tough on most peoples." That concept has gotten me through many an argument. It made me realize that the successful peoples / nations do NOT sit around crying boo-hoo at what has happened to them. They do not perpetuate victimhood. (Jews are experts at this; we remember but we don't wallow). I realize with the Palestinians they are perhaps being manipulated to be perpetual victims in order to further Islamist agendas, but hell -- take your ball and leave and start creating a life.
I always enjoy your comments. I agree that the Palestinians may have been manipulated but after several generations? When Mohamed Hadid, a multimillonaire can still claim victim status, that's when he is manipulating it to serve his purpose, and I believe many are like him. But i definitely agree with you that successful people and nations didn't sit around feeling sorry for themselves. They worked hard at building a society that they could survive and thrive in. If they didn't, the world sure would have looked different now. Thanks for your perspective on it.
Thank you so much! Wow, I didn't know about Mohamed Hadid. I was going to say, I guess cult-thinking can be inherited? But someone like him is of course using his situation to promote radical Islamist thinking -- it probably benefits him somehow. Think of the leaders sitting around in Qatar -- wealthy, safe and powerful. Anyway, thanks!
And demented people do strange things to Jews.
I saw this march towards wokeness at the very beginning. Universities attract radicals which isn’t necessarily a bad thing until it becomes the point. Because there’s nothing radical about a group of likeminded radicals. I did see the anti scholarship in blossom- the idea that a certain angle (e.g. anti capitalism) and academic buzz words alone were enough to constitute serious scholarship. Try hearing an English teacher tell you the Heisenberg uncertainty principle applies to the impossibility of gender duality in the 90s (Heisenberg didn’t know his own reach!) A few students were visibly brainwashed though probably temporarily. Most laughed it off. People knew capitalism gave them nice things. Now they think it’s taking their nice things. Many freedoms are being questioned and are under assault. People fail to understand the potential arbitrariness or wickedness or self interest of the overseers, that we tolerate freedom of words and ideas as a guardrail against the inquisitors who would punish people for their Judaism, and for thinking the earth orbits the sun. It’s not even worth discussing how unfree Gaza is that Gaza itself is an apartheid state against women, dissenters, gay people. It’s almost comical- free Gaza to be even more unfree. It doesn’t need to make sense. It’s hate. I rewatched a scene from Au Revoir Les Enfants. The French Nazis are trying to eject a Jewish man from a restaurant. Some people defend him. One lady shouts, “Go back to Moscow.” My husband would tell you that in Moscow it was “Go back to Israel.” It’s not like “Get out” and Jews haven’t gone together since time immemorial. I’m sure the haters would consider it proof that Jews are the problem rather than that this is what has happened to visible and or successful or “different” minorities since societies laid themselves down. The Jews had the fortune of surviving over and over, to the exterminators, more proof of the menace.
Someone should study how HR at the universities was taken over by radicals (and to some extent foreign donations funding radical departments) to create enough of a critical mass to silence the opposition (in this case center leftists bc there are so few conservatives). I think this is happening to a lesser extent at most companies (with some exceptions) but people are nonetheless cowed into submission or silence.
Your efforts on this Substack along with other writers is not just to counter the ignorant masses, inform the curious masses, but to comfort other Jews. It’s nourishment in these dark crazy times. Thank you!
Antisemitism is unique in that it’s a type of hatred that could be applied to groups in somewhat similar predicaments but Jews are really the only mostly stateless (till recently) and visibly present minority throughout history across much of the world, inspiring way too much attention and venomous mythology. I would love to believe what we’re seeing now is just long cultivated Nazi and Soviet inspired antisemitism from the Mideast coupled with western ignorance and conformity but western ignorance and conformity don’t suffice as an explanation for me. The willful lack of compassion, the mind infection of true intellectuals among the uninformed, the inability to discern or filter in alternative or more complex explanations- something is internalized in humans and their need to other even to violent ends. This impulse is a constant and for all you can explain about rabid anti semitism in its forms, there is that which you will only explain in terms of periodic explosions of some of the worst facets of human nature, in other words, something “atavistic.”
You should understand the only thing dumber than a college professor is a college student.
Just thought of another ... "Ever seen a starving Palestinian in the news?"
They look pretty well fed.
Agree: the only real defense is for a Jew to look inward and take a serious look at our rituals and our profound theology.
Do you know why they hate us? It’s because we’re like them - but not like them.
You keep me going man
Well said! Palestinians don't seem to want a state, they just want something to complain about to seek International sympathy for a self-inflicted plight! Therefore, Palestine needs to be de-funded!
What would they do with a state? They can’t even survive without charity. Of course partly that’s Hamas stealing stuff to build tunnels and buy weapons.
Thank you for this essay especially calling out a certain Jewish organization for its failure to confront antisemitism on the left with the same vigor as it does the right. Deborah Lipstadt also fails in this regard. I am also frightened by the ignorance or nonchalance of so many of my Jewish friends, especially those on the left, who remain unconcerned about the staggering rise in antisemitism or believe things will return to “normal” when Israel leaves Gaza or the Palestinians have a state. They blames Israel as opposed to the antisemites and Islamists. The genie of antisemitism was freed from the lamp, and it’s not going back.
