The Pure Stupidity of Shared Humanity

If we keep ignoring it when they abuse our freedoms, they will eventually take them away.

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Many folks have been opposed to Israel as a Jewish state (and all that comes with it) not just these days, but over the last several years and even decades, under the guise of “shared humanity.”

Let me be clear: I think the idea of shared humanity is wonderful, and it is one of the reasons why I chose to leave my home of 24 years (Southern California) and move to Tel Aviv — because the “Miami on the Mediterranean”¹ is truly among the “shared humanity” capitals of the world.

So I am all about shared humanity, but I am also one of nearly eight billion people on this planet, and the idea that we can get billions of people to agree on even a roughly similar definition of shared humanity, plus the necessary guard rails, is utterly preposterous.

Potentially it is possible to do so with your neighbors, with your friends, at your workplace, maybe even in your own community. And to the extent that any of this is possible, I think it is fabulous.

But on October 7th, 2023 — when I woke up just before 7 in the morning to rockets being fired indiscriminately at Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities — my shared humanity flew out the window, because some 3,000 Palestinians (who represent hundreds of thousands and even millions of more Palestinians) made it clear that we do not agree on the idea of shared humanity.

And that is fine. Human beings do not have to agree on everything.

Regardless, I could have been at the Nova music festival in the south of Israel, where more than 250 people were massacred that day. Do you know how many times over the last 10 years of living in Israel that I have been invited to various festivals at various locations throughout the country?

That could have easily been me, and definitely one of my friends. In fact, just a few months before October 7th, I went on a date with a woman who attended that music festival with her sister — and both of them were murdered. How is shared humanity working out for this woman and her sister right about now?

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I do not believe that human beings are inherently good or bad, just different. We are all born into different circumstances, in different places across the world, with different climates and landscapes and resources, and so forth. Understanding that the environment in which we grow up is incredibly influential on shaping who and what we become, we ought to aim for coexistence, not conformity.

I love traveling to different countries and experiencing different cultures that are not like the American and Israeli ones to which I am accustomed. Difference is what makes this world interesting, and if we can share things in common like certain so-called human rights, and basic levels of respect, I am all for it.

But they are approximately 1.8 billion people on this planet who subscribe to a religion, which is historically imperialistic, violent, oppressive, misogynistic, and murderous. These traits are built into the DNA of Islam. I do not need folks to tell me for me to know that not all Muslims exhibit these traits, but many of them do. And among those who do not exhibit them personally, countless tacitly support those who do.

I also do not need folks to tell me for me to know that other religions at other points in time were also imperfect, but “whataboutism” is not going to make imperialistic, violent, oppressive, misogynistic, and murderous Islamic ideologies suddenly disappear.

If we listen just a little more closely, there are many Muslims who are telling us loud and clear that Islam, on the whole, ranges from problematic to lethal. Luai Ahmed is one of these Muslims. A few weeks ago, he wrote on X:

“Dear Muslims, the world is scared of us. The world is laughing at us. The world is worried about us. And there are legitimate reasons for their worry that we cannot keep denying. It is time for us to flush the word ‘Islamophobia’ down the toilet and start looking in the mirror and ask ourselves: How did we get here? How come the largest and most thriving terrorist organizations in the world are Muslim? Why do we keep repeating these stone-age traditions that have failed us and continue to fail us?”

“Meanwhile, we are stuck on Earth in the Middle Ages, going to our poisonous mosques every Friday, reciting the same chapters and the same stories of Mohammed. Why haven’t all of these books and teachings led to any scientific, technological, or medical advancements? Fourteen hundred years of us, stuck, debating: ‘Which is the correct sect?’ ‘What is the correct interpretation?’ ‘Who is a real Muslim? ‘How can we convince people to become Muslims?’”

“Why on Earth would anyone want to become Muslim today?”²

At the same time, there are other Muslims who make excuses for every aspect of their religion and try to explain away all of our justifiable fears. Or they attempt to gaslight us into thinking we have a phobia (an irrational fear) about Islam, and thus our feelings are the real problems, not their religion.

Sure, no religion is perfect and all should be open to reforms. There is also something called math, which I know some in the crowd think is inherently racist, but for the rest of us who actually appreciate math for what it is, a quarter of the world is Muslim and, frankly, we should be worried just as much about that as we should about global warming and other serious global threats.

Certainly, diversity should be cherished. So too should learning about other people who come from different places, with different backgrounds, and different ways of thinking and doing and believing. But cherishing diversity is not anywhere near the same as tolerating a religion that dominates our world and is responsible for so much terrorism, imperialism, human rights violations, and tyranny.

There is a reason why most Israelis do not want to live in one state for two peoples: us and the Palestinians. It is not because we are racist, or because we are haters, or because we are greedy and want all the land to ourselves.

It is because we are realists, and we know that if the Jews and the Palestinians live in one so-called democratic state, the Palestinians will aim to bear more children than the Jews, within a generation or two they will nefariously become the majority, they will then remove the state’s democratic values, and they will do terrible things to the Jewish population.

The reason we believe this to be true is because that is what has happened to Jews in almost every Arab- and Muslim-majority country — and the sample size, both in countries and years, is robust.

It is time for the rest of the West to finally wake up and stop allowing democratic values to be manipulated by people in your governments and on your streets to disrespect your countries and their histories, and to mock the cultures that have allowed those people to unleash such manipulation in the first place.

Countries must legislate and police this problem away by making it clear that all good-hearted and well-intentioned people are welcome, regardless of religious or ethnic or national background, so long as they respect the values and the customs of Western liberal societies.

But we should also be clear that there is a second side to this coin: If you are not courteous of our values and customs, there are real consequences. I, personally, am of the belief that a three-strike rule should be implemented, so that it is clear to those who want to be disrespectful either in words or in actions: three strikes and you are out of the country, and stripped of your legal documents.

By doing so, people who actually want to stay in these Western liberal democracies will moderate themselves and eventually become part of so-called mainstream society. Meaning, productive and decent contributors to the society and to the country.

Otherwise, if we keep ignoring it when they abuse our freedoms, they will eventually take them away — because, while you and I might adhere to the precept of shared humanity, they so obviously do not. As a matter of fact, they are already imposing their violent, supremacist, intolerant will on our liberal democracies.

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Last week, the British Parliament changed the way it operates because the Speaker of the Commons was afraid that some parliamentarians would be harassed or even murdered if they could not be seen to vote for a ceasefire in a war thousands of kilometers away. This is not democracy. This is a country that is unwilling to live by its own rules in order to placate a violent mob.

And efforts are already being made to sweep this reality under the carpet, like was done with the murder of British politician Sir David Amess, who was assassinated by Islamist terrorist Ali Harbi Ali, a British citizen of Somali descent. Can we honestly afford to let this happen again?

We must be unshakably honest and admit it: We have a problem with Islamist extremism that requires immediate, drastic action. Appeasement, multiculturalism, “live and let live,” cultural relativism, and virtually every other hyper-liberal worldview have not been working. We know what doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is called.

If intimidation and threats of violence produce results like the one we saw last week in the British Parliament, this will only encourage more intimidation and threats of violence — and not just in Britain.

This is a direct attack on our Western liberal democracies, kind of like 9/11. Genocidal slogans projected onto the symbol of the British parliamentary democracy would be a little more tolerable if these same people demonstrated for Syria (which has more civilian casualties than Gaza by a factor of 10), for the Uyghurs (who are undergoing ethnic cleansing in China), or for Afghans (the women of whom are repressed nationwide). But the fact remains: These people did not demonstrate for these others.

Thus, these demonstrations and threats (perceived and real) go deeper than most of us think. They are strategic and deliberate. If I was an authoritarian enemy of the West, I would know that I cannot beat the West’s military might. Instead, I would focus on infiltrating Western liberal democracies through subversion of institutions and societies. As an authoritarian, I would use the West’s own liberal order against it.

In authoritarian states, such demonstrations against government policy would be met with violence, jail sentences, and even death. But the West is better than that. Our laws are mostly liberal and just — to the point that, now, many law enforcement professionals are tolerating hate speech, harassment, bullying, threats, intimidation, and micro-aggressions.

The secondary effect is that wider public confidence in law enforcement has been damaged in many Western cities, further subverting a vital democratic institution. How many times have we seen claims of two-tier policing during the last four months?

Then there is subversion of the West’s people, which has taken place on the back of a highly aggressive and effective disinformation campaign. Such campaigns are designed to provoke strong emotions. The hardcore protesters will be antisemitic fifth columnists, acting knowingly, but most people at protests will have been “well-intentioned.” A disinformation campaign has duped them into believing:

• There are 30,000 civilian casualties (numbers that do not stand up to the merest critical scrutiny).

• There is a genocide happening (patently nonsense, even using Hamas’ inflated numbers).

• The destruction in Gaza is somehow different to any other urban war (which it is not).

All this persuasion has been achieved by a disinformation campaign that is supercharged by social media. War is appalling, and showing repeatedly and up-close the effects of war on buildings and people (women and children) — with buzzwords like “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and “colonialism” and “settler violence” — naturally evokes a powerful reaction.

It is juvenile and oversimplified to relegate this war to one between “the good guys” versus “the bad guys.” We are in the middle of a geopolitical power struggle. Israel and the West’s enemies know they cannot defeat us militarily, so they are attacking us through other barbaric and psychologically manipulative methods, notwithstanding the use of fifth columnists and disinformation to attack liberal democracies and rules-based order.

We need to urgently find a way to counteract this kind of disinformation campaign, or the future looks very bleak. Either way, liberal democracies will not survive over the long-run if they continue to allow attacks on our processes, threats to our politicians, and perverse demonstrations in our streets — and, to add insult to injury, if they continue to indulge or write off the perpetrators.

Western governments, political parties, intelligence agencies, and police and security services need to understand that we no longer have the luxury of pretending this issue away. People who threaten violence should be arrested and locked up for a very long time. Again, three strikes and you are out.

If the threats are directed against elected officials, this is an attempt to subvert our democracy and should be treated as such. Foreign nationals who engage in, call for, fund, or glorify violence, religious hatred, or other violent extremism should be deported immediately.

We must be honest with ourselves. If we do not act now, as sadly it seems that most of us will not, the result will be more violence and more intimidation. It is not a pleasant truth to have to admit, but the reality will only deteriorate if we persistently refuse to speak it — and shared humanity will be but a figment of the West’s collective imagination.

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1. “‘Tel Aviv world’s 9th best beach city’.” Ynet News.

2. Luai Ahmed on X