THIS (see below) is why those that hate us have won... ALREADY WON an' yeah, the battle is on viddeyo an' takes place halfway 'cross the world. It's a PR battle--like ya said. NOTHING beats this kinda PR fer the "Hamassian" cause. Nothin' we joos can EVER say (or do) can trump this painful imagery UNLESS we kin prove it's Pallywood. Unless we can show it's faked /deep faked. (Can we?)
Frankly it's it's all over substack like white on rice: on the right, on the left, in the middle--so there's no hidin' it or ignorin' it. If these doctors are not actors, we're screwed.... Even I found it painful ta watch...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF4GfpWp0XA
So in terms of what'cha write about these demented irrational SJWs... sure yer 100% keerect. But no terrorism against us (deemed worthless & reprehensible) joos holds a CANDLE to this kinda stuff--i.e. in the viddeyo--. It's like Keene artwork! The big doe eyes....a the innocence dashed... the kind hearted doctors without borders showin' up the evil harms done by the heartless IDF.
Now I dunno if some unhinged soldiers really DID show such heartlessness--I pray ta god that's NOT the case! But if so--if angry soldiers ARE behavin' like this--that's gotta be nipped in the bud ASAP--these folks brought to trial. It might already be too late ta walk it back.... Of course that is IF it's true, IF no extenuatin' circumstances.
Otherwise there's no way out--it cannot be unseen. I look at the haters--all writin' about the evil psycopathic BABY KILLERS. An' "da joos" are all guilty-- NOT makin' this up... So yup, we have LOST the PR battle an' this puts the cap on the bottle... No talk of "human shields" trumps the stories of orphaned horrifically injured children..
An' each & every joo the world over WILL be held responsible... I cannot see a way out of this... it's all heartbreakin' (unless it's fake in which case it's just manipulative...) SIGH.
The accusations need to be addressed.
worse than I thought--it's all over the innertubes like white on rice but I liked this coverage---Howard Jacobson does it obliquely...but presciently... he ties it in w/ the blood libel..
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/06/tales-of-infanticide-have-stoked-hatred-of-jews-for-centuries-they-echo-still-today
MORE:
this doctor also questions the shared X rays an' shows 'em...
https://x.com/emilykschrader/status/1845117993849704854
this ballistics expert also sez the xrays don't match up with the damage you'd expect to see... https://x.com/angertab/status/1845170296468172857
there's also this:
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/op_eds/2024/08/03/how-to-pose-as-a-reasonable-critic-of-israel-with-a-little-help-from-the-media/
an' the ever-supportive Brendan O'Neill
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/no-israel-isnt-deliberately-killing-children-in-gaza/
SIGH.
This is HUGE. The damage is HUGE (as I predicted)
The above "little drops in the bucket" ain't easy ta find (it took me half an hour on an alt browser many hits down)-- ain't gettin' out... an' OFFICIAL response is needed as we're all "genocidal baby killers" now... (oy. + s.o.s.)
100% agree! (if it's false, the world must know -- an' if true--omg I hope not--but if so, ditto--as lies end up bitin' us all in the tuchis!)
I don't think there is antisemitism within the western Left, you don't have a good understanding of the leftist psyche (but maybe I don't either, I am trying to study this). You say it's covert antisemitism, but then how would we see it--maybe through dreams or hypnosis or Freudian slips?
The Left sticks up for the underdog and believes the underdog is always right and always oppressed. They care about justice and compassion, unable to make tradeoffs and prioritize between two bad situations. So they can't understand that if 40K Palestinians (or whatever the real number is) were not killed and Israel just did nothing, then more than 40K Jews will be massacred over many years, and all Israelis would live in terror in perpetuity. They also can't understand Israel prioritizing the life of Jews over non-combatant Palestinians, or that it is a logical impossibility for the socialist Jews who first came to Israel to be colonialists (just like it is a logical impossibility for leftists to be anti-semitic, or other forms of non-inclusivity, unless we go with your covert hypothesis).
If there were an obvious power imbalance in the fighting in Sudan, maybe one side being European and the other side native, I think lefties would have the same reaction they do towards Israel/Palestine. They also don't understand the nature of Jihadists, thinking they are just like oppressed black people in the US during Jim Crow or apartheid South Africa.
All of the “pro-Palestinian” protests (many of which feature overt and covert antisemitic elements) are from the left, and leftist politicians are regularly being coerced into combining “Islamophobia” with antisemitism even though one has nothing to do with the other.
Let's forget about covert, because unless we can do psychotherapy, we can't prove anything. And I agree that "Islamaphobia" is a snarl word, meant to stop discourse and critical thinking, but I claim "antisemitism" can be used similarly. Can you provide links to overt antisemitic actions and rhetoric from leftists? I saw something in Sidney, Australia, but how do we know the demonstrators were leftists? And how many demonstrators are we speaking of, who chanted antisemitic tropes? If only a handful among hundreds, then it's an exception to the rule. Extraordinary claims require strong evidence.
There are definitely political leftists who have authoritarian personality traits, so it's possible there are a few who are antisemitic. But I have not seen evidence for that yet.
What they should do is whack them
In my inbox just now--shared but someone with over 35K subscribers... PR dept? The "demented" are winnin' this battle... I wanna hide under a ROCK!
https://thespectaclemag.substack.com/p/israels-record-of-shame-a-long-chronological